We've been invited to go along to a conference next week organized by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport on "creative industries". Although we made it clear to them that we are not-for-profit and a lot of the programme is not particularly relevant, they were very keen to get us to go along, even to the extent of giving us a free ticket.
The website is at http://www.cabinetforum.org and the agenda is:
* Access to finance for creative industries: What do creative businesses need to do to attract investment and demonstrate reliability of future cash flow? How do you tackle the lack of understanding between investors and creative * New business models for online content: How can a viable business be made out of online content without relying on advertising? * Developing Talent: What can be done to create opportunities for the next generation of creative talent? How can creative businesses make sure tomorrow’s employees have the right skills to thrive? * Securing creative rights: How best to ensure that those who generate and fund creative product are able to secure its value? Both regulatory and non-regulatory methods will be examined.
Some of these things are clearly not relevant for us but some - "securing creative rights" and "new business models" - are issues that we may wish to have input into. There are also likely to be some big hitters there who we would be interested in partnering with in the future, including senior people from companies like Spotify, BBC Vision and Wired UK. Peter Mandelson is a keynote speaker, which could be an important opportunity to put the case for public domain to a key decision maker.
My question: what should I focus on at this conference and what should I aim to get out of it?
Any thoughts appreciated.
Andrew
2009/10/19 Andrew Turvey andrewrturvey@googlemail.com:
My question: what should I focus on at this conference and what should I aim to get out of it?
It doesn't sound like the agenda is particularly useful for us, so I recommend you view it as a networking opportunity (and it is a fantastic one). Try and talk to (and exchange business cards with) as many people as possible and try and get them to agree to further discussions about possibly working together. I would concentrate on explaining who we are and what we do and, if you can think of anything, how they could help us - try to leave it open to them helping us in other ways too, though.
2009/10/19 Andrew Turvey andrewrturvey@googlemail.com:
- New business models for online content: How can a viable business be made out of >online content without relying on advertising?
May have to be defensive on this one. We do make selling content harder. would expect the BBC to pick up most of the flack there though. News corp have been running a campaign against them along those lines.
- Developing Talent: What can be done to create opportunities for the next generation of creative talent? How can creative businesses make sure tomorrow’s employees have the right skills to thrive?
- Securing creative rights: How best to ensure that those who generate and fund creative >product are able to secure its value? Both regulatory and non-regulatory methods will be >examined.
As always our priority here would be to oppose anything that cased legal issues for free licenses. Basically anything that limits what terms an author can release their rights under is problematical.
Some of these things are clearly not relevant for us but some - "securing creative rights" >and "new business models" - are issues that we may wish to have input into. There are >also likely to be some big hitters there who we would be interested in partnering with in >the future, including senior people from companies like Spotify, BBC Vision and Wired >UK.
Spotify seem unlikely
Peter Mandelson is a keynote speaker, which could be an important opportunity to put >the case for public domain to a key decision maker.
Given his ideas about copyright keeping him from the issue would probably be a far better option. A couple of mentions of the Gowers Review of Intellectual Property should do it.
My question: what should I focus on at this conference and what should I aim to get out of it?
Any thoughts appreciated.
Andrew
Well looking at the full agenda:
http://www.cabinetforum.org/files/Cabinet_Agenda_A4.pdf
The peer2peer bit might be an opportunity to make the case that free licenses have the ability to make people stakeholders in copyright and thus less likely to ignore it.
We need to know what David Lammy has to say but since I can't really predict what he will say I can't really provide much advice for responding.
Main sessions 2&4 are of interest but mostly in a "we need to know what they are thinking" way. In the case 4 keep an eye of for this being used as an excuse to further lengthen copyright terms.
Of the fridge events the BBC future tech is probably a must. The rest would appear to be less significant.
On Mon, 2009-10-19 at 23:58 +0100, Andrew Turvey wrote:
We've been invited to go along to a conference next week organized by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport on "creative industries". Although we made it clear to them that we are not-for-profit and a lot of the programme is not particularly relevant, they were very keen to get us to go along, even to the extent of giving us a free ticket.
The website is at http://www.cabinetforum.org and the agenda is:
- New business models for online content: How can a viable business be made out of online content without relying on advertising?
Wikipedia is not the only project. Wikinews is CC-BY. Content can be copied and used on an ad-supported site. See http://enwn.net/aEDd
My question: what should I focus on at this conference and what should I aim to get out of it?
As mentioned earlier, get names, and, I'd add, try to get any press there to mention you were present.
On Mon, Oct 19, 2009 at 11:58 PM, Andrew Turvey andrewrturvey@googlemail.com wrote:
Peter Mandelson is a keynote speaker, which could be an important opportunity to put the case for public domain to a key decision maker.
My question: what should I focus on at this conference and what should I aim to get out of it?
Shoot Peter Mandelson in the head at point blank range wearing a Wikimedia UK bandana and shout "INFORMATION WANTS TO BE FREEEEEEEE!"
I expect that would get the odd headline here and there. A bit of publicity for us.
If you're not keen on a lengthy prison sentence a decent kick in the balls should get us at least onto page four or five.
... or perhaps not. Wikimedia UK is a peaceful organization, as is Wikimedia as a whole, and I'm sure that none of our members would ever seriously consider doing anything like this.
Mike
On 20 Oct 2009, at 16:30, Bod Notbod wrote:
On Mon, Oct 19, 2009 at 11:58 PM, Andrew Turvey andrewrturvey@googlemail.com wrote:
Peter Mandelson is a keynote speaker, which could be an important opportunity to put the case for public domain to a key decision maker.
My question: what should I focus on at this conference and what should I aim to get out of it?
Shoot Peter Mandelson in the head at point blank range wearing a Wikimedia UK bandana and shout "INFORMATION WANTS TO BE FREEEEEEEE!"
I expect that would get the odd headline here and there. A bit of publicity for us.
If you're not keen on a lengthy prison sentence a decent kick in the balls should get us at least onto page four or five.
Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediauk-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
2009/10/20 Michael Peel email@mikepeel.net:
... or perhaps not. Wikimedia UK is a peaceful organization, as is Wikimedia as a whole, and I'm sure that none of our members would ever seriously consider doing anything like this.
No, hopefully not, but what Bod said was pretty funny (to me at least!)
On Tue, Oct 20, 2009 at 4:33 PM, Michael Peel email@mikepeel.net wrote:
... or perhaps not. Wikimedia UK is a peaceful organization, as is Wikimedia as a whole, and I'm sure that none of our members would ever seriously consider doing anything like this.
The North Korean Chapter has nukes.
We're way behind in the arms race.
You have to ask yourself whether you really want the biggest Wikipedia to be one that requires you to install a non-standard character set.
2009/10/20 Bod Notbod bodnotbod@gmail.com:
On Tue, Oct 20, 2009 at 4:33 PM, Michael Peel email@mikepeel.net wrote:
... or perhaps not. Wikimedia UK is a peaceful organization, as is Wikimedia as a whole, and I'm sure that none of our members would ever seriously consider doing anything like this.
The North Korean Chapter has nukes.
We're way behind in the arms race.
You have to ask yourself whether you really want the biggest Wikipedia to be one that requires you to install a non-standard character set.
It's standard, just a different standard. I, for one, welcome our new Hangul writing overlords.
On Tue, 2009-10-20 at 16:30 +0100, Bod Notbod wrote:
On Mon, Oct 19, 2009 at 11:58 PM, Andrew Turvey andrewrturvey@googlemail.com wrote:
Peter Mandelson is a keynote speaker, which could be an important opportunity to put the case for public domain to a key decision maker.
My question: what should I focus on at this conference and what should I aim to get out of it?
Shoot Peter Mandelson in the head at point blank range wearing a Wikimedia UK bandana and shout "INFORMATION WANTS TO BE FREEEEEEEE!"
I expect that would get the odd headline here and there. A bit of publicity for us.
If you're not keen on a lengthy prison sentence a decent kick in the balls should get us at least onto page four or five.
This may not be a professional approach to Peter Mandelson, but WMUK simply lacks the funds to hire a professional hitman. :-P
Can't abolish the *unaccountable* Lords fast enough for me. Although I'm none too happy about rumours the Dark Lord may be exiting that chamber to stand in a safe Labour seat.
What is, actually, conspicuously absent from the discussion is whether anyone has a *right* to make a profit on these creative works. Copyright is a social contract; society grants a work's creator(s) a limited duration monopoly to allow them the *opportunity* to make a profit.
Arstechnica has a good article relating to this today. Those well-entrenched and profiting from creative works have a 100+ year history of scaremongering and depriving the public domain what they agreed to give it in the first place.
On Tue, Oct 20, 2009 at 5:03 PM, Brian McNeil brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org wrote:
Joking aside, I think that if I had a moment alone with Peter Mandelson and could curb my violent impulses for five minutes, I'd put it to him that cutting off someone's internet for illegal downloading is a punishment liable to be suffered as much by the innocent as the guilty.
Take a bog standard family of four, married with 2 kids... maybe a 15 year old son downloads copyrighted media, gets caught, internet cut off.
Now dad can't run his business, mum can't do her grocery shopping and the studious daughter who respects copyright can't get her homework done.
[Note, I'm aware that I'm assigning rather stereotypical gender roles re work and shopping, I hope you will forgive me...]
I understand that being cut off wouldn't happen until there's been more than one warning, which would give parents a chance to intervene and son to change his ways but you could still argue that the family as a whole has effectively been warned despite three of them being beyond reproach.
I'd also like to tell Mandy that copyright terms of life plus 70 years is helping a select few whilst denying huge amounts of culture to the many and that owning something for 70 years after YOU'RE FRICKIN' DEAD is unlikely to be the spur to activity the government thinks it is. In addition, a next generation that inherits income from copyrighted works actually is disincentivised from getting a job if the income from the copyright is sufficient to support them. The government normally *loathes* people who don't go out to work, but apparently it's fine if your dad happens to have written The Da Vinci Code.
Arstechnica has a good article relating to this today. Those well-entrenched and profiting from creative works have a 100+ year history of scaremongering and depriving the public domain what they agreed to give it in the first place.
Are you referring to this one?
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/10/google-book-digitization-pro...
If not please send a link as I'd be interested to see it.
On Tue, 2009-10-20 at 18:16 +0100, Bod Notbod wrote:
On Tue, Oct 20, 2009 at 5:03 PM, Brian McNeil brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org wrote:
<snip>
Arstechnica has a good article relating to this today. Those well-entrenched and profiting from creative works have a 100+ year history of scaremongering and depriving the public domain what they agreed to give it in the first place.
Are you referring to this one?
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/10/google-book-digitization-pro...
If not please send a link as I'd be interested to see it.
No, this one:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/10/100-years-of-big-content-fea...
2009/10/20 Bod Notbod bodnotbod@gmail.com:
On Tue, Oct 20, 2009 at 5:03 PM, Brian McNeil brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org wrote:
Joking aside, I think that if I had a moment alone with Peter Mandelson and could curb my violent impulses for five minutes, I'd put it to him that cutting off someone's internet for illegal downloading is a punishment liable to be suffered as much by the innocent as the guilty.
Can you get him to meet some famous musicians? Childhood TV stars perhaps? No? Your opinion means approx diddly squat then.
Flick through http://dominicseuroblog.wordpress.com/ if you want to see the kind of tactics used.
I'd also like to tell Mandy that copyright terms of life plus 70 years is helping a select few whilst denying huge amounts of culture to the many and that owning something for 70 years after YOU'RE FRICKIN' DEAD is unlikely to be the spur to activity the government thinks it is. In addition, a next generation that inherits income from copyrighted works actually is disincentivised from getting a job if the income from the copyright is sufficient to support them. The government normally *loathes* people who don't go out to work, but apparently it's fine if your dad happens to have written The Da Vinci Code.
At this point dropping below life+70 isn't going to happen. There isn't much of a campaign to extend it beyond that though.
On Tue, Oct 20, 2009 at 7:08 PM, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Can you get him to meet some famous musicians? Childhood TV stars perhaps? No? Your opinion means approx diddly squat then.
I was under no illusions that Peter Mandelson would drop to his knees and suck my cock for making hitherto unthought of ideas available to him.
Since when did it become list policy that one should only post opinions that Peter Mandelson would subscribe to? I mean, I wouldn't put it past the Labour government to bring this in under a new communications act, but I think until they do you might be rather more circumspect with your diddles and, indeed, squats.
2009/10/20 Brian McNeil brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org:
What is, actually, conspicuously absent from the discussion is whether anyone has a *right* to make a profit on these creative works. Copyright is a social contract; society grants a work's creator(s) a limited duration monopoly to allow them the *opportunity* to make a profit.
Outside wikimedia's remit. Wikimedia is interested in maintaining the right not to make money of your work and any further erosion of the public domain.
wikimediauk-l@lists.wikimedia.org