[Advocacy Advisors] European Commission Study on New Business Models

Wed Feb 19 17:11:24 UTC 2014

On Wed, Feb 19, 2014 at 5:38 AM, Dimitar Parvanov Dimitrov <
dimitar.parvanov.dimitrov at gmail.com> wrote:

> Thanks for the responses, Luis! It always helps to have several people
> look at something, as one can always miss a few points. I might rework some
> of the answers from the European perspective. Otherwise all the points seem
> relevant.
>

Feel free to rework however you'd like - these were very much random notes,
not something intended for directly sending to the EU :)

<snip>

I will see what other civil society orgs have prepared as notes and report
> back here.
>
> As to commenting on this report: It does not have to be "official", as
> this document is not public and this version in particular never will be
> (only on this mailing list :D). Hence, our comments on it won't be public
> either (except for this mailing list).
>

Reminder to everyone here: this mailing list is very public and my comments
have already been blogged by a list member :)

Luis

> Dimi
>
>
>
> 2014-02-18 11:12 GMT+01:00 Michael Maggs <Michael at maggs.name>:
>
> These are all very important points and it would be great if someone could
>> work something up this week, so that we can respond.  I'm not
>> myself around, unfortunately, but I hope that somebody might be able to
>> pick this up in the next few days. Shouldn't need too much work, as Luis
>> has done most of the thinking.
>>
>> Michael
>>
>> On 18 Feb 2014, at 02:31, Luis Villa wrote:
>>
>> 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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-- 
Luis Villa
Deputy General Counsel
Wikimedia Foundation
415.839.6885 ext. 6810

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