Who makes money with content? Who should pay for content? – PL 06 2013

21 June 2013 | 16:30-17:30
Programme overview 2013

People

Key Participants

• Francisco Pedro Balsemão, Impresa
• Mike Holderness, European Federation of Journalists
• Marco Pancini, Google
• Comments by: Konstanin Komaitis, ISOC

Moderator

• Marianne Franklin, Goldsmiths University of London

Reporter

• Sorina Teleanu, Parliamentary assistant, Parliament of Romania

Messages

• Best practice recommendations, worked out by all stakeholders jointly would help ensure fairness throughout the value chains.
• If we want to reach effective solutions, we need collaborative approaches among the various stakeholders.

Session report

The aim of this session was to address, from different perspectives, the following questions: who makes money with whose content, on whose terms? And who pays for this content?

The panel session underlined that, if during the pre-digital world, the answers to these questions were relatively uncomplicated; the evolution of the Internet has lead to significant changes in terms of production, distribution of and access to content, thus making it more difficult to have straightforward answers. The technological changes have been creating “disruptions” in the content-related business, have lead to an increase in the quantity of available content, and have created new possibilities for users to access content. When copyright was introduced, its aim was to reward artists, while at the same time allowing access to content and progressing science. But the new realities of the online space have overwhelmed the copyright model and created challenges that need to be addressed in order to ensure that the interests of all parties (content producers, publishers and consumers) are taking into account and protected.

Three main issues were raised in relation to the existing copyright model:

• The matter of choice: while there is a need to allow creators to have an economic gain from their creative activities, we need to take into account the fact that there are creators who do not necessarily want to make money out of their content and they should be entitled to exercise this choice;
• Access: the main question to be addressed here is to what extent the existing copyrightbased models allow access to content, under what circumstances and with what limitations and exceptions;
• Efficiency: to what extent content creators really benefit from the economic value of their content, taking into account, for example, the complicated matter of collecting society and the fact that the existing royalties are uneven?

Some participants emphasized that there are alternatives to copyright which offer solutions for some of these existing challenges, and one of them is the Creative Commons. But there were also opposing views showing that Creative Commons and similar solutions do not address the need for people to have sustainable ways to support themselves from their creative activities; the need to protect authors’ rights was one example. The question, however, is whether we should stick to the current model or move towards a new model. Some of the participants mentioned that a suitable approach would be to have all stakeholders work on best practice recommendations (eventually, and if needed, with the aim to transform them into national/international legislation), which would help ensure fairness throughout the value chains. If we want to reach effective solutions, we need collaborative approaches among the various stakeholders.

All these debates illustrated the fact that the current discussions about copyright tend to focus on a traditional approach. But what if not the content is the problem, but the circulation of the content? Do we think about content too narrowly? If yes, how do we move forward with this debate?

Transcript

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This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings.

>> MARIANNE FRANK: Good afternoon everybody. I think we need to begin. It’s 25 to 5:00.

Thank you for coming to the last plenary session. My name is Marianne Franklin. I’m here representing the IRP coalition at IGF. But I’m here as a working academic, which means I’ve got an interest at the outcome. My interests hours, as an academic, we have to produce, we have to publish.

So before I introduce the speakers, I just want to say that the one thing you learn when you start out in our business is that the publishers always win when it comes to the contracts. No matter what you do. But the irony is that even the publishers find themselves in a different position from the old days. So we will be talking about who makes money with content?

I’d like to suggest there is a word missing in the title. I’m not sure if my speakers want to address this. It’s not so much who makes money from content. It’s who makes money with whose content. And that is the thing that matters to me.

Because I’m also an an educator. I work with students. I work with the digital native generation. They tyke it for granted that everything is going to be free, including all the textbooks they have to read or the journal items they have to access.

And some of us know what that all means. So we are all caught in a double bind. And each of the four speakers here today have clear views on what needs to be done. As you will hear, even in the short time they have been allowed to speak, because as audience members we are sure there are plenty of views from the floor. My job is to facilitate a discussion between panelists, each other, and you as an audience. So please don’t hold back.

There are four elephants in the room. Four. You know the story about the blind man and the elephant. Well, they are not the elephant. They are the Gazelle. The four elephants in the room are, the issues about copyright, intellectual property rights, lawmaking and working practices, and business model, now being significantly challenged by copy left ideas and common licenses. And if they don’t talk about this, I invite someone in the audience to bring this up. Librarians and people working with young people know this.

And the other thing is about open access to knowledge. Within universities, there is a huge movement, especially amongst younger academics, that knowledge should be open access. But the question is who pays for that and who pays for whose knowledge to be open access?

These are very tantalizing topics.

The third elephant in the room that leaves all of us completely stuck in the middle of the road is that actual practices, how people have been using the ability to connect in various ways and share ideas and content from music to films, to their own books, self publishing is through peer-to-peer sharing. Not a new idea, but we have technologies that make actually possible things that others – that other generations have been doing for a long time. So I’m sure these for me are three of the four elephants in the room.

And the fourth elephant in the room is the issue about public service versus commercial ends. Okay. The issue about individual benefits and costs to some of the issues that some of the panelists will talk about, and the larger picture.

So when I say I’m a working author, I try, and I’m an educator, I try. That’s a very personalistic view.

But the next thing is who pays for whose content and on whose terms?

Now I’ll turn to my panelists.

We have, first of all, we have Francisco Pedro Balsemao, from Impresa, a publisher representative.

And then we have Mike Holderness, European Federation of Journalists in the second to right hand seat.

And then Marco Pancini from Google, Italy. So don’t rush at them all at once.

And then we have our discussant, which is Konstanin Komaitis, who will cover comments on the three speakers. The three speakers will make their statements in the way they wish, according to priorities that are important to them, for three minutes or so. Can you manage that? Yep?

And then Konstanin Komaitis will respond. And we will see what happens next.

So ready your questions. And I’ll see if by the end of the hour we still have something to say.

Thank you very much. So first of all, Francisco, could you like to take to the floor? Thank you.

>> FRANCISCO PEDRO BALSEMAO: Thank you. Can you hear me? Thank you very much for having me here. I am – I work in publishing. I work at a publishing Impresa, one of the largest media groups in Portugal for most of you who don’t know this. And I’m here representing our – the interests of Impresa on the one hand and also the publishers in Portugal. And because I represent Impresa at the European publisher’s Council, I am also speaking on behalf, in a way, of the EPC.

I’ll make my statement short. You are right, this is a very interesting topic, so I’ll keep this open for debate.

It’s a difficult question who makes money and who should pay for content. The first answer, there is a predigital world answer and then there is a post digital world answer to these questions.

Today, as before the Internet, when it comes to newspapers, to broadcasting, our businesses, our publishing business, they still make money in spite of the crisis, the changing economy and changing consumer habits. So we still make money. But not as before.

And the question of who pays for content before the advent of the Internet was also quite simple. In the case of publications, the consumer paid for this. The consumer or either in newsstand or shops or – companies would pay for advertising space and it would be quite simple. If you walked out of a shop without paying for a magazine or newspaper, you would be arrested. That would be quite simple to deal with.

And I’m not saying that this was easy, the predigital world. It’s quite difficult, very competitive. Fiercely competitive. But, it was more transparent and efficient in terms of markets than it is nowadays.

The answers to these questions nowadays, it’s more complicated when you consider the new multimedia digital landscape, which is not transparent at all, because of the advent of front line distributors, of creative content, not all of which they have paid for, as you said.

This is one of the – a word which was missing from the title. Publisher, who makes money with whose content. So this is one of the issues I’ll try to tackle.

And some content I would say the search giant Google help themselves to others. This is not personal against Marco, who I don’t even know, but I think this is something expected from us.

The ironies that are in popularity nowadays of professional media content on these networks has never been greater. We have developed into multimedia devices, tablets, mobile devices, and we have millions of consumers eager to read our content, to have content in these devices.

So who makes money from content? This was kind of an introduction. Someone said that content is king. If this is true, it doesn’t really apply anymore, especially to those who have enthroned content, which I see used as publishers. Publishers were the ones who enthroned content. And journalists, when I say publisher, I also mean journalists in this case.

One of the players who makes content nowadays, who makes nowadays from content online, is Google. Why is Google – and when I say “Google,” I also mean, include other search engines, but I especially will mention Google, because of its dominance. First of all, its dominance.

Google is the de facto, the gatekeeper, especially in Europe, to the Internet. It counts for well over 90 percent of every search made in Europe. Besides that, Google has 28.4 billion Euros in revenue. So it is also a very large company. Very rich and powerful company.

Publishers need to be on Google. We need to be on Google. We have no other choice. This has been tried before in some countries, and it’s not easy. We need to be visible to users. So the thought of collectively withdrawing ourselves from Google is not an option.

We have very little bargaining power because of Google’s competence, and this has a reflection on the discussion of fair search, content licensing, and other terms.

Google also dominates publisher intermediation contracts, over 90 percent of the market. And it precludes competition in these markets, and advertising and search marketing.

On the other hand, Google has its own use of – has a very special use of its own commercial services. So, for example, we don’t really know, there is a lack of transparency, as I said before, of how, for example, contents – if contents behind pay walls I ranked in the first searches when you search for the content. This is something that has been said, but we have never been sure if it’s true or not. But if there was more transparency, we would know if this was true or not.

And the monopoly will discourage also competitors from innovating and investing in this market.

Especially, due to our markets are very dwindling markets in terms of publishers. We have to tackle the issue of Google News. Google News, maybe we will try to develop this later, I think most of you will have questions about Google News. But for publishers, we find it’s a dominant commercial rival to news aggregation services. And it benefits for free from our publishers’ and journalists’ intellectual efforts and investments of our companies.

And it really doesn’t benefit publishers, as some arguments may be said, maybe from Marco or other members of the audience, but it’s not been proven that Google News will benefit publishers.

Someone compared Google News to a book about restaurants, and that is – in these books, the restaurants in these books, if publishers were paid for being on Google News for the snippets, then it would be the same thing as if the restaurants, when they had their listings on this restaurant book, it would be the same thing for the restaurant people to be paid. But the restaurants have a choice and we don’t really have a choice right now, on the one hand. And the restaurants invest in foods and services, and we invest in information in itself.

So, in summary, Google’s dominant position means it can ultimately ticket others online business models. And it’s really, when it comes to creative content, Google has refused to cooperate with rights holders in terms of using content. And so it has undermined permission basis models which are left to compete with Google’s model.

These are small points.

>> MARIANNE FRANK: Final point.

>> FRANCISCO PEDRO BALSEMAO: Final point. There is some suggestion that we just want the piece of the cake for itself. There is something behind this. I hope there are journalists in the room which can also help me on this. Publishers need to be remunerated for their efforts. To strengthen Democracy, and to strengthen freedom of speech, we have to pay our reporters and other workers, their salaries, and be able to inform the public, in compliance with the highest ethical standards, investigative journalism and uphold Democratic values and maintain our independence.

Portugal, I cannot stress this enough, Portugal is a young Democracy and for years it was subject to a censorship regime. For us, it’s a very important point. And so I think this point should also be developed later.

>> MARIANNE FRANK: We can return to that point in due course. Now I’d like to turn to Mike Holderness.

>> MIKE HOLDERNESS: Hi. I am a journalist –

>> MARIANNE FRANK: Just for our live transcriber, that is Mike, yes. She is fine, go for it. Yes.

>> MIKE HOLDERNESS: Hi. I’m representing the Federation of Journalists and hence 100,000 journalists in Europe. I make my living by writing about Science and Technology and editing.

And I’m to look ahead, beyond some of the specific annoyances that we have now. We read Jaron Lanier’s recent book, “Hello Into The Future.” It turns out that for the last 20 years, he has been thinking some of the same things I’ve been thinking. But he got published because he created virtual reality and I didn’t.

And he thought hard and he turned his back on the thought that information wants to be free as in free beer. As he said in London recently, we totally blew it and that’s just wrong. He does say, and I disagree with this, as much as it pains him to say so, we can survive if we only destroy the middle class of musicians, journalists and photographers. I insist that it’s vital to be possible to make a living as a professional, independent journalist, to hold power to account, whichever are. But he argued correctly that the issue of making money from content is much bigger than that. He has concluded that without regulation, online markets will lead to a “winner take all” outcome.

At this point, imagine the slide of income distribution that looks like this, where the top 1 percent take more than half.

He considers the likelihood that three dimensional printing will take off, maybe in ten years, maybe in 30. Probably not in the five that his proponents are encouraging us to think.

But at some point it will be possible to download a file that prints out a robot that can serve sandwiches, a robot that can feed somebody in an old people’s home. At this point, a huge proportion of the economy will be mediated by works, expression in the language of the law and authors’ rights. The robot that takes someone’s job away will merely be the print out of a file protected or not by author’s rights, much more than by other rights, such as patents.

If such works are widely shared, and if the only cash involved comes from servers, which index the sharing and servertizing alongside it, then what happens? Jeron writes, “Google might become a snake eating its own tail.”

If so much information is free, then there is nothing left to advertise on Google that attracts actual money. The business model eats itself, the income distribution gets steeper. We have a mass of peona and a very small class of people, who actually destroyed their own business model.

He makes some proposals which go right back to the charming Theodore Nelson. I met him and discussed them with him and his 1960s scheme for doing the Internet properly. If you don’t know, Nelson proposed that links be two-way, which would immediately have taken a lot of the discussion we have had over these two days about privacy into a completely different arena. And Nelson proposed that when a work is quoted, or cited, nanopayments flowed from the person making use of it back through, including the sites of work or the remixes or remix of a remix payments flow back through.

Jaron would include in that everything. For example, the cash value of the Facebook status updates. Because make no mistake, when you say “I’m going to Lisbon” on your Facebook status update, that has monetary value at the moment, because Facebook is trying and not doing as well as some other corporations, trying to get advertising against it.

>> MARIANNE FRANK: I’m sorry to interrupt. We can always return.

>> MIKE HOLDERNESS: I’ll try to wrap up.

>> MARIANNE FRANK: Please wrap up. We will return. You’ll get another chance to say more.

>> MIKE HOLDERNESS: What Ted Nelson proposes is the right thing. But to someone who does coding, staying up two nights in a row, trying to do the right thing is not always productive. What he discovered is the principles behind this way of making an economy that works are the principles of duatiter, identification of the author of a work, the rights to payment. And as an American, he made it be a bit supervised. Because he is schooled in the American concept of property as a commodity. But we need the rightful right to the Internet is where everybody who creates content, all of you, get an economic stake in what you do.

>> MARIANNE FRANK: Thank you very much. I think that’s a clear statement about what needs to be done.

We will turn now to Marco Pancini from Google. People are dying to intervene. As you can tell, I’ll ask you to stop if you have to, with all due respect. I know you have lots to say. Thank you, Marco.

>> MARCO PANCINI: Thank you very much for giving me this opportunity to be part of this debate.

I would like to put in a different context the discussion that we are having, because from our point of view, what we are having in front of us is not a conflict but is an ecosystem. Our role is to be the platform. And the goal in building a platform is allowing the user to access the information in a useful and effective way.

And on the other side, the content producer, and when I say “content producer” I mean professional and nonprofessional content producer, to put content up online and then allow the user to get in touch with this content.

Now, when I made the difference between nonprofessional user and professional was a specific proposal. First of all, we don’t believe that it’s up to us to decide what business model is going to work online. We are proposing some business models, and then we are very happy to experiment together with our partner, so the professional content producer, which of this business model is actually working.

So it was mentioned that the model of the advertising, which makes it possible to assist the content also without a payment. But on the Google platform, online, generally speaking, it’s possible to put your content for sale and then get a fair return from your production and from your activity.

All that said, I will also stress two points. First, I don’t believe that the action that the content is going through is only – the only reason for the disruption is Google. I think the technological change is putting all of the actors in this ecosystem in front of a huge cycle of disruption. If you think about the way that users were interacting with Google a couple years ago, mainly through a laptop or through their working station, and now the main experience is through screens, you can imagine how this disruption can affect also new players, if they don’t understand that they have to look in Android or in moving from demander to suggester, and the interface, also, the disruption.

The second point is if we really want to be effective, we have to look at the relationship in a more collaborative way. Therefore, for example, some best practices, like the agreement that we have done together with the French publisher industry are going in this direction, where we support the industry and the industry instead of using this money just to sustain the day-to-day activity, they are looking to the future, the future of the digital publishing, and the experiment and the new business model.

So again I would like to close with this message, my first statement. It’s not about being a conflict. It’s about working together in order to be all of the actors in this business model.

>> MARIANNE FRANK: Konstanin Komaitis is playing the role of summing up, so if you don’t mind I’d like to open it to one round from the floor. I’d like to gather comments, okay, and then get some remote participation, I think.

Just as we have the business models, Google is the bad guy. Google is not the only bad guy, there are many things that we have to come up with, because the rules of the game have changed. Anymore inputs based on this first round? And don’t be shy.

Because one tweet said there were too many monologues. So... if you feel this way, it’s up to you to say something. Passivity is not a defense. I know it’s late. Okay. Thank you.

We have one from remote. Can we take one from remote? Someone from the audience? At the back. Please keep your comments brief.

>> AUDIENCE: If I’m not mistaken, Google is making money with each search result, and playing a mediator role between content creator and users. So does Google plan to pay some sort of that money to the content creators?

>> MARIANNE FRANK: So are content creators getting the money. Second question, just so we get a sense of what is going on, please. Please identify yourself.

>> Christopher Wilkinson. I’d like to ask Google how much it would cost me to have a subscription for access to all Google’s services, with full privacy and no advertising.

>> MARIANNE FRANK: That’s a direct question which requires a direct answer.

>> MARCO PANCINI: Yes, from the first comment on the Google search, sure, you have advertising in relation to the search is that the user is conducting, and the match is through key words. But again not all of the searches are monetized.

Frankly speaking, it shows that especially in relation to new, it’s hard to monetize. That’s why we created other business models that can be attached to that. For example, Google will get direct payment for content or access, which allows the content producers to put on their own website advertising, display advertising, that can support their business activity.

On your question, it’s a very fair question. Actually, there are several ways in which you can access Google without getting any direct relationship with our advertising models.

For example, if you use the search engine without being logged in, there is no kind of activity that is conducted vis-a-vis your data. It’s displaying advertising. You like or may not like. The advertising that you are seeing on Google is based on the key words that you are searching, not on your personal data. If you are using Google as – not as a user, but overall the way we want to allow a user to interact with our Web services is by having full control over their data and without forcing them to use our services. That is absolutely fair.

>> MARIANNE FRANK: Okay. Turning to content creator, as you know I’ve got a vested interest in this. I’d like to ask also publishers about the issue about what do content creators really get? There is a long history of musicians, artists, script writers, getting pitiful royalty deals. Part of the peer-to-peer sharing, a move that has been aided and abetted by the ability to do it online without signing up contract, is because royalties and the return to the creators are quite uneven. So I’d like to ask the panel, do you have a response to that question? Publishers also take – sign up contracts with content creators, from Francisco or Mike? Response?

>> MIKE HOLDERNESS: Discussing these issues, I end up I adopt the comments of my learned friend. But from him to him to me. There is an issue with individual creators, whether they are musicians or writers, having a steeply sloping playing field in which the deals – the issue is harsh in the English speaking countries where it’s possible for Murdock to claim to be the author of what I write. His corporation doesn’t look like an author to me, it looks like a corporation.

I think what is needed is steps, first, best practice recommendations, but probably eventually legislation, probably eventually Internationally to ensure fairness, right through the value chain.

>> MARIANNE FRANK: Fairness right through the –

>> MIKE HOLDERNESS: And contracts. When you put a photo on Flickr, that contract keeps changing. That’s fair, because that photo may end up having a cash value at some point.

>> MARIANNE FRANK: Francisco, would you like to respond?

>> FRANCISCO PEDRO BALSEMAO: I agree with Mike. Portuguese law, I specialize in it. I think our law for IP rights is fair. And if you sell the journalistic contents, that you have to pay a fee, a royalty. And I agree with Michael that sometimes the buying power is not as high as it could be. But I think the main word here is “fair.” We have to be fair.

>> MARIANNE FRANK: But are you being fair?

>> FRANCISCO PEDRO BALSEMAO: We try to be fair. I can’t say what I’ve been saying towards Google and then doing something else.

>> So you have to be doing what you are saying.

>> MARIANNE FRANK: So consistent.

>> FRANCISCO PEDRO BALSEMAO: Yes.

>> AUDIENCE: Stuart Hamilton from the IFLA. In libraries, of course, we have a lot of contact with newspaper publishers, but I think we have more contact with the book publishing industry. And I was very interested to hear from the stage that, for example, the actions of Google are affecting the ability of the newspaper industry to innovate or reinvest.

I think we all know it’s difficult to change your business models or move with new services, due to the changes that come with the digital environment. However, if you are going to do that, then I suggest it would be a good time to do it when the profits and revenues are high, so that you have something to fall back on.

In that respect, I find it interesting in a new report this week over the last sort of 13 years the profit margins after tax of the five biggest book publishing companies in the world were increasing consistently. So this is not an industry that is losing money. So when I hear that it’s difficult to innovate because we are losing money because this and this is happening to us, this profit margin seems healthy. And I would say that it’s a good time to get on providing new services.

>> MARIANNE FRANK: Thank you. I think there will be another state of responses after Konstanin’s statements.

>> KONSTANIN KOMAITIS: The comments that came from all three panelists in this first part of the session was that the times are changing. Users are exposed to an abundance of content. There are plenty of business models there. And it appears that copyright is quite overwhelmed to support all of these, both the content creation as well as those business models.

The panelists made the point, which is of course a fair point, that the Internet has changed also the way we’re thinking of distribution of content. It has redefined those distribution channels. Some of them actually have made them obsolete. So, of course, depending on where you sit, for some people this is good and for some people this is bad.

But if you do allow me, I would like to take us a little bit – take a step back and put things into a much larger context. And that context is before we even start talking about monetization of content, the first one is choice. Not everybody wants to get money from what they are creating, from the content that they are creating and they are putting up on the Internet.

And the second one relates to access. Whether the current copyright structure actually allows access, facilitates access to content that you pay or you don’t really pay, which of course leads to issues of accessibilities. And there are very valid questions that can be made there.

Currently, just very briefly, the World Intellectual Property Organization, they are in Marrekech trying to get a Treaty for the blind. It has to do with the way the blind community is able to access books, not only print books, but also digital books that are out there, and how to address this book famine.

So creators should be given a choice. And just to stop and say that the Internet Society is actually looking also at the technological measure, that we can identify this choice. Whether technology can assist someone who is exposed to that content to say whether – or the content creator, yet, to say if you read my content, I want to get X amount. If you don’t read it – if you read it, I want to get full amount or only 50 percent or you can do whatever you want.

So possibly if copyright is not ready to provide answers, a good way to start thinking about it is through technology.

>> MARIANNE FRANK: Okay. Thank you.

>> MIKE HOLDERNESS: I’d like to address the question of choice, if I may.

>> MARIANNE FRANK: Address the question of choice.

>> MIKE HOLDERNESS: Firstly, authors’ rights law is essential to people having the choice. The comment means nothing unless the author says that is the license I grant the world and I shall enforce it, and no one will take my code or tune and wrap it up, you know, and hide it behind – inside of a priority product.

A story of my own experience of how authors’ rights actually work on the Internet is that once upon a time there was an angry young man with a blog that was annoyed with copyright law. And he read about US copyright law because it was on the Internet and he wrote about it. And he wrote eloquently. And a newspaper went to his blog and copied and pasted the words into the newspaper. And it was a newspaper with which he did not wish to be associated. And he was annoyed that they were making money out of his words. He chose to give it away freely. And at that point he contacted me to see how he could enforce his authors’ rights in the way that he objected to copyright. It’s when the situation changes as well that needs to be taken account of.

>> FRANCISCO PEDRO BALSEMAO: Can I just – just because it’s really to do with what is – with what Konstanin said. To do with technology, one of the points you said, the European Council has been working on a new system called the link content coalition. This is trying to build a voluntary rights exchange that incorporates a well structured database of rights which can be searched by third parties. And they identify ownerships and they get clearance. So the original slogan of this was the answer to the machine and the machine is the machine.

The meaning is quite simple.

>> MARIANNE FRANK: We have someone from the audience.

>> AUDIENCE: Good afternoon, I’m Diana and I’m from University.

I would have to have a comment on some of the phenomenons that are happening in the music industry, actually, due to copyright.

We not only have in present day people taking each other’s music and saying that the music belongs to them, but we actually have software now that allows us to take music that belongs to someone that is in the regular industry, with a studio, and create new content based on that music.

I would like to know comment from our panelists about this particular phenomenon and how copyright law applies in this particular situation, because it was not brought up yesterday, for example.

>> MARIANNE FRANK: I think it’s important that we understand that content isn’t just words, it’s also music, sound, film, performance. And this makes the legal side of it more complex.

Does someone want to respond immediately to this? It’s a big question. It opens – it brings another elephant into the room and the room is already quite crowded. They are behaving at the moment.

>> MARCO PANCINI: If I may, it’s just a matter of also competitiveness. And again, I’d like to see all the issues separated. Because if we look also at the big picture and we look at competition that European companies are facing vis-a-vis the American and Asian companies, I think if we look at the existing copyright regime in Europe, probably we – you know, the support is very clear in this direction in the UK. Probably we should look at making this system a bit more flexible. So instead of looking at these issues, which are very important, but maybe are affecting a specific sector and a specific group of authors, if we look at systems instead of more rigid identity, we need more flexibility

>> MARIANNE FRANK: Are you concerned about cultural heritage or more concerned about authors’ rights in your question? There are two sides to that question. Music sharing, sometimes music gets sampled, it gets circulated and used, and it belongs to a particular cultural group and it has cultural meaning and because it’s my music and you stole it.

>> AUDIENCE: Both sides are important in its own way. But the second one is probably a more present issue in legal terms.

>> MARIANNE FRANK: In legal terms. Okay. Now, the hands are up. So Wolfgang and then – so one, two, three. Okay. Anything for remarks?

>> I’m Wolf Ludwig. I’m a journalist by profession, by background.

I come from a very traditional approach, as most journalists do. I’m a former journalist media unionist, and I – with the upcoming Internet, I learned completely new lessons. I realise now I’m speaking in my role as a creator, as a journalist, who also has partly to earn money with it.

My first remark, Internet and open access considerably changed my life and working environment. Whereas for a former story, I spent two sweet days with researcher, I can do this in an afternoon thanks to the Internet and open access.

So the advantages I gained as a professional journalist by the Internet, by Google, are much higher than the losses, I observed, over the last ten years. Therefore, I always realise, final remark, there will be most probably an everlasting contradiction between requirements of open access and vested interests.

Thanks.

>> MARIANNE FRANK: Thank you. That is bringing up the metalica versus radio sharing and making money. We can return to that. Thank you.

Wolfgang?

>> WOLFGANG BENEDEC: You mentioned in the beginning that she is also publishing books and so on. And I wanted to point out the restrictive nature of copyright for academic publishing, for example. Because we give exclusive rights to the publisher. Sometimes you have even to pay to be published in the journal, which that is so expensive that nobody can afford it except a few universities. So that means that you are published anyway, that your thoughts are very restricted in distribution and dissemination. And this is not our intention. When we develop something at the University or elsewhere, people and their blog, then they want to be read. And there is this contradiction between we want to share what we think and copyright, which has exclusive – provides exclusive rights and often leads to the restriction of the free flow of information, finally, also, of our Freedom of Expression.

And then also a limitation to the access to knowledge, and we have to think of people in this house, libraries there, who cannot afford our – these data banks, these – which have all the journals, et cetera.

So here, something is really upsided or imbalanced. And the real challenge I think is to develop new balances, new ways of meeting the interests of the authors, and those who want to share their information. Maybe also music, who knows. We are talking as if it’s only money which matters. There are many other reasons also to be productive. Thank you.

>> MARIANNE FRANK: We are forced to pirate our own work, by the way, in our working lives. When students refuse to buy books, I wonder why, they cost so much money and they go to Google books and they can’t read it, because Google books isn’t that straightforward. So what do you do, pirate your own work?

>> I’ve had to do that.

>> MARIANNE FRANK: Pirate other people’s work? Who are the pirates? I think Konstanin wants to make a comment.

>> KONSTANIN KOMAITIS: Just to react to what Wolfgang has said. Copyright was never – was meant to do exactly what you were saying. It was part of what copyright was created for, was to allow access to progress science. You cannot progress science unless you get access. However, where we find ourselves today is an evolution of copyright over the course of many years. And I think that we need to find the challenges that the Internet imposes on copyright as a great opportunity to reflect on where copyright, how it started, where it has gone, and whether we need to recalibrate and redraft our understanding of what copyright was originally meant to serve.

So you are right. I was an academic and I actually had to pay to be published. And my University was able to support it. And that is a gap that we see existing. Because if universities, and especially in the context of education and libraries are not able to pay for this, because of copyright restrictions, they are going to find other ways to do it.

And they – the Internet has produced these many ways. So it’s very important to take copyright and bring it back to how it was supposed to be in order to be able to serve its function.

>> MARIANNE FRANK: So let’s move, thank you, Konstanin. I think we will move through –

>> AUDIENCE: I’m in the back of the room. I’ll be standing. John Paul Mauve from the European Publisher’s Council and the European Publisher’s Magazine and others.

I want to give you information in the name of transparency and clarity. This morning we met a lot of officials from Google here in Lisbon. And we have been discussing with them the possibility to cooperate and to know better their tools and their technologies that they are offering to us, to make some money in Google.

Nevertheless, there are still three questions that I would like it share with you and give you just a little of my – one of my concerns.

The three questions is nevertheless the tools that we have discussed are going to be outlawed in Europe from the new regulation of data protection. Will be outlawed in Europe from the new directive that is under preparation of the audiovisual that will be the next future, not only the visual, but also multimedia.

And, finally, there is a certain idea of offering as the possibility of Google plus having also something like a forum where our journalists could be able to write for themselves, without having even the indication from what media they would be coming. And this, if not more, they bring a lot of labour questions.

>> MARIANNE FRANK: Okay. It’s labour.

>> AUDIENCE: Finally, I wanted to say and to ask, if I may, Marco, I’m sorry to ask you one thing. The 60 million deal with France, it’s something that we should forget very quickly. Because, first, it’s 20 million a year for a very small number of newspapers, and even smaller number of magazines.

The French Government in its budget has aid to the press, 410 million this year, 390 next year and 350 million in the other year. So compared with what is already in the French budget, I’m sorry, but this is only the Devil of what the Portuguese Government, even with the difficulties that we have in Portugal has in its budget to help the Portuguese media. And it’s very, very small money. So maybe we should forget it.

>> MARIANNE FRANK: Thank you. We will have one remote participant. We have an audience member – first of all, yes.

>> REMOTE MODERATOR: We have 15 remote participants at the moment.

>> MARIANNE FRANK: 15 questions?

>> REMOTE MODERATOR: One Armenia remote hub. I have three questions and comments from the remote participants.

Someone is asking about Google and illegal content. He is asking how does Google cooperate with such kind of content makers? Or Google cannot fight with such kind of content. And there is a comment, creative comments already provides some insight on the digital copyright, intellectual property issue.

And a question from the Armenia hub. How can hosting providers promote the development of content? What are the instruments for such intervention? Thank you.

>> MARIANNE FRANK: Before we address those questions, we will turn to maybe... yes? Loud and clear?

>> AUDIENCE: I am part of the Spanish IGF. And were you addressing me?

>> MARIANNE FRANK: Yes.

>> AUDIENCE: And I wanted to say that there is some reform on the intellectual property law right now under way. And we had a very heated debate in the Spanish IGF. We managed, after a lot of discussion, we reached some points of consensus that are now being challenged. So this is a bit depressing. But one of our points of agreement was a clear defense of the intellectual property. I’ve seen tweets going in a different direction. So I don’t know if that is as universal as we thought.

>> MARIANNE FRANK: Yes. The fifth elephant just came into the room.

>> AUDIENCE: But one thing that was stressed as a challenging arena is the role of copyright collecting societies. And they – the way they are – they act as intermediaries, sometimes, and the way they exercise their power.

Another thing that was laid out and talked about in extent was the role of Telcos and search engines as part of the value chain in the distribution of digital contents, and how we need to make sure that everyone that adds value somehow has a role in the market.

I just wanted to – those were my points.

>> MARIANNE FRANK: Thank you. Now it’s dividing into keep, return to traditional ideas of authors’ rights, intellectual property which we know and love to hate for two hundred years. Or as the tweeters say, there are things such as common licenses, people say share or you have to say this is from me. And people take radically different approaches to their work partly because it’s adequate right now.

This conundrum, we are talking about content in a very old school way. The stuff, the product, the things you produce, the song, the book, the idea. What if content is not the issue? What if it’s the circulation of that content that is being monetized? It’s the practice of sharing itself that is becoming more and more the currency.

So the content, you could be sharing an old sock, it doesn’t matter. That old sock might mean something to somebody or you might have knitted that sock. But it’s the circulation and the sharing that is making the money.

To me, are we thinking of content perhaps too narrowly? And what about creative comments and what about different ways of understanding creativity and authorship? Does the panel have anything to say about any of that, in one sentence, because we really need to finish on time. Marco, would you like to start?

>> MARCO PANCINI: Sure. I think taking into consideration all the negotiation and discussion, we are going through a moment – through a period of disruption. The whole economy and in particular the publishing industry, we believe that we are part of the solution not part of the problem. So again we are there to work together with them. And I’m sure that we can find a solution, taking into consideration the things that were said before, that access to information, more flexibility in copyright, are things that are part of our policy agenda. It’s the way forward if we want to maintain competitiveness in Europe. So that is absolutely something that we should all look into.

>> MARIANNE FRANK: Thank you. Mike?

>> MIKE HOLDERNESS: Well, wow,

>> MARIANNE FRANK: One point.

>> MIKE HOLDERNESS: This is a great way of giving stuff away, but it doesn’t address the issue that we need sustainable ways for people to live and to produce works. Whether the income is taken from the sharing, or from direct payment, they need – the people who are actually producing the raw material need a share of that. Yes, we need to go back to the roots in order to – the French authors’ rights laws started from successful authors realising that their older colleagues were falling sick. Jeron changed his mind because he got fed up with playing benefit Global Internet Governances for musicians who needed to pay for operations.

I have to renege on a position, too. In 1993 I contributed to John Perry Barlow’s wine without bottles, something about this idea that we will make money from performance, not from what we actually fix, from music that was recorded. That doesn’t work if you have kids. That doesn’t work if you fall sick. Authors rights – and a pension fund as well is a living for creators. This room is full of creative people. Please don’t sell out your own futures.

>> MARIANNE FRANK: That is a very important point and we may disagree, but thank you, Mike.

>> FRANCISCO PEDRO BALSEMAO: It comes down to how you value content. If you think your content is valuable, then put a price on it, if you want to – it’s a question of choices – if you want to, if you think that that is the way to go. If you don’t want to put a price on it, don’t put it.

And I think this question of old versus new media, versus new copyright systems, it’s clearly a nonissue. I think there is the old media, traditional media, has been adapting to all the changes in terms of technology, in terms of new consumer trends. So you can’t really call it old, in a T-Rex way. And this new form of copyright, of protecting your IP rights, they can be compatible with traditional ways, as you were saying. They can be compatible. But you have to have value put on your content. That is the main thing. The bottom line.

>> MARIANNE FRANK: Thank you. And Konstanin?

>> KONSTANIN KOMAITIS: I’ll go back to your question, Maria, and I think occasionally we are thinking narrowly what content is. I said in the beginning, there is an abundance of content. You have local content, and local content in many instances has nothing to do with intellectual property. So we have to start separating the issues. But before we start talking about the substance, we have to step back and start reflecting on the process. How we want discussions to be conducted, and that is, you know, the way discussions will be conducted will determine whether we can actually reach some valid and concrete solutions.

>> MARIANNE FRANK: Thank you. So just to end, we began the workshop with the title “Who pays for content?” And I suggested we should say who pays for whose content and whose terms. Who should pay for whose content on whose term of use, and under what conditions of circulation? And I think we have all got lots to think about.

So thank you very much. You did really well. Bye-bye.

(Applause)