A new system for the protection of creative content necessary for a diverse and functioning democracy

I attended a UTSpeaks event this evening featuring Professor Michael Fraser, who addressed the following topic:

Are we ready for a new age in how creative content is sold and stored online?

Michael Fraser laid out his vision of a transformed copyright system arguing that the creators of original content ‘deserved to be rewarded’.  Fraser said that must build an information economy and knowledge society in Australia, as a sustainable economic engine for the country that would supercede Australia’s natural resources.  Copyright represents a legal infrastructure for creative content, he said.

Fraser laid out four necesary conditions for viable creative industries.

1. Access (which he said was coming in the form of the NBN)
2. Content (Australian is proven as a market for creative content in his view)
3. Copyright (effective law and protection)
4. Business models

The latter two were the areas that needed to be addressed.  Passive and unresponsive business models combined with ineffective copyright laws were undermining the necessary conditions for an information economy.  He said that content owners are not providing content in the form that customers want.  In other words, its far too difficult to identify the copyright owners for content today and too costly (dollars and time) to negotiate the right to use their content.  A large swathe of the population ilegally access content, as a result.  Illegal downloads and piracy cost creative industries 10% of their revenue per annum.

As an aside, I thought it a little ironic that Fraser didn’t credit or source any of the data points that he included in his slides – and there were many.

Fraser than ran through some of the existing copyright protection systems, and the shortcomings of each:

• Creative Commons: ‘makes a useful contribution at the fringe for free content’
• Revenue from ads connected to content: ‘only supports the content that attracts enough advertising dollars and there cannot sustain free expression’
• Patronage: ‘again, cannot support free expression, which is essential for a functioning democracy’
• Content producer databases: ’siloed, not meeting consumer expectations’
• Online content shops: ‘do not meet demands for re-use’
• Google books: ‘adopted an opt out model for publishers which it combines with a revenue share model but there is an inherent data in corporations owning this content’
• Social Networking Sites: ‘advertiser pays revenue to the site not the creators’.  Fraser was generally dismissive of the amatuer approach.
• He also mentioned the not very mainstream academic journals and copyright collecting services

A new model is required that provided instant access to content together with the rights in one transaction.

Fraser then took us back a few hundred years to the industrial revolution to provide some thoughts about the governing principles of a new copyright system.

He cited the following milestones from history and their impact on the respective industries and consumer adoption.

1. The introduction of property rights prior to the Western Europe’s industrial revolution.  A similar system if applied to creative content would secure intellectual property and “make a market for creativity”.
2. A national infrastructure is a pre-requisite for effective trade and competition similarly our creative industries require a national infrastructure for content.
3. The introduction of standards in the rail, power generation and shipping industries, which each had the effective of reducing cost and improving efficiencies in their respective industries.

Fraser’s new copyright system – his proposed National Content Network – would apply these principles to creative content.  It would provide an active registry (providing metadata) and actionable information for every piece of creative content that was produced or made available in this jurisdiction.  Individuals that wanted to re-use a piece of content would refer to the registry where they could access the following information:

• Details of the copyright restrictions that apply to that piece of content
• The ability to procure and pay for access and re-use rights
• Contact details for the content creator

The NCN would interoperate across all types of content and would be administered by the Government.  The system would reduce illegal copying, he claimed – allowing a sustainable funding model for culture and knowledge products.  Equal access would be applied to paid and copyright free content.  Fraser said that the system would enhance competition between creators.

I agree with Fraser’s assertion that individual content producers deserve to be rewarded.

I think there is a danger that a failure to reward content producers may result in a narrowing of our creative and cultural horizons.  Having said that, the Internet provides opportunities for creators to reap the reward via other means, such as the accumulation of influence but then is this  a sustainable model for large numbers of people over the long term, I don’t know.

Fraser didn’t use the word ’sharing’ once during this presentation, which I found interesting.  The experience of Social Networks shows that individuals are willing to share ideas, content and creativity in an communal or altrustic frame of mind.  I think Fraser would challenge the quality of this content and maybe he would have a point.

Quality content can be niche content, in fact perhaps you could argue that the greater the niche the higher the quality.

Which of the existing content infrastructures and business models will support niche or specialist content in the future?  That is a real challenge.