Net piracy takes ‘toll on jobs’

The growth of illegal file-sharing could cost European countries 1.2m jobs and 240bn euros (£215bn) by 2015, an industry report claims.

The study, commissioned by an industry body and endorsed by trade unions, studied the impact of web piracy in Germany, UK, France, Italy and Spain.

It claims that without measures to curb piracy, the UK alone could lose up a quarter of a million jobs by 2015.

But campaigners described the report as "corporate propaganda".

‘Need for action’

The study, conducted by economics firm TERA Consultants on behalf of the International Chamber of Commerce, said that the UK’s creative industries experienced losses of 1.4bn euros in 2008 because of piracy.

Brendan Barber, General Secretary of the TUC, said that the results showed piracy was a "major threat to the creative industries in terms of loss of employment and revenues".

"If there was ever the proof needed to demonstrate why the Digital Economy Bill is imperative for the protection of our creative industries, this report is it," he said.

DIGITAL ECONOMY BILL

• Legal framework for tackling copyright infringement via education and technical measures
• New duties for Ofcom to assess the UK’s communications infrastructure every two years
• Modernising spectrum to increase investment in mobile broadband
• Framework for the move to digital radio switchover by 2015
• Updating Channel 4 functions to encompass public service content, on TV and online
• Age ratings compulsory for all boxed video games aimed at those over 12 years

Web giants oppose copyright plans

The Digital Economy Bill was outlined in the Queen’s speech in November 2009.

It includes various proposals to tackle illegal file-sharing including a so-called "three strikes" element, which would see persistent pirates cut off from the net.

It also includes element that would give courts the power to block websites that facilitate copyright infringement.

The bill has been passed by the Lords and is now expected to be rushed through the Commons before the general election.

There has been a groundswell of opposition to the Bill from firms such as British Telecom, Google and Facebook, which say that elements of the bill could undermine free speech on the net without reducing copyright infringement.

A campaign has also started on the internet encouraging people to write to their MP to stop the government rushing the bill through "without proper debate"

Jim Killock of the Open Rights Group (ORG) is a vocal opponent of the Digital Economy Bill and the new research.

"I am fed up of hearing corporate propaganda being deployed in order to justify intrusions on our rights to freedom of speech, privacy and to a fair trial," he said.

"We have no truck with infringement of copyright, but it is shameful that anyone from the Labour movement can attempt to justify removal of vital services such as the internet as a punishment."

"To me, piracy is something adventurous, it makes you think about Johnny Depp"

Agnete Haaland
International Actors’ Federation

The ORG recently revealed that certain amendments to the bill proposed in the House of Lords – but not passed – had been drafted by music industry group the BPI.

"Members of the Labour movement spent decades fighting for people’s rights to basic services, education, and political organisation: they need to ask themselves where their true values lie," said Mr Killock.

"Are they with Gordon Brown’s call to recognise the internet as just as vital for the today’s citizens as water, gas and electricity; or are they with music industry lobbyists, calling on Parliament to infringe people’s human rights"

Piracy plan

The new report used data from EU countries, the World Intellectual Property Organization and Eurostat, the EU’s statistical gathering arm.

It said its figures were a worst case scenario based on consumer Web traffic growing 24% annually.

The report said that European creative industries generated 860bn euros and employed 14.4m million people in 2008. In the same year it estimates that 10bn euros and 186,000 jobs were lost across Europe.

Extrapolating that data, it suggests that up to 1.2 million jobs and 240 billion euros worth of European commerce could be wiped out by 2015.

In the UK alone, losses could be up to 254,000 jobs and 7.8bn euros, it said.

According to the UK government, the creative industries in the UK employ around 2 million people.

Agnete Haaland, the president of the International Actors’ Federation, which supports the research, said that education was key to tackling piracy.

"We should change the word piracy," she said.

"To me, piracy is something adventurous, it makes you think about Johnny Depp.

"But we’re talking about a criminal act. We’re talking about making it impossible to make a living from what you do."

She urged the European Parliament to implement rules to tackle online piracy. </p

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Being human

Art is a problem.

Not in the sense that it is a waste of money, often unfathomable and occasionally obscene. It is a problem because of all the things people do it is the activity that cannot be easily explained by consulting their biological urges.

It stands out as a uniquely human activity. No other animal goes to such lengths to produce it, consume it and react to it in the way that people do. That’s why it is a problem. And a tricky one at that.

Patrick Tresset and Frederic Fol Leymarie are trying to shed light on it using a system called Aikon that aims to unpick and then copy how an artist works. The artist is Mr Tresset who has almost a decade of practice as a portrait artist to call on.

"We’re trying to understand what goes on in the mind of the person performing the act of drawing," said Prof Leymarie.

That understanding, gleaned from watching Mr Tresset at work and drawing on his own insights of how he works, has produced a system that uses a robot arm to sketch faces.

At no point, said Prof Leymarie, was the idea to create photo-realistic reproductions of faces. Instead the roughness of the finished sketches is key.

"It’s a cheap robot arm because we are trying to get away from something that’s a performance and very well engineered," he said "In part that’s because we are trying to capture the different elements and uncertainties that are expected from a human."

One key insight that developing the system has revealed is the difference in the amount of time that artists and non-artists spend looking at a subject when they are drawing.

Non-artists, said Prof Leymarie, spend their time looking at the paper. By contrast, he said, artists look at the subject and trust their hand to do the reproduction.

The collaboration between Mr Tresset and technology has been such that now the robot arm can produce sketches in its own distinctive style.

And, said Prof Leymarie, the collaboration does not end there.

"He can not only use it as a way to explore and understand what he is doing or what other artists are doing," he said. "He can use it as something more powerful.

"It can be used by artists to explore why they end up doing a certain type of art a certain way," he said.

Novel art

Mr Tresset and Prof Leymarie are not alone in using technology to tickle the creativity of artists and others.

At a Digital Expo to show off Goldsmiths College’s digital studio, Dan Jones created an installation that helped visitors explore interactive creativity.

It bonded motion capture to a virtual landscape. As a participant moved around the enclosed space, clapped their hands or spoke, the landscape was changed in response.

Mr Jones said the installation was related to the work he is doing to help scientists and artists explore all facets of their creativity.

In a similar way, he said, the creative journey that artists embark on when producing a work is really only one path through the larger landscape of all the things they could create.

"Through a lifetime of practice artists acquire habits and tropes," said Mr Jones. "One way out of that is adopting computational models that supplement their own creative process that can re-shape and re-direct that impulse."

Simulations based around small, smart software programs known as agents can help artists reach those areas of that creative landscape that they would otherwise never visit.

One product of this work is a system that can improvise and jam with musicians.

"What’s particularly interesting about it is that it’s inherently unpredictable and chaotic," he said. Often it takes musicians to places they have never been before and stretches their ability to improvise, to create.

Mr Jones work is also being applied to the sciences to help a group of researchers tackling leukaemia to understand how stem cells react to the disease. The interaction of visualisation and their deep knowledge of the biology could give them a far greater insight into how that system works.

Dr Mick Grierson, who oversees the work going on at Goldsmiths, said the projects go to the heart of what it means to be a maker, hacker, scientist or artist. And arguably a human. It is all about curiosity, creativity and innovation.

"That’s what makes science great, and technology great and art great," he said "It’s about playing with ideas.

"You try a few things out and see what happens, then try more and more and you come up with something that is genius," he said.

Only by building it, seeing and shaping it, can they truly understand. Something any and every maker can identify with.</p

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

ISP cleared of copyright charge

In the first case of its kind, an Australian court has ruled that an internet service provider cannot be responsible for illegal downloading.

iiNet, Australia’s third largest ISP, was taken to court by a group of 34 movie production houses.

The group included the Australian divisions of Universal Pictures, Warner Brothers and 20th Century Fox.

They claimed that iiNet was guilty of copyright infringement for not preventing illegal downloads of films.

The movie group hired investigators to track the numbers of iiNet customers using BitTorrents to illegally download movies.

They wanted iiNet to warn the offenders and then cut them off if they continued to download. The group also wanted certain websites to be blocked by the ISP.

However, the judge ruled iiNet was not responsible for the online behaviour of its customers.

"I find that the mere provision of access to the internet is not the ‘means’ of infringement," said Federal Court Justice Dennis Cowdroy.

"If the ISPs become responsible for the acts of their customers, essentially they become this giant and very cheap mechanism for anyone with any sort of legal claim."

In Italy, meanwhile, the government is proposing new laws which would make video channels such as YouTube directly responsible for copyright infringement if their users upload copyrighted material.

The proposals would require YouTube, owned by Google, to acquire a broadcasting licence in order to operate. </p

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Sky launches 3D channel in pubs

Sky is kicking off the UK’s first 3D channel with a live Premier League football match to be broadcast from nine pubs around the UK this weekend.

The match between Arsenal and Manchester United will be viewable in 3D in pubs in London, Manchester, Cardiff, Edinburgh and Dublin.

In April Sky will roll out its 3D channel to hundreds of other pubs.

Later in the year, Sky 3D will be made available to all Sky+HD customers with a range of content on offer.

This will include movies, sport, documentaries and entertainment.

Sky 3D will initially be available as a free add-on for those with Sky+HD boxes.

Viewers need to wear a special pair of glasses to watch the content.

There has been a great deal of hype around the technology since cinemas began showing films in 3D.

Avatar, shot in 3D, has become the highest grossing film of all time.

It is expected that 3D-ready TVs will hit the consumer market later this year.

"People have already embraced 3D cinema and because Sky’s 3D service uses the same kind of technology, we’re confident there will be demand for sport, movies, concerts and drama in 3D," said Gerry O’Sullivan, SKy’s director of strategic product development.

In February, two rugby matches in the Six Nations championship will be filmed in 3D and shown at cinemas around the UK.

The 2010 World Cup will also be filmed in the format.

The BBC was the first to show a 3D sports event, broadcasting an England versus Scotland rugby match at the Six Nations championship in 2008.

HOW 3D BROADCASTS WORK

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Piracy ‘creates cultural deserts’

Countries like Spain run the risk of becoming "cultural deserts" because of online file-sharing, the music industry has claimed.

The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) says that global government legislation is essential to the sector’s survival.

It cited Spain as an example of a country which does not have laws in place to prevent illegal downloads.

The sales of albums by local artists there have fallen by 65% in five years.

Federation chairman John Kennedy said the situation in Spain is now "almost irreversible".

"Spain runs the risk of turning into a cultural desert," commented Rob Wells, Senior Vice President, Digital, at Universal Music Group.

"Drastic action needs to be taken in order to save the Spanish music industry"

Rob Wells, Universal Music Group

"Drastic action needs to be taken in order to save the Spanish music industry."

In a market that is "rigged by piracy" it is non-English language music which suffers the most when the music industry tightens its belt added Mr Kennedy.

This is because global stars such as Lady Gaga, who topped the digital download chart of 2009 with 9.8m downloads for her single Poker Face, are regarded as more secure investments.

Legislation required

In the UK the IFPI said it was supportive of the proposed Digital Economy Bill, which includes legislation to cut off persistent file sharers.

"If there is a risk of kids losing their internet connection, they will stop," said Mr Kennedy.

He described the loss of the recent court case against BitTorrent website Oink as "a terrible disappointment" and an indication that current laws in the UK are "out of touch with where life is".

He expressed support for the bill’s controversial clause 17, which would give the Secretary of State power to make changes to copyright laws.

"I hope they won’t throw clause 17 overboard," he said. "We want this to be futureproof."

However, companies such as Google and Facebook believe that the ability to make fundamental changes are too broad and could stifle innovation.

"IFPI is calling for a copyright ratchet that will remove due process and threaten our human rights," said Jim Killock, Executive Director of the Open Rights Group.

"Copyright holders cannot hope to micro-manage the behaviour of every consumer."

Despite the stranglehold the industry considers itself to be in, legitimate music services are starting to pay off, the IFPI believes.

Global digital revenues increased by 12% in 2009. In the US, iTunes is selling more music than Walmart and digital sales account for 40% of the industry’s revenue.

"The news from the commercial viewpoint is reasonably good but it’s not happening fast enough," said Mr Wells.

He highlighted Spotify as the most successful financial model and said that the Orange monkey service, a joint venture between Universal Music Group, 4Music and Orange, had acquired 110,000 subscribers since its launch in July 2009.

The pay-as-you-go service offers free access to music in exchange for a regular top-up of at least £10 a month.

"The music industry finally believes it is making progress in the battle against web piracy with governments taking action and legal music services beginning to prove viable," said BBC technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones.

"But the industry is still furious about what it sees as negligence by some governments notably Spain – and is warning that there is a growing threat to local artists posed by piracy." </p

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.