Is the future of content on the internet free or not?

Is the era of free news and content on the internet history? Rupert Murdoch, owner of News Corp Inc. certainly thinks so, while others a experimenting and thinking about the future of ‘free’.

According to Murdoch, newspapers have themselves to blame for the loss of readers. They shouldn’t have put their content online for free! To make sure that ‘free’ is now history on the internet, Murdochs’ News Corp Inc. is going to charge online readers in newspapers such as the Ney York Post, The Sun and The London Times. Readers already had to pay to access the Wall Street Journal website since last year.

On the other side of the discussion you have several writers and thinkers who predict that the future of content such as music and movies will be free. Also, already free email services are already experimenting with unlimited storage space for its users. The reason is that developments in information and communication technologies are allowing greater information exchanges at faster speeds. Effective control of copyrighted works (such as music in mp3 format) is thus lost.

A prominent writer in this field is Chris Anderson (also know from the article/book ‘The Long Tail’), who wrote an article about the future of free business models. Hypebot, a music, technology and new music business blog hosted a ‘Free Week’ last month, with articles containing the opinions of music industry professionals on the future of ‘free’. Although it is not necessarily true that all agreed ‘free’ was the right way to go, the conclusion was that ‘free’ was is not stoppable anymore. The sentence “Let's stop debating free and start debating how to do free right” summarises the thoughts on content of others than Murdoch well.

Well known one-liners such as “You either compete with free or use free” seems to be applied increasingly by artists, who give away their music (partly) for free and earn an income through other means. Another leading thinker and writer, Kevin Kelly, described in an article how one can earn how it is possible to earn revenue with a ‘free’ business model. In the mass-copy world of the internet he differentiates 8 uncopyable values, which can be monetised: Immediacy, personalisation, interpretation, authenticity, accessibility, embodiment, patronage and finability (read the article for an explanation of these values).

Only time will tell how users respond to paid news-services, which they have gotten used to as being a free source of information.

Thesis on privacy and copyright

A thesis by miss Tuba Yali, one of my students, has been added to our knowledge database. Miss Yali has written an excellent graduation thesis on the relation between privacy and copyright in the context of p2p networks. The subject over her thesis is especially relevant in the context of current dicussions about filtering of copyrighted content and the prosecution of individual uploaders and downloaders.

You can download the thesis here.

BREAKING NEWS: Mininova starts trial with content recognition

Mininova, the worlds most popular Bittorrent site, has announced that it will start a trial with content recognition. The trial is aimed at making Mininova’s copyright policy more effective. Already thousands of .torrents have dissapeared from the site.

Potential infringing video files referred to by torrents (e.g. files with titles that match titles of popular movies) are downloaded and checked by a third party content recognition system. If the system verifies that the downloaded content corresponds to infringing content, Mininova removes and blocks the torrent that refers to this file on Mininova.

By using content recognition, Mininova can automate the process of ‘notice and takedown’, making it far more effective. Currently, mininova operates a manual system of notice and takedown. Apart from the fact that this new automated system is more cost efficient for Mininova, it is also of greater use for the content industry because it is likely to be far more effective.

By introducing the new content recognition tool, Mininova distinguishes itself from similar services like The Pirate Bay who do not operate a notice and takedown system. By using an effective notice and takedown scheme,  Mininova can shield itself from liability for the conduct of its users on the basis of article 14 of the e-Commerce Directive. Therefore, the move on the part of Mininova is interesting, because Mininova is currently being sued by anti-piracy outfit BREIN for contributory copyright infringement. The lack of an effective notice and takedown schemes was one of the main reasons the administrators of the Pirate Bay were found guilty of aiding and abetting copyright infringement.

If the new content recognition trial is succesful it could be first step in creating  a much needed balance between the interests of Bittorrent providers and users on the one hand, and the content industry on the other hand. However, the system will probably also have its critics, because in a sense it is a filtering mechanism. The system does not provide a threat for the privacy of users because the system does not link the use of .torrent files to individual users.

New Zealand to write new copyright act from scratch

A new copyright act has been announced in New Zealand, which will be completely written from scratch. While normally copyright issues are patched with amendments, recent uproars in connection with a law which allows repeat copyrights infringers to be disconnected from the internet (similar to the new French law) and several other issues have led the NZ Minister of Justice and Commerce to completely freeze copyright amendments.

The NZ copyright act was written before the internet and iPod age, which means that the law has become outdated, due to fast technological developments in content copying content. The internet develops too quickly for the law to offer a sufficient balanced copyright protection. To avoid a building a messy law, full of amendments, based on obsolete legal theory, the NZ government plans to re-write the whole act.

It is expected that the rest of the world will closely monitor the development of the new NZ copyright act, because most nations seem to be struggling to keep their laws up-to-date with mass-copying technology. The new copyright act could be an interesting legal experiment, if all stakeholders are allowed to join the debate. However, some fear that the entertainment industry will seize this opportunity to create a new law, which will be in favour of lengthy protection, strict enforcement and few exceptions.