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Digital Rights Working GroupPre-reading for second meeting

March 23, 2006

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Explanation of Materials

• As background materials for the next Digital Working Group meeting, we have prepared a very basic overview of some issues, common terms, and programs associated with Digital Rights.

• The materials are divided into three parts:– Synthesis of recent news articles about digital rights management

(DRM)– Relevant terms or ideas– Centers of expertise

• On each topic, we have summarized key themes to provide you with a high-level reference guide.

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Overview of Contents

• Recent headlines– BBC: Building Public Value & Its Digital Future– Guilds, Affiliates and Downloading– Current Players in Web Video

• Relevant terms and ideas– Creative Commons License– BBC’s Creative Archive– Fair Use– Broadcast Flag

• Centers of expertise– Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard

Law School– Center for Social Media at American University

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Digital Rights in the News

• In recent weeks and months, the issue of digital rights management has often been in the news

• The pages that follow provide a synopsis of some recent articles that are relevant to this working group

• Copies of selected articles have been sent to you and all articles are available for you to download on the www.ptv-agc.org website

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BBC Green Paper and Digital Rights

BBC Building Public Value: Renewing the BBC for a Digital WorldThis paper outlines both the BBC’s mission and the strategy it plans to take in order to achieve its goals for the next ten years. Most relevant is chapter 3, “Building Public Value in the Future,” which proposes a variety of initiatives to ensure that content stays relevant for all audience segments, with a major focus on internet access to programming – archival and current. (see attachment for document)

Locking Down our Digital RightsBBC News, February 8, 2006Internet law professor Michael Geist suggests legislators may need to intervene to prevent onerous DRM restrictions on consumers that may harm creativity and the digital economy. (see www.ptv-agc.org for article)

As part of their Charter Review process in 2004, the BBC outlined a digital strategy to best position itself in a technological uncertain future. The UK government then asked the British people to respond to the BBC’s proposal. 

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BBC White Paper and Views

At a Glance: BBC White PaperBBC News, March 14, 2006The White Paper is UK Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell’s analysis and recommendation for the renewal of the BBC’s Charter. This article provides a short summary of the key findings. (see attachment for article and www.ptv-agc.org for entire White Paper)

Entertainment ‘Key’ to BBCBBC News, March 14, 2006“The White Paper makes entertainment central to the BBC’s mission,” says Jowell. “The BBC should continue to take fun seriously, ingraining entertainment into all its services.“ (see www.ptv-agc.org for article)

White Paper Press ViewsBBC News, March 15, 2006This article highlights the views and editorials of the UK’s leading newspapers. General reaction is that the Culture Secretary approved nearly every aspect of what the BBC has asked for and agreed to its plans for the future. (see www.ptv-agc.org for article)

In mid-March 2006, the UK government published the BBC White Paper, which provides the BBC with plan to execute on their strategy for the next ten years. These articles illustrate public reaction in Britain to the report.

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Guilds, Affiliates and Downloading

Download DramaVariety, February 27, 2006Feeling that they capitulated early-on in residuals from home video, guilds are taking a hard stand on residuals from downloading, streaming and other on-demand distribution. (see www.ptv-agc.org for article)

As TV Networks Use Web, Affiliates Seek Piece of the ActionThe Wall Street Journal, February 1, 2006Affiliates are seeing themselves marginalized as networks allow programming to be downloaded; however, affiliates are proposing solutions and many networks are listening. (see attachment for article)

To Blunt the Web’s Impact, TV Tried Building Online FencesThe Wall Street Journal, March 16, 2006The internet, DVRs and Slingbox are viewed as disruptive technologies by the networks. The Big Four are searching for technological and legislative answers that help adjust their business models. (see attachment for article)

As the networks and studio see the internet as another revenue channel, creative guilds and affiliate stations want to make sure they get a piece of the pie. These articles outline the concerns and possible solutions among all parties involved.

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Current Players in Web Video

Searching Web for Video ClipsThe Wall Street Journal, March 1, 2006Video on the web is multiplying exponentially, and it is difficult to find the clips you want. However, AOL Video Search, Yahoo Video Search and Blinkx TV prove to be useful video search engines. (see www.ptv-agc.org for article)

Choices Expand for Watching TV on Your PCThe Wall Street Journal, February 22, 2006Rather than the exception, it is now becoming the norm to be able to view current and vintage TV, movies and live sports from your PC. (see www.ptv-agc.org for article)

Media Center Puts Microsoft Ahead of RivalsThe Wall Street Journal, January 5, 2006Microsoft envisions its media center PCs as the center of entertainment for households, who can watch all programming accessible via the internet instantly on their TV. (see www.ptv-agc.org for article)

Searching and playing video on the web is becoming commonplace, and with increased broadband penetration and speeds, the internet has an opportunity to be the biggest distribution channel for all – free and fee – content.

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Overview of Contents

• Recent headlines– BBC: Building Public Value & Its Digital Future– Guilds, Affiliates and Downloading– Current Players in Web Video

• Relevant terms and ideas– Creative Commons License– BBC’s Creative Archive– Fair Use– Broadcast Flag

• Centers of expertise– Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard

Law School– Center for Social Media at American University

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Definition of Creative Commons License

• In 2002, a Stanford University professor named Lawrence Lessig created a new, easy to use licensing agreement that allowed content creators to share their work in a flexible way

• Under existing copyright law, no published material may be shared without reimbursing the creator, but Lessig recognized that some creators actually wanted to share their work – under certain conditions

• The Creative Commons license allows content creators to indicate if they want their work to be shared for non-commercial uses, credited, or manipulated and adapted in any way

• The Creative Commons team developed simple comic strips to describe their service; one of these comics is included on the following pages

Source: www.CreativeCommons.org

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A Creative Commons Comic

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Comic (con’t)

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Comic (con’t)

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Comic (con’t)

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Comic (con’t)

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Comic (con’t)

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Comic (con’t)

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Comic (con’t)

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The Creation of the Creative Archive

• BBC is currently required to provide some limited access to archives for licence fee payers (i.e. nearly every UK citizen)

• In April 2005, the BBC launched an 18-month pilot project, the Creative Archive License Group, to create a digital public library that allows free access to selected content (moving images, stills and sound) for learning, for creativity and for pleasure

• The Creative Archive is based on the Creative Commons model in the U.S., and seeks to set out a middle ground to rights management, rather than the extremes of the pure public domain or the reservation of all rights

• Working with five other organizations, the BBC is seeking collaboration among rights holders and archives – commercial and public content providers

– The three founding partners include bfi, Channel 4, and Open University– Two additional organizations recently joined: Teachers’ TV as well as Museums, Libraries

and Archives (MLA)

• The Creative Archive’s vision is to create a true public resource, not something uniquely tied to the BBC, and to encourage content creators to release material that has exhausted its commercial value

• In September, 2005, Superstar VJ Archive was launched, followed by Open News Archive in December, 2005, and Open Earth Archive in February, 2005

Sources: Paul Gerhardt, BBC Press Release “Creative Archive Pioneers,” creativearchive.bbc.co.uk

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Creative Archive Uses Today • What kind of content is in the Archive?

– Currently, all content is in the form of short video clips, audio and stills– There are no long form pieces

• How is the Archive organized?– Currently, there are 3 separate archives

• Superstar VJ Archive: Random footage (e.g. Manhattan skyline scene) that encourages users to create their own music videos

• Open News Archive: 80 historic news audio and video reports• Open Earth Archive: Science and nature audio and video content

• How can UK users access the content?– Content can be played in Windows MediaPlayer or Apple Quicktime – Content can also be edited with free Easy Edit Suite provided by BBC

• How does the BBC plan to expand the Archive?– As rights are cleared, longer form news and documentary video will be included – Primary focus will be news, nature and generic video, with secondary focus on

entertainment programming– About 100 hours of footage is expected to be available during pilot– Assuming pilot is approved, current proposal is to add at least 1000 hours per

year to the Archive over the next 10 years

Source: creativearchive.bbc.co.uk

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Creative Archive Partners’ Offerings

– Offers clips and shorts including silent comedy, early literary adaptations, newsreel footage and archive footage of British cities in the early 20th century

Partner Content ProvidedTarget Audience

bfi

Channel 4

Teachers TV

Open University

MLA

– Showcases new works and connects new talent with broadcasting professionals and each other through service called 4Docs

– Provides copyright-cleared stock footage for 4Docs users to incorporate into their documentary films

– Provides VJs with specially-commissioned and archive content for incorporation into their audiovisual productions with a service called Pix-N-Mix

– Plans to provide content that users could not easily get for themselves such as chemistry experiments, views of the interiors of public buildings where filming would be difficult, innovative graphics sequences

– Offers over 700 downloadable programs for use by teachers, including video podcasts

All

Primarily students

Filmmakers

Teachers/Parents

Small organizations

– Plans to help smaller audio video archives across England to release their content

15-25 year olds

Source: http://creativearchive.bbc.co.uk/archives/for_download/

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• The Creative Archive’s tagline neatly summarizes their brand position:– Find it. Mix it. Rip it. Share it. Come and Get it.

• The Creative Archive has looked for multiple ways to encourage interactivity – Need to register and become member– Actively solicits feedback– Creates contests aimed toward younger people (e.g., Noise Film Festival)

The CA Actively Solicits User Interaction and A Younger Demographic

Are you 25 and under and want to get into the creative industries? Would you like to see your work on television, radio, online and in print? Plus an opportunity to have your work reviewed by some of the UK’s most renowned creatives and potential international collaborators.

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4. No Endorsement and no derogatory useThe Creative Archive content is provided to allow you to get creative with content, not for campaigning, soapboxing or to defame others! So don't use it to promote political, charitable, or other campaigning purposes and remember to treat others and their work in the way that you'd expect them to treat you and your work...with respect!

1. Non-commercialThis means that you may use the Creative Archive content for your own personal use and for not-for-profit educational use but you can't sell or profit financially in any way from the use of the Creative Archive content.

2. Share-AlikeThis means that the Creative Archive content is granted to you under the terms set out in the License and if you wish to use the content you must then license anything you create or produce using the Creative Archive content (i.e. a Derivative Work) under the same License. It's simple!

3. Crediting (Attribution)It's your chance to make sure everyone knows what you've done, but you ALSO need to make sure that everyone who has contributed to a piece of content (a Derivative Work) is credited too. It's up to you how creatively you acknowledge others' contributions!

5. UKThe Creative Archive content is made available to broadband users within the UK for use primarily within the UK.

Like Creative Commons, Creative Archive Provides Its Own License Agreement to Users

Source: http://creativearchive.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/03/the_rules_in_br_1.html

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Definition of Fair Use

• “Fair use” is a principle set out in the United States Copyright Act that recognizes that some material under copyright should be legally and freely available for certain purposes

• The Copyright Act defines those purposes as “criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research”

• The act states that four factors should be considered when determining if a use is fair:1. The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of

commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes2. The nature of the copyrighted work3. The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the

copyrighted work as a whole4. The effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the

copyrighted work

Source: Definitions of Words and Phrases Commonly Found in Licensing Agreements. Yale University. http://www.library.yale.edu/~llicense/definiti.shtml

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Re-evaluating Fair Use in the Digital Age

• Appropriate definitions of fair use have recently been called into question

• Google’s plan to index a large portion of books online, for example, has caused many people to question if this use is indeed “fair”

– If you have time, watch the following video, created by Lawrence Lessig, about this debate (click link to view video if you are reading in “slide show view” or copy the address into your web browser):

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5l2nrbmBQXg&eurl=

• Documentary filmmakers have felt that their artistic creativity is being curtailed by an overly rigid approach to copyright compliance

– Working with the Center for Social Media (see p.30), several national organizations of documentary filmmakers have recently drafted a “Documentary Filmmakers’ Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use”

– This statement outlines four types of situations where documentary filmmakers should be able to use copyrighted material under the fair use doctrine:

1. When employing copyrighted material as the object of social, political, or cultural critique2. When quoting copyrights works of popular culture to illustrate an argument or point3. When capturing copyrighted media content in the process of filming something else4. When using copyrighted material in a historical sequence

Source: http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/rock/backgrounddocs/bestpractices.pdf

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Definition of Broadcast Flag

• A broadcast flag is a set of bits, or “flags,” embedded in the data stream of a digital television program

• These flags indicate if there are any restrictions on how the program can be recorded

• Possible restrictions include the following:– Inability to save a digital program to a hard disk– Inability to make secondary copies of recorded content (in order to share or archive)– Forceful reduction of quality when recording (such as reducing HD video to the

resolution of standard TVs)– Inability to skip over commercials

• In the United States, new television receivers were supposed to incorporate broadcast flags starting July 1, 2005 but a federal court ruled that this was unnecessary

• While the stated intention of the broadcast flag was to prevent copyright infringement, the court upheld the view that broadcast flags interfere with the fair use rights of the viewing public

Source: Wikipedia; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadcast_flag

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Overview of Contents

• Recent headlines– BBC: Building Public Value & Its Digital Future– Guilds, Affiliates and Downloading– Current Players in Web Video

• Relevant terms and ideas– Creative Commons License– BBC’s Creative Archive– Fair Use– Broadcast Flag

• Centers of expertise– Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard

Law School– Center for Social Media at American University

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Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law SchoolMission

The Berkman Center's mission is to explore and understand cyberspace, its development, dynamics, norms, standards, and need or lack thereof for laws and sanctions.

We are a research center, premised on the observation that what we seek to learn is not already recorded. Our method is to build out into cyberspace, record data as we go, self-study, and publish. Our mode is entrepreneurial nonprofit.

Background

• Founded in 1998, the Berkman Center is a research program dedicated to exploring cyberspace, sharing in its study, and pioneering its development

• Members of the Center include a network of faculty, students, fellows, entrepreneurs, lawyers, and virtual architects who are all working to identify and engage with the challenges and opportunities of cyberspace

• Topics related to the internet that the Center has investigated include governance, privacy, intellectual property, antitrust, content control and electronic commerce

• As part of their active research mission, they have created an open software platform for free online lectures and discussions, they sponsor conferences, and they support the traditional Harvard Law School curriculum, often in conjunction with other Harvard schools and MIT

Source: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/home/mission

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Berkman Center Activities• One of the main projects of the Berkman Center has been The Digital Media Project; currently in its fourth year,

this project is investigating ways that the transition from analog to digital technology can occur as smoothly as possible, and with the maximum benefit to all

• In particular, some of the Project’s research has focused on the following areas

– Patent law: Examining the tension between the benefits of encouraging scientists to produce more research by protecting creators’ work and the drawbacks that a complicated, expensive patent law system can cause such as increasing barriers, higher cost, and commercialization of science

– Scholarly context: Exploring how the benefits of digital media be used in education and how businesses, laws and technology may be preventing academics and educators from reaching this potential

– Digital Media Exchange: Building a web-based, open source platform that enables the distribution and licensing of digital content

– New tools: Creating online tools such as recommendation engines, playlists, blogs and podcasting

– Television’s regulatory context: Examining the implications of television’s rollover from analog to digital

• Digital Media Project aims to share their findings with a broad range of stakeholders, including government officials, the media, artists, businesspeople, and the public at large

• As part of this ongoing outreach, the Berkman Center will be hosting a conference entitled “Beyond Broadcast: Reinventing Media in a Participatory Culture” on May 12-13

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Center for Social Media at American University

Mission

The Center for Social Media showcases and analyzes strategies to use media as creative tools for public knowledge and action. It focuses on social documentaries for civil society and democracy, and on the public media environment that supports them.

Activities

• Center activities include public events, research projects, convenings, organizational links, and web-published research

• They have examined issues like the future of public media, best practices in Fair Use, and public engagement in documentaries

• The Center is part of the School of Communication at American University in Washington, DC, and is directed by Professor Pat Aufderheide

Source: www.centerforsocialmedia.org