If anyone doubted that the media landscape is drastically changing and that we will see new outlets should definitely take a look at the article in todays Guardian – We all helped to speed the demise of professional photographers. I don’t fully agree with the title of the article as the future media scene will be a symbiosis between what we not call traditional media and specialized user contributed media sites.
Clearly Web 2.0 is not sufficient and we need to create more intelligence in the business logic of the future online media sites to take advantage of the power of the loose publishing model of social media and counteract the problems with it. Also the future media is facing issues both on the business model side as well as the legal side too. I prefer to start to explain by brushing up everyone on the true intention of the web and one of my favorite quotes from Tim Berner-Lee explaining his ideas behind the web:
“Suppose all the information stored on computers everywhere were linked… Suppose I could program my computer to create a space in which anything could be linked to anything…â€
I do believe that this idea is lost to many times in the current debate on the web and the future of the web. I have written about this issue before – In the Wake of the Birth of the Web and The Social Web also known as Web 2.0.
The underlying idea of the web directly implies that philosophically it should be perfectly fine linking to other sites, thereby directly or indirectly giving them the credit for the content. If you are not storing their content, I will have a very hard time understanding why that would mean infringement of copyright. If that is copyright infringement then isn’t just telling it to my friends about the content also be copyright infringement? I know I am totally over exaggerating and the examples are not really compatible as the nature of broadcasting in the two different cases is very different. However online it is sometimes very hard to tell the two cases apart. I do believe we instead should try to adapt to the situation and find new ways to deal with copyrighted material and in particular how to make sure that the creators get credit and money for it. I do believe by letting them be part of the creation they will help us find a solution which will satisfy all parties. I would like to emphasize that I do not in any way – directly or indirectly – encourage copyright infringement and you should always respect copyrighted material.
The previous and ongoing disputes with Google News will also shed some light on the problem with linking to sites and how you can do that. From the case in Belgium, it is clear so far that you are allowed to link to the sites and even store a small snippet, but not store the full article. If someone disputes even that, we might as well start to think about banning search engines as they then also would be illegal – they link to sites and store a short snippet for each link. It opens up for a very interesting discussion which basically means no one can do anything with any content of the web if you do not ask them. To me, the whole thought behind the web is then completely lost and I certainly don’t believe that is the right way to go.
As for the business model, I do believe the outcome of the case between YouTube and Viacom will give guidance to the IT industry on how to treat the copyright issues online in a monetized environment (especially how to judge when a video clip becomes a copyright infringement and when it is not). The future advertising is definitely moving towards online video or IPTV (pick your flavor) so the case is highly relevant and timely. (The outcome will probably also impact the other available distribution channels too though.) The industry is in definite need of some guidance to handle these issues when you have advertising as a business model and it is still very much an unknown territory. What does the law really mean as for which solution is the right one? No, it is not very clear today.
My intention with this blog is to emphasize that the media scene is changing and will continue to change if yet only faster. Unfortunately the business models as well as the legal models have not evolved to match the development. The entrants, who best understand how to take advantage of all the different available distribution channels – offline, online, broadcast – the evolution of the media as well as the flatness of the world, will become huge hits. I have a bet on which site will be that, but that is a later question.
