In November 2006 NSW Premier Morris Iemma announced that Sydney would roll out a free wifi network claiming that it would boost business in the city. There’s been a lot of water under the bridge since then in NSW politics and in May 2008 they finally announced that this grand vision, along with many others, was finally dead (reported in the SMH here). Instead of Sydney having ubiquitous free wifi the vision was wound back to making it available in public libraries. After all, city-wide schemes had crashed and burned in Chicago, Houston and San Francisco and we’re not financially irresponsible are we? In the wake of those decisions all I have to say to our weak kneed state leaders is: Whai Whai.

If you understand Italian go to www.whaiwhai.com and have a look at what they’re doing with free wifi in Venice, Florence and Rome. Residents get free wifi, tourists are charged a nominal fee.  So what can they tourists do with all that bandwidth besides update their Facebook profiles? Whai Whai takes off in the real world where the Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons left us on the silver screen. Imagine exploring one of these beautiful cities by taking part in a treasure hunt following a mystery that unfolds under the guidance of your mobile phone. Whai Whai has won an award for innovation in tourism in Italy and, with venture capital behind it, has plans to expand internationally. There are several similar projects in this space under development in Australia. It’s a shame the infrastructure just wasn’t in place to roll them out or even test them. As usual we’ll probably become a whai whai franchisee rather than an exporter of Australian IP. We’re left asking Whai?

In late May I attended a great conference on Copyright Future – Copyright Freedom held at Old Parliament House in Canberra which featured a keynote talk by Stanford University Professor Lawrence who is pictured above. One session of the conference was run in the old House of Representatives chamber and many of the speakers were overcome with the gravity of the setting and the honour of speaking there. The standard of the presentations was in keeping with the historic surroundings, the next step that is needed is for some of the ideas to transition to legislation in the new Parliament House.

Copyright can be a fairly dry subject at the best of times but, judging by the energy in the room, you got a powerful sense from this conference that there is an urgent need for reform. The proceedings were opened by Attorney General Robert McClelland and speakers included Former Justice of the High Court Michael Kirby and eminent lawyers from all sides of the copyright debate. The fact that there was general agreement of the need for reform provides some reassurance that the entrenched positions of the past may soon begin to break down.

In the film and television industry my experience is that if you mention the subject of copyright reform the conversation turns fairly quickly to condemnation of “pirates” and “thieves”. But one thing I learned from the Copyright Future conference was that reform of copyright laws is not unprecedented. There have been major reforms and ammendments to copyright legislation throughout its history in response to evolving creative practices and technologies. Radio, television, photocopying and videotape are among the technologies that have prompted changes in the past including a total redraft of the Copyright act by Nigel Bowen in 1968. So, it is not inconceivable that change to copyright legislation is warranted with the advent of the internet despite the strength of feeling on the issue.

There is no doubt that current copyright legislation is out of step with internet technologies and practices of sharing content online. A punitive approach to online sharing is difficult to enforce although the recording industry persists in mounting legal action in this area. But what is the cost of this approach and is it viable in the long term? Lawrence Lessig, in a powerful keynote presentation appealed for reform of a system which is “criminalising a whole generation”. Using the analogy of the prohibition of alcohol in 1920’s America, Lessig questioned the effectiveness of “waging a war” on alcohol consumption, terrorism or internet sharing. He gave a polished presentation (one that he’s obviously given many times before) which made an impassioned, clearly argued case for reform.

Lessig started by building a picture of the “read-write culture” that we all associate with the internet but pointed to strong antecedents in culture prior to broadcasting. There is a long tradition of artistic work which builds on prior work in painting and literature. Quotation is used widely in academic writing and there are established systems of citation that make this OK. Yet there are no well agreed systems of citation when it comes to digital audio or video. Do writers need to ask permission of the copyright owner to quote someone else asks Lessig? Of course not, and as video and audio become the new lingua franca for global communication these questions become more pertinent. Lessig showed some of the best examples of mash-up culture such as The Obama Hope poster, DJ Dangermouse’s Grey Album, Girltalk, Will.i.am’s Yes We Can mashup, and of course Johan Soderberg’s mashup of Bush and Blair and for a whole lot more pointed us to Greg Rutter’s Definitive List of The 99 Things You Should Have Already Experienced On The Internet Unless You’re a Loser or Old or Something.

These are some of the most inspiring examples of global mashup culture, but Lessig also made mention of some of the less inspiring content that populates the internet by making a wider appeal to embrace amateur content.  Reform of copyright law needs to incorporate a clear distinction between amateur and professional content so that they are treated differently under the law. But perhaps Lessig’s most powerful argument for change was that laws that criminalise a whole generation function to generally erode respect for the rule of law. He pointed to the rise of a copyright abolition movement which, he maintains, is fueled but the disfunctionality of the current law.

Perhaps one of the most powerful moments of the conference was when Professor Adrian Sterling publically agred with Lessig’s appeal for copyright reform. By way of explanation, Sterling is a British barrister and legal academic well known for his representation of the recording industry since the 1970’s and his voice is a powerful addition to the chorus. But to call for reform is all well and good, what are the solutions? Sterling maintains that any reform to the Berne convention (the 1886 international agreement for the Protection of Artistic and Literary Works) is doomed to failure. He maintains that a streamlined system of international licencing needs to be established to reflect the global reach of the internet – an approach that favours changes to the administration of rights rather than fundamentally changing them.

Certainly the decriminalisation of media reuse for amateur purposes is on top of the list for reform. Two approaches seem to be emerging including blanket licencing that frees up amateur reuse of work while encouraging respect for moral rights. The second approach, that Lessig referred to briefly, is the German Green Party’s “cultural flat rat” where legalised sharing of peer to peer material is funded through licence fees collected by internet service providers. More can be read about this here.

All credit to Brian Fitzgerald and the team at QUT Law Faculty/CCI for organising the conference. More documentation can be found here. Although I’m not aware that there was a recording made of Lessig’s presentation at the Conference there is a great one here recorded in New York for Fora.tv which bears a striking resemblance to the talk in Canberra. On the final day of the conference there was a session held to discuss a more open approach to releasing archives and publically owned materials on the internet. If public institutions lead by example on this front it can help to encourage more widespread reform of the system.

Zillion TV, as you read in my last post, are about to serve up free on demand TV services to homes in the US using a business model based on personalised advertising. An interesting innovation at GDC this year is covered in a story on the BBC technology pages about a new on demand video games service called OnLive. The article is entitled ‘The End of the Games Console?’ and includes commentators who speculate that the PS3 and XBox360 may be the last games consoles produced because of the vast potential of serving up on demand games. But wait a minute, these services aren’t something that are going to launch in five years time, they are launching now or very soon.

Now, let’s look for a minute at the recently announced Australian government plan to build a fibre to the home broadband network in Australia. My main criticism of the plan is that it’s going to take 8 years to build the thing. What is harder to believe is the skepticism coming from some entrenched industry players (and opposition parties) about the long term financial viability of this network. Who is going to pay for it they ask? Will consumers increase their monthly broadband subscription fee from $50 to $200 per month is the question on everyone’s lips today (including Malcolm Turnbull). CEO of AAPT, Paul Broad, took this approach when interviewed on Lateline Business tonight and I’ve got to say I think this attitude is small minded in the extreme. Come on guys, lose the plumbing and superhighway metaphors and start thinking of some more imaginative business models. Making money from high speed broadband is not all about metering the pipe you provide into the home and if that’s the best you can do when you think 8 years into the future then you deserve to go broke.

Zillion TV, for example, is a service I would like delivered to my home and it seems advertisers are prepared to pay for the privilege of reaching me. Example number 2: rather than going down to the mall and picking through the bargain bins at EB Games I would like access to a much larger online catalogue of games which I can instantly download and play – OnLive?  The margin that I usually pay to the retailer instead pays for a proportion of the broadband service. It isn’t rocket science to work out that this broadband pipe is going to enable a wide range of services that are not currently available and my consumer spend is going to change, business models are going to change. Hopefully clunky old ISP’s and Telco’s will be left behind in the dust. (photo by Blentley )

I’ve been flicking through the MIPTV news after our very own home grown Scorched.tv picked up a Digital Emmy® award yesterday. MIPTV is a glitzy event and the Scorched.tv team certainly had their moment in the sun but I couldn’t help notice the glare of ZillionTV splashed across blog posts and twitter feeds and of course it turns out they’re the Gold Sponsor of this year’s Digital Emmy® Awards.
So who are ZillionTV and what do they want? If you go to their web site they describe their impressive array of partners like this:

Charlie had his Angels. We’ve got our own team to make it all happen, and that includes content providers, television commerce gurus, and yes, even advertisers.

It certainly seems they do and content partners include Disney, Warner Brothers, Sony Pictures, NBC Universal, 20th Century Fox and, as they announced at MIPTV, the Weinstein Company. Not a bad collection of partners all keen to beam their product via high speed internet to a TV near you. And what’s more the service is going to be free, supported by personalised advertising, tailored to your very own psychographic tastes. Sounds like the Hollywood distribution monopoly is going to morph into another form, if the g’zillions of investment dollars behind it continue to hold.

I’m working on a new suite of courses at AFTRS at the moment and talking to lots of people in the industry and also potential students about the kinds of programs they think we should run.

Heard something interesting on Future Tense (ABC Radio National) about the School of Everything which got me thinking differently about education. Basically the School of everything facilitates links between potential teachers and learners in a variety of niche and not-so-niche content areas. Their co -founder Paul Miller spoke well about their Ebay-like model but more importantly about the long tail of education. With education arguably becoming more homogenised in mainstream institutions School of Everything is able to highlight all those niche areas that only very few people may be interested in. Funnily enough, most of the School’s programs are face to face for small numbers of people and many are run for free. A bit like other long tail content it’s obviously a mix of professional and amateur content listed side by side but it also points to a trend of peer to peer education taking place outside bricks and mortar instititions.  If it takes off it’s also potentially a threat to all those online educators who offer walled garden subscription education services. It’s worth signing up to check out School of Everything. Unfortunately there’s not a lot of Australian offerings listed so if there’s something you can teach this might be one way you can find a class.