[Advocacy Advisors] European Commission Study on New Business Models

[Luis Villa]

It is an interesting document. Some notes:

   1. The framing is wrong - it should be "production models", or
   "sustainability models", not "business models" - the assumption that
   production of copyrighted works has to happen through "business" is a
   harmful and anti-democratic in an age where every citizen has access to
   tools that can publish to the entire world.
   2. Ditto use of "the industry", as if "the industry" is the only
   meaningful producer of content. (Really, these two points alone could make
   for a great blog post; this paper is far from the only one that makes these
   two mistakes but is particularly blatant in use of the framing.)
   3. In part as a result of this framing, it is sad but not surprising
   that no citizen/public interest groups were consulted in the creation of
   the material. Not sure we'd want to say that to them publicly, but if we
   decide not to offer informal comment I'd want to say that publicly in a
   blog post when this is published.
   4. If the purpose of the observatory is to study infringement, then
   clearly peer production should be listed as a "business model" and the
   infringement of peer-produced material should be treated on a par with
   material produced through the other production models. I'm sure this group
   can come up with examples of infringement of our material and of other
   peer-produced content.
   5. Music: no mention of tools like Soundcloud (.de-based!) that are
   intended to democratize music creation and publication.
   6. Video: no mention of how Youtube/Vimeo has created a vast amount of
   non-industry video content creation, or of regular traditional media
   industry infringement of citizen-created video without penalty or concern.
   (If we wanted to write this up formally for them, we'd want to find some
   examples of this.)
   7. Sports: I can't speak to the EU, but in the US, fan-created
   commentary (such as sbnation.com) is now a huge source of reporting on
   sports news, often delivering better quality than the traditional news
   sources. Probably not directly relevant to this section, though (unless
   there have been legal threats in the EU around fan-provided live-streaming
   commentary).
   8. Press content: at least in the US, donor-supported/non-profit media
   is an increasingly important source of news; lots of detail here:
   http://www.journalism.org/2013/06/10/nonprofit-journalism/ Don't know if
   there are EU-based examples of this.
   9. Social media: with regards to 4.7 (news/social media), it should be
   noted that social media probably disproportionately *helps* peer-produced
   media, since that historically has very few resources to use for
   marketing/distribution, and so must rely on word-of-mouth.
   10. Sec. 4 and 5 consider "news" and "books"; amazingly, neither
   consider new text-centric methods of production of copyrighted works, like
   wikis or blogs. Again shows how blind this is to the actual innovation
   happening in the content space.
   11. Books: no mention that technical protection measures have encouraged
   monopolization of the distribution channels, to the detriment of
   traditional distribution channels and to blossoming antitrust problems in
   the US (and presumably soon in the EU).
   12. 6.2: a mention of communities! But on cue, statement that these
   authors may not be being remunerated, as if remuneration was the only
   potential goal for creators. Youtube gets mentioned here, but not in Sec. 1
   (Music) or Sec. 2 (Audiovisual), which is insane.
   13. Sec. 7, Business Software: doesn't mention open source. Completely
   nuts.
   14. Sec. 8, video games: no mention that this is a golden era for
   independently-produced games. Not sure that fits our narrative very well,
   at least not without a lot of explanation.
   15. B2B Services: this feels overly focused on remuneration/commercial
   licensing; I suppose that is inevitable to some extent, but it seems like
   it would be worth noting the increased options for free, high-quality
   content that business can use (e.g., Flickr photos and Commons for stock
   photography).
   16. "The fact that the legal offers is at least as diverse as the
   illegal one" - ahhahahhahahhahaha. Really, it is quite amazing that they
   think that providing a "portal" will increase awareness of legal content.
   The best way to increase awareness of legal content is to provide it
   legally online and advertise it as such...

So, these were not brief. I am unlikely to have time this week to select
the most important points here and craft them into something - but I think
at least a brief statement to them to the effect of "we think this
completely ignores many legal sources of non-industry content and many
sustainability models, such as focus on non-remunerative incentives and
voluntary contributions" would be worth making.

HTH-

Luis
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