Regulation – Page 7 – Digital-Lifestyles

Ashley Highfield, BBC – The IBC Digital Lifestyles Interviews

This is the sixth in a series of eight articles with some of the people involved with the Digital Lifestyles conference day at IBC2004.

We interviewed Ashley Highfield, Director of New Media & Technology and the BBC on the need to make content easily available to the public, and the platforms they might use to obtain it.

Ashley oversees BBCi services on the internet, interactive TV, and emerging platforms. He’s responsible for the BBC’s Technology portfolio, encompassing IT strategy, Research and Development, and technical innovation looking at the content forms of the future.

Can you give our readers some background to BBC’s interactive and new media operation and what you do here?

I’m responsible for all the BBC’s non linear output – so anything that is on the internet at bbc.co.uk, which is the world’s largest content website. It’s used by over 10 million people each month in Britain, and has a global user base of probably around 30 million. It covers news, information, education, entertainment … everything.

It is supported by our interactive TV service BBCi, which is available on satellite, cable and digital terrestrial Freeview. That too has an monthly audience of over 10 million in the UK alone. It offers a range of services, for example, the Olympics with multiple video screens that you can choose from – as well as information and education, things like GCSE Bitesize. I’m responsible for our mobile offering as well. I also look after the Technology Portfolio at the BBC and Research and Development.

Would you like to tell me a bit about your two IBC sessions this year and the sort of things that you are going to be covering?

The overall framework is that 50% of the UK have digital television, 50% of the UK has the internet and that’s been the easy bit in a way. I think history will come to look at that as actually having been the lesser task than the next 50%. The two sessions actually fall into quite neatly into “What are the technological solutions?” and “What are the content solutions?” So, what broadly are the solutions that could help drive us towards a digital Britain?

And what are the issues?

There has been a lot of work done by bodies like the Digital Inclusion Panel and by ourselves and by the Broadband Stakeholders Group and by Ofcom that are starting to come to some agreed conclusions about what are the barriers to adoption.

They are many and complex and the barriers are around “I don’t know it’s available” through to “I know it is available but I just don’t want it”; through to “I can’t afford it; I am frightened of it; it is not available in my area; I don’t even understand the language it is in; I can’t use it physically for some reason” and so on. There are a range of reasons.

I think that the interesting angle for these sessions, particularly the second one on content, is not just to ask “What are your whacky ideas for the future?”

If we know that the future is going to be held up by these different barriers, what are the contents initiatives to address these specific barriers? That for me would be “What tangible impact do you think it is going to have to drive take-up and get us to a digital Europe?”

That would be I think a much more gritty session rather than one that just goes off into the usual cyber bullshit.

Quite right.

I can give you an example.

Imagine I am someone living in a high rise block, I am thirty-eight but I am a single father bringing up two kids they’re thirteen and I have got digital Television because I have forced to by the Government.

I really never use anything other than the old five Terrestrial Channels. I can’t afford to get my kids a PC and I certainly can’t afford to subscribe to the internet or broadband, and they are getting teased at school for being behind the curve.

They are struggling in their lessons because all the other kids have got the digital curriculum available to them at home. Now, what if we could offer a content solution that got the digital curriculum into that home without any subscription charge? What if we could find a way of beaming that content service over digital terrestrial television into the home and getting it onto a cheap box for storage? If I could do it overnight so that my kids could actually have access to the digital curriculum in their bedroom through a £50.00 Freeview box with a hard drive, that would make a big change and impact on my life and would force me, as this single father, over some of the barriers.

It would be for my kids’ education. If it was simple enough to operate by just using the four coloured buttons, it wouldn’t break down and it was cheap – there was no subscription cost – then that would do it for me.

What are the content solutions, the content technology hybrid solutions that would breakdown all these barriers to leaving us with a non-digital underclass?

Do you see the BBC offering a Broadband content service, and perhaps even its own set top box?

It is not a specific plan – the set top box is not a specific plan, but it does strike me that we are not thinking about these problems laterally enough at the moment. The content people are just looking at the content solutions and the hardware people are just looking at the hardware solutions and what you end up with is hardware being put into the market like DTT boxes with PVRs in them.

Like HomeChoice and Sky+?

I think Sky+ is a platform driven solution where they want to drive subscription up to their platform. That’s very clever, but it is coming at it from their perspective. They haven’t actually thought too much about what kind of content could you start to download onto a Sky+ box. They are just going to start offering that service at the end of the year, downloading movies and letting you consume them when you want to consume them.

HomeChoice has a slightly different angle, and then you have the hardware manufacturers who are just making free-standing Freeview boxes with PVRs in them.

No-one is actually saying “Well, what is the content solution that is going to drive demand?” It is all a bit fragmented at the moment.

So yes, I do think that the BBC has got a role to play in starting to create content solutions that will start to shape the way that people look at the hardware.

The united broadband platform – the equivalent of a set top box like that – has lots of advantages for production houses and people who produce content. You write it once and it can run on several kinds of boxes. How serious is the BBC about getting involved in a project like that when you have people like N2MC trying to work on a single European standard for interactive content? Is there some duplication there or does what you are doing fit in with what the European Broadcasting Union is doing?

I know of a number of initiatives that have tried to set single standards – let’s say interactive TV MHP. I am sceptical because there is installed base in Britain – how many set top boxes do we have, 11 million? 7 million Sky boxes, 3.5 million cable, 3 million Freeview … in fact, well more than that now.

And at least 5 interactive TV platforms across Europe as well.

Right – it is not going to happen. It is better to actually focus either at a higher level of abstraction like putting a Java engine into every set top box or even a higher level just putting tools into the broadcaster to enable us to create content once and then using multi-platform authoring tools.

Again, it is a technological solution that often doesn’t wake up to the reality in the commercial market. Why would Sky ever use any other solution? Let’s assume that Sky is forever going to have Open TV as a legacy in 7 million homes. In which case let’s deal with that reality and therefore try and find solutions in the real world.

That’s what I am interested in – finding solutions in the real world for this last 50% of people who haven’t got Digital Television.

The worse thing is to try to dumb interactive content down to a common technology platform.

The lowest common denominator with the worst functionality.

It is not going to happen.

How much content will be on the Interactive Media Player when it launches?

The vision is quite clear – the vision would be all programmes up to a week after transmission. Then you are into practicalities, everything after that is practicality. Therefore, what can we put in or rather what can’t we put in? I would like to start with everything until somebody gives me an absolutely convincing reason why we couldn’t.

Now, clearly that is going to take a while, when we launch it as a real product, if we launch it – you know we have only just finished the trial – there is no guarantee that we will. If there is no demand for this thing, no matter how cute a technical idea it is, we won’t do it. But, if the demand is strong and we can find solutions to the rights issues and the distribution issues then we would want to set a route map towards all the content.

What rights issues and distribution issues do you see?

A plethora. Everything from encoding the stuff in the first place, to storing it here, to checking people have the right access to get it in the first place: i.e. they are within the UK, right windowing and so on, to how we actually physically distribute it, that it doesn’t make our service fall over, to quality control when they get it, to download and streaming technologies. You may know that we are looking at least three technologies to lighten the load of distribution.

I’ve heard peer to peer mentioned…

Peer to peer. We are doing that for IMP. We are doing multi-casting where we send it once to the service providers who then distribute it on, and store and forward and storage serving.

We are looking at a number of different technologies to lighten our distribution load. That’s the technology issues.

The rights issues are broadly around trying to find a framework similar to the one we achieved with the radio player which is a bulk rights clearance framework because it won’t work trying to clear things one by one by one.

What about Creative Commons? Lots of people are very excited about the Creative Archive and its use of Creative Commons. What’s the feeling inside the BBC about using Creative Comment as a licensing?

Too early to tell. I mean, it is an idea. It’s one that we therefore want to test but as to whether it will provide an effective enough rights framework, I don’t know.

So it is not set in stone yet?

No.

What sort of DRM will you be employing with the Interactive Media Player and will Creative Commons material be DRM’d and will it be your own BBC codec, the source for it or will you be going to Microsoft?

Yes – all those are being evaluated at the moment! Those are the questions. The trial at the moment that separates the download from the DRM I think is very clever. It allows peer to peer, and the file is encrypted and can only be viewed when you come to view it by checking back with the BBC to confirm your rights at that time.
That isn’t going to necessarily work for Creative Archive where we give you the content to view and manipulate in perpetuity. There will be different DRM solutions for different content and that’s why at the moment we are running a separate initiative from Creative Archive – because they are actually testing different demands and different modes of usage. One is about catch up TV, and another is about actually keeping the content forever and doing things with it. They are going to need different rights approaches.

You are looking at using two difference rights systems for content that is used in two different ways.

Yes, currently.

When the public buy content they have copied protected CDs, they have Fairplay protected tracks from iTunes, they have WMA protected tracks from OD2 – and they can’t move content between devices. As awareness increases of the fact that people are locked into devices and DRM systems, where do you think that’s going to end? Do you think there will be a shake-out in the DRM market or will consumers say “That’s enough”?

There’s money in them there hills and competing formats are going to be around for a while. Whether the shake-out would happen such that you end up with the ubiquitous single framework a la VHS or whether you end up with a number of slightly different formats like DVD, or whether in this instance an organisation like the BBC could help to create an open framework remains to be seen.

Clearly, one of our objectives would be to ensure that our content was available, free at the point of consumption – and that is what we are here for as a public service broadcaster – and not intermediated by other gatekeepers. That is the primary strategic drive behind implementing the Creative Archive. It is to be able to get our content to our audiences with the minimum encumbrance.

As far as your audience goes, will the Creative Archive be limited to the UK or will other countries be able to access it by buying a licence?

It’s something that is up for debate. The licence fee extends just to the UK and therefore it is a completely legitimate framework for us to have pay models outside the UK.

Obviously BBC Worldwide exploits extra-UK rights for all of our content. They sell those rights packages to other broadcasters, not to individuals. What we have never done is to offer our content direct to the consumer a commercial B to C model. We have always done B to B to C. So could we start offering pay per play, pay per view for international users off the back of the Creative Archive. It’s something we can look at, but it can never be and will never be the major driver for the products. We can’t have a commercial tail wagging a public service dog.

We are seeing an increased demand for our narrowband streamed content, like our radio services. Also, the Proms is popular in Japan. That’s probably one of our Global roles. Increasingly as the content gets richer and more bandwidth is required, the cost of distribution increase – how do we recover these costs?

The perceived value increases, too, as the content becomes richer and so we get more guarded, a bit more jealous. There is certainly a huge demand around the world for content that is being funded by the Licence Fee.

We need to be careful. The Olympics is a good example where we do not allow Broadband access to the Olympics content from outside the UK.

We have got the rights to all the broadband content on the web but only within the UK. So if you try from abroad you just can’t get it.

The BBC’s efforts for the Olympics this year are phenomenal – you’re providing much more footage than has ever been done before by anyone and you’re covering it in very different ways. There are on-line statistics completely updated, people can watch the five interactive feeds at one time on broadband and on interactive. Do you see this as just the tip of the iceberg for new types of content that are enabled by new technologies? What sort of types of content are you looking forward to in the future?

That is where it starts to get interesting, the question is “How will content change to meet this need?”

My clichéd example is still the best one I can think of: snooker. Colour television, a change in technology made the sport.

Clearly people played snooker before colour telly, but it wasn’t a broadcast sport and suddenly about 1969 it was. What does this broadband and interactive TV technology enable that wasn’t before? The Olympics is a really good example. The viewing figures for minority sports, we imagine, will go up considerably.

So that makes the Olympics a better proposition, but it doesn’t change the nature of the Olympics. What sports could actually be fundamentally changed or created by new technology? An example might be a long form sport that currently doesn’t work terribly well in a broadcast schedule, like the Round the World Yacht Race. You could use GPS graphics – there are websites that enable you to track the yachts, but could you then use some clever interactivity and so on to make it a much more compelling sport, and therefore take it out of a niche activity and propel it into the mainstream.

Yes, almost certainly are there sports out there waiting to be transformed into mass spectator sports, like fishing. That’s where we haven’t got to yet, because we are only four years into interactive TV and probably only about four/five years into entertainment content over the web. We have not yet moved forward into totally new forms of content.

It certainly is an exciting area.

It is and you just see some emerging things like “Big Brother”. “Big Brother” would have just about worked as a television programme just on its own – “Test the Nation” you would have struggled to make Test the Nation work if you couldn’t have actually tested the Nation. If they couldn’t have joined in via interactive TV and the web you would have a bit of a lemon of a format, but, you know, where do you go from here?

Another good BBC example, of course, is “Come and Have a Go if You Think You’re Smart Enough”.

Right – totally doesn’t work.

It would never exist unless there is participation through the use of technology. Actually those kind of content, I think, we should set up at the beginning. Probably those are the ones that we want to show that we are on a journey here from enabling existing content to be shown in new and interesting ways to increase Region consumption through to totally new forms of entertainment that this technology allows.

Just thinking about “Come and Have a Go” and that sort of integration of different content platforms. Where do you see mobile content services moving? Will the BBC be adopting things like DVB-H?

We have been in a world where mobile content is not able to be distinctive enough to have made it appropriate for a large scale investment by the BBC. We are meant to be by being public spirited, we are meant to provide content that is distinctive and that is where its public value outweighs its market impact.

I think it has been very difficult with a tiny screen and text to let the values of the BBC through. I think it changes once you start to get 3G more broadband video, more meaningful video onto mobile phones.

However, I still don’t think that would then be enough if all we were doing was duplicating the audience that were already using us on-line. Then is that the best use of the Licence Fee? The question I’m asking is: What audiences are we not getting on interactive TV or the web that we could reach through the mobile?

Let’s take teens, a clear audience that are watching less television – certainly less BBC1 prime time Television. What kind of services could we offer to that audience through mobiles, and how can we make it high quality and distinctive? Now that is really interesting, and we have done some stuff like that – like GSCS Bitesize. I think it is too early to call at the moment the mobile market because it has been ostensibly a text based information service.

As it becomes a richer service – an example would be GO – IP based services i.e. how rich could it be for the BBC to offer you a content service to your mobile phone depending on where you are. Now have already trialled some of that where you can go on a walk around London and using information from our History website – will know where you are and tell you through the mobile phone historical facts about where you are actually standing at the time.

How could we use our network of Where I Live regional sites to maybe give you the news and information in radiating circles around your mobile phone? That for me starts to become really exciting. Once we start to move into that world I think that value of what we can do on mobile will increase exponentially.

Would you charge for a mobile service like that? If you are trying to get into every area to offer services it means that you are slicing the Licence Fee thinner and thinner.

Well, not if there is no marginal cost of distribution.

If we cut up all our content anyway, my vision would be a world where all of our content is meta-tagged with its location. On Interactive TV you could give me the news in a five mile radius round Humberside but you could also do that on your mobile phone. It’s not just news content – all our content – you could show me say on the Nature website, give me all the sightings of Greater Crested Plovers within a five mile radius of where I am, i.e. that all of our content – give me any entertainment you’ve got, any comedy clips from the Fastshow that are set in Wales. You can just see a whole BBC centred around location – now if we did that if we meta-tagged all out content then there would be no marginal cost of distribution to the mobile phone.

What resolution will Creative Archive material be in?

We’re testing that.

The content ranges from about 400 KB a second – news stuff – a bit more than that like 500 on Top Gear and so on right the way through to trials at 4 megabits for high definition. I have a Media Centre at home so I was able to use IMP to download the HD stuff and then watch it through my plasma telly – awesome!

That then, puts you in an interesting space where we could get HD out to people’s television sets without the need to rely on Sky and Cable to upgrade their Networks. At the moment can’t – it doesn’t matter if I shoot something in HD you can’t get it on your Television set, whereas through the Creative Archive we could. It is interesting but what we don’t know is, is there any demand?

Steven Carter, Ofcom said it wasn’t broadband until it was 10 megabits per second. When do you think that will be happening in the UK?

I don’t that is a terribly meaningful definition anyway. I think we are far too hung up on technology. The right question should be – when can we deliver enriching engaging content through these devices that doesn’t, because of its quality, diminish the experience? That is the question. It doesn’t matter if you come up with amazing encryption technology. Get me Eastenders down 500K and I get just as much out of it because the graphics aren’t blocky, then that is fine.

We are not there yet – jerky, slow video – we are not there yet but I don’t think it is 10 megabits. It is probably useful to try to understand it because it is certainly more Bandwidth than we have got with them at the moment. But understanding what – here is a good example – in Hull we found that local news people were willing to take it “lower quality” and yet to the audience it wasn’t lower quality at all – we thought lower quality meant lower picture quality, but actually for them it was higher quality because it was local.

It was immediate and although it was user generated, that for them was their perception of quality. The fact that the picture was shaky didn’t matter. So we are putting our perceptions of what quality is onto this equation.

I suppose it has a higher value to them because it is local and, in fact, when you see footage coming back from Baghdad you don’t mind that it’s jerky because you expect it to be.

Yes – because the important thing is that you want it now.

What impact will Charter renewal have on new media services on the BBC because obviously you are becoming very intermingled with traditional programme production?

It is fundamental – if you go through Building Public Value, there are 42 major initiatives in there – of which 25 are new media, so we have go to move from a position of still being, to some extent on the boundaries of the core BBC to being absolutely its heart. That’s going to be a big shift in everything.

Ashley is a chairing the ‘New Platforms, New Content‘ session between 09:30 and 11:00 at the IBC conference on Sunday, 12th September in Amsterdam. Register for IBC here

BBC

Channel 4 Planning a Digital Radio Station with UBC Media

Channel 4, the government-owned UK broadcaster, has signed a deal with UBC Media to explore the development of a digital talk radio station. UBC is the largest independent radio production company in the UK.

The companies will begin a six week consultation process to discuss their plans with Ofcom and independent producers. Channel 4 expect to outsource much of the programming to production houses.

If it goes ahead, the station would launch next spring, and half would be owned by UBC. The station, currently imaginatively called Channel 4 Radio, would be broadcast on the Oneword Radio license, held by UBC.

UBC recently acquired radio production company Smooth Operations, for UK£1.8 million (€2.68 million).

UBC Media

US Top of the Spam League, Canada’s Unwanted Email Output Apparently Falls

A new survey from Sophos reveals that the US is the top spam sending nation in the world, followed in distant second place by South Korea. The US sends 42.53% of all spam, South Korea 15.42%.

The UK, France, Spain and Germany all send under 1.5% of the world’s total of spam each.

South Korea’s spam output has tripled in the last year, but Canada has managed to half the amount of spam originating from its borders – though this could simply be a fact that everyone else’s has risen. Spam now accounts for more than 65% of all emails sent. Somebody, somewhere, must be buying things from these people to make this a viable business.

The US’s spam output has risen despite the Can-spam Act coming into force this year in January, allowing ISPs and government agencies to prosecute spammers – even jailing them. The Can-spam Act also requires that unsolicited emails must have an way of opting out of future emails, but everyone knows that spammers just use this to verify if your email address is active and send even more unwanted emails.

Interestingly, 40% of the world spam total is sent through zombie PCs – computers that have had their security compromised and are being used as spam relays without the owner’s knowledge or consent.

Sophos’ Dirty Dozen

The DTI and ENUM

The Department of Trade and Industry in the UK is considering a public database that will link IP numbers to phone numbers. ENUM will be a searchable database of an individual’s domain names, email addresses, IM identities and telephone numbers.

Stephen Timms, Minister of State for Energy, E-Commerce and Postal Services (now that’s a portfolio of three entirely unrelated remits if ever I saw one), said “ENUM is a system that links telephone numbers to Internet names and destinations, increasing the flexibility of electronic communications. It is one of a number of developments that will allow us to operate more easily and effectively in the converging worlds of telecommunications and the Internet. The UK has been one of the foremost players in developing the ENUM concept and the Government wishes to continue to stimulate further development in this area.”

ENUM would enable users to access internet services from a telephone, and vice versa. All telephone numbers would essentially become like IP numbers.

Voice over IP services will benefit greatly from a service like ENUM, but some analysts are concerned about individuals’ privacy. The DTI recognise this from the outset: “ENUM may become an important element in the process of convergence between the traditional telecommunications world and the Internet world. The arrangements for ENUM necessarily include at least one unique registry function and therefore particular care needs to be taken to prevent abuse. The proposed arrangements have been defined by an open group of interested UK parties. DTI is seeking confirmation that the arrangements meet the needs of an open competitive market and adequately protect the interest of all participants and safeguard the public interest.”

The DTI’s consultation on ENUM

David Wood, European Broadcasting Union – The IBC Digital Lifestyles Interviews

This is the fifth in a series of eight articles with some of the people involved with the Digital Lifestyles conference day at IBC2004.

We interviewed David Wood, Head of New Technology in the Technical Department of the European Broadcasting Union. David also works for the Secretary General as Head of New Media.

David has a background in electronics, television and the Arts – making him an ideal candidate for the European Broadcasting Union, and has worked for the BBC and Independent Broadcasting Authority.

We talked to him about the hurdles he will face in setting up a single technical platform for digital broadcasting in the EU, and the benefits of encouraging hardware, software and media providers to work together.

Some of the people visiting the site might not know about what you are up to, and certainly might not know about N2MC, the New Media Council, so can you give me some background as to what you are doing at the European Broadcasting Union and indeed what N2MC is all about?

They are kind of two separate areas. Essentially, the European Community helps to fund a series of research and development projects in a number of areas – and one of the areas is network, audio, visual systems and home platforms and it means digital broadcasting, interactive television, internet delivery and in home networks.

They are currently running a whole series of research and development projects which last two or three years in specific areas – some looking at digital television, some at the synergy of broadcasting and mobiles, and others at digital rights management issues.

Recently in the consultation discussions that we have had, amongst the projects where people share their results, there has been a feeling that Europe needs an entity – which is loosely called a technology platform – at which people from different organisations would examine where there areas or shortcomings in interoperability, production and delivery. The group has been putting together the case for setting up a technology platform which would try to investigate where there are shortcomings in interoperability and make suggestions as to what could be done.

If we look around today there are plenty of instances – for example, interactive television, as you know there is a whole range of different ways of doing that – Open TV, MHP and so on.

I believe there are currently five different interactive televisions standards in the wild?

Just in the UK alone there are three different ones being used.

So, if you take the Europe of 25 countries, it’s not that bad – but, yes there are certainly five major languages or application programming interfaces. Some people believe that we are on the threshold of what’s called high definition television and people in Europe are going off in several different routes as to the right way to deliver that.

You could also look at digital rights management and see different solutions and one solution is coming out of the mobile environment, and another solution is coming out of the digital television environment. The idea wouldn’t be to invent anything or to solve any problems that somebody else is solving, but to have people who could look at all of the networked audio/visual environment and ask the question “Have we done as much as we can on interoperability and what can we do to make everything connect together?”

It is not just a matter of the convenience for the user but of helping European industry to maintain its place in the world.

There is a general feeling that we should really do all we can to make sure that the European new media industry is as well equipped as it can be.

We worked for some time looking at what were the different issues, and we produced some proposals. The next step is to discuss with a new Commissioner, Olli Rehn, who is responsible for this area.

The idea is to meet with him in September to see how he sees this, and whether he would support such an initiative. Of course, this is a industry initiative and it is not a matter of something the Commission itself is doing.

Later in the year, if everybody agrees that it is workable, we would set up this technology platform. It happens that there are a couple of other areas in industry where the same thing is happening – one is called nano technology: areas where it seems very important for Europe to be competitive and have the best available tools, and we will do what we can to coordinate our research and development.

I suppose there is the desire to not want to reinvent the wheel every time…

Absolutely.

…but then again you are up against commercial entities who want their own technology to succeed. How are you dealing with that?

The group who have been discussing this believe that, in the long term, the interests of everybody will be best served by open systems. This is the environment that has produced, for example, the massive success of GSM and so on.

What we have to do is to find a formula in critical areas where on the one hand we encourage entrepreneurialship, innovation and forwardness, but on the other hand we recognise that with things like a public offer there is a value in having common systems and standards. Somehow the trick in the technology platform will be to find the path between those two things. What we want to achieve is both. Encourage the entrepreneurialship and so on, but allow the stability of common systems where it is possible.

Nobody has an easy or quick answer or formula. I guess these things will have to be looked at case by case but at least we have a common vision of that’s what we are trying to do: encourage competitiveness and so on, but at the same for that to grow you need to have a stable industry where people know what is going and some degrees of, if not common standards, common interfaces. The trick is to make things interoperable.

The Commission has said this week that no decision is going to be made until the end of 2005 on whether a common interactive television standard is to be looked at and that everyone should share information and play nice until then. But then you have got organisations in the marketplace there who are direct competitors to each other, for example, Sky are quite happy using their own platform. Are they really going to want to open it up to their competitors when this could possibly be a chance for them to own the interactive TV platform?

The particular case you are discussing was the issue of whether or not the Commission should encourage the national members of the Community to insist on using the MHP interactive television language.

This particular issue is a very difficult one. For example, take BSkyB who have already a legacy of 5 or 6 million set top boxes which use Open TV.

If you say to them after a given period of time that they must change to an open system, then that is a very difficult thing. Who is going to pay for all that replacement?

Perhaps sometimes you have to swallow hard and say maybe we started this process and bit late. It is the same in France: large numbers of propriety boxes already in public hands.

The Commission was faced with that dilemma: they can’t fund replacements for existing receivers and the conclusion they came to, as you rightly said, was to try to use other means – forums to encourage people towards a common system rather than making it mandatory.

That was their decision and some people think that was the right one, others think that it might have been better to bear the pain and go for a common system. It certainly illustrates that there is no simple route in this and the technology platform would have to look at it case by case. Sometimes if you get in early these things are easier to do than if you arrive late.

Can you just give me a bit of background to your session at IBC this year and the sort of things that you are hoping to cover?

I will be taking the delegates through some of the issues are significant in terms of interoperability of networked audio/visual. I will give them an update on what the result was of the discussion with the commissioner and how they might, if they wanted to, be part of any initiative of this kind – the technology platform.

Who have you got behind you in N2MC?

It is the work that we have done so far came out of the consultation group of the projects that are being partially funded by the Commission. At the beginning at least most of the actors came from that world and that is the large European companies that are involved in research and development in this area like Phillips, Thomson and Nokia.

We have also taken advice from a number of individuals who have helped us. One is a guy called Leonardo Chairiglioni who is the convenor of the MPEG Standardisation Programme. Richard Nichol former boss of Martelsham, the British Telecom labs, Jean Valliesen who is another third guru with Phillips.

So we’ve had the major manufacturers and also we have brought into the discussion quite a number of other actors like Bertelsman, the German broadcaster, BSkyB, Deutsch Telecom, Intel – quite a range of actors from the media environment. We’ve got no reason to exclude anybody.

We sampled what we thought was a cross section of people who might be interested in the initiative.

Now you mentioned Bertelsman there, what sort of feedback are you getting from content producers?

Content producers feel that they do have their own issues in terms of interoperability and everybody is conscious that, in the end, this is one of the really critical areas in terms of content distribution and programme production.

At this stage what we are doing is asking the question “In what areas could such a venture provide added value for Europe?”, but there is this definite feeling that the content industry has to be something which we help in Europe, that it is a vital part. It must be a vital part of the European media industry, so we should be particularly looking to help, if that is the right word, the content industry to make life easier, to make things interoperable, to encourage competition and at the same time encourage entrepreneurialship.

Some would say that you have a mammoth task ahead of you –

Everyone would say that!

Even just looking at one area like DRM. What sort of milestones are you setting? How are you going to know that you are on the way to sorting this out?

We are at the stage of discussion and people would say how they thought it was best to handle that particular one. But my part in the discussion has been to suggest that, probably the best way to go forward is that we need to see what the requirements are of the different ways of delivering content in terms of digital rights management.

We need a list of what broadcasters need, mobile phones need, broadband needs, and then we will see whether there are some things which are the same, some things which are different and if there are some things which are the same then we could move to a stage where we can actually use the same technical systems.

It is a matter of discussion but my fourpennethworth has been to suggest that the right way is to delineate what are the requirements of the different media and see what the similarities and differences are. That for me the way we should move forward on interoperability on DRM, but it is all for discussion.

You’ll be looking at the requirements between manufacturers for interoperability, but will you be looking at consumer requirements?

Of course, yes – the two have to go hand in hand.

Rightly or wrongly the companies, like the one that pays me – the European Broadcasting Union, and public service broadcasters somehow see themselves, apart from anything else, as the guardians of the consumers.

We are paid for by a license or by advertisements. Our shareholder is the public. When we come to the question of requirements, we have to first and foremost ask whether the customer is a user. We must the right to time shift or whatever it is they want to do.

European Intellectual Property Directives state that it’s illegal to try to circumvent a copy protection scheme. Yet there is also a fair use clause in another European directive, stating that consumers can make copies of media. These seem to be contradictory.

Yes, I guess it is a fairly complex issue and one of the things that people are wrestling with now is the use of things like the broadcast flag which the FCC in the United States is adopting.

In the US the plan, as we understand it, is that if you have a digital broadcast you have to put this signal in, on the one hand, and then you have to put some apparatus in the receiver which acts on it and prevents the signal being carried over onto an internet connection.

This is a matter of discussion but the idea of obliging receiver-makers in Europe to put anything in the boxes is pretty difficult to imagine happening. The climate of opinion in Europe – getting 25 different states to make it mandatory to have some particular prevention technology in a digital receiver – just sounds absolutely impossible.

There are lots of issues to discuss and there are no easy answers, but all of these kind of things, as you say, are matters that a cross platform body like the technology platform could discuss and see where there are common ways forward.

So out of the areas that you are going to be looking at with, what is your favourite? What are you most looking forward to getting your teeth into?

In the digital phone world you have the 2.5 G and GPRS methods of delivering digital media, and to some extent 3G or UMTS, and in addition to that there are two other routes to delivering content to handhelds by a broadcasting channels already in the wings. One is a system called DVB-H, and the other one is an enhanced profile of DAB.

How these four options will live together is a difficult one. In an ideal world, I guess, we would have some cooperative network technically where you could imagine that if there is something on your hand held that lots of people want, it comes via a broadcast path. If it is something that only a couple of people want, then it comes via the digital phone network.

Could we achieve these kinds of cooperative networks? The same notion of cooperative networks may also apply between broadband delivery and digital broadcasting to the home. Could we imagine connecting both broadband and TV and TV broadcasting, and if we can do it in a kind of seamless way for the user? Creating that world of cooperative network – well, that would be pretty exciting.

What support do you think you will get from the new Commission?

We don’t really know what his priorities are. The civil servants there change every so many years because the Commission is generally afraid that if someone stays in the job then people get friendly with them and perhaps exert too much influence or whatever it is. The staff are forever rotating – so there will be new people not just only Rehn.

The issues of interoperability in the API and MHP and all of things that you mentioned, have come out of a group led by a gentleman whose name is Adam Watson-Brown.

Adam is moving on out of that area which is loosely called Strategy and into a group which is looking at content regulations – quotas and so on. We may have quite a new order at the Commission in terms of things like interoperability and the API in the future, but it remains to be seen.

The public are now getting used to buying digital media which is quite often protected in different ways: doesn’t work on some devices, works on others, can’t be transferred, has different rights. Are you looking to the public for support in what you are doing?

The consumer associations would be very much invited to be part of the technology platform to make sure that we listened and heard what they had to say. It is a two-sided thing, we want to make industry prosperous and give the European public the convenience and so on that they deserve. We are very much aware that there are two sides of this coin.

We can’t say with certainty that we will create a technology platform and it will be useful and successful, but in the discussions there seems to be a body of opinion that something like this may be useful and we will never know unless we try.

We want to encourage people to think about the issues of interoperability, where there maybe something that could be done, what could be done, who could do it and hopefully encourage people to contribute to this process.

If we have a single aim it is to make it inclusive of all of the actors so that everybody feels that they are buying into their solution.

David is a panellist in the ‘Understanding the Range of Platforms‘ session between 14:00 and 15:30 at the IBC conference on Sunday, 12th September in Amsterdam. Register for IBC here

N2MC

European Broadcasting Union

Internet-only Pharmacies Approved in England

The UK government has approved internet-only pharmacies in England under changes to the laws governing pharmacies in general, as a result of an Office of Fair Trading report. Whilst some pharmacies already sell medicines online, they must have a physical store to trade legally – the changes to the law mean that internet-only chemists will soon be available for the first time.

The Department of Health is assuring the public that there will be strict rules enforced to ensure quality of service and safety.

Health Minister Rosie Winterton said “These reforms continue to support the Government’s aim to put the needs of patients first, ensuring that local health services reflect the changing lifestyles and needs of patients.”

Whilst it’s a great idea in principle, some internet users may mistake spam and some less reputable online services offering medicines as legitimate organisations. It will take public education and strict policing to ensure that members of the public do not put themselves at risk.

Office of Fair Trading

Pfizer Gets Hard On Viagra Spammers

Research undertaken by Pfizer has prompted the pharmaceutical company to take legal action against the hundreds of spammers selling fake or generic Viagra on the internet. A survey revealed that 25% of men thought that the emails actually came from Pfizer. If that really is the case, then I’d say that erection problems aren’t their only problem – they need to buy some clever pills too.

There is no such thing as generic Viagra (known as sildenafil citrate) because the drug has not be approved by the Food and Drug Administration in the US – makes you wonder what it is these people are buying.

Pfizer are now working with US law enforcement agencies and the FDA to track down and prosecute those illegally selling, or claiming to sell, Viagra. They already have organisations and 24 websites targeted. Alongside all of this legal activity, they have a new public awareness campaign to educate the public on the dangers of buying random, unprescribed pills off the internet.

“Pfizer is taking these steps to help raise consumer awareness about the problems posed by illegitimate online ‘pharmacies’ and to directly address the source of these problems,” said Jeff Kindler, Executive Vice President and General Counsel at Pfizer. “We want it clearly known that Pfizer does not send or support the sending of spam, which comes from websites that illegally use the Viagra name to promote and market unapproved ED products that may contain ingredients that either do not provide optimal efficacy or may pose health risks.”

Research shows that younger men are now taking Viagra recreationally as a lifestyle drug, and this coupled with the fact that some people are still stupid to buy things they read about in spam, means that there will be no quick end to impotence-related emails any time soon.

Worryingly, Pfizer have just lost patent protection for Viagra in China, so look forward to a sudden flood of legal sildenafil spam coming from there.

Pfizer

FCC Approves TiVo Content Sharing

The Federal Communications Commission has approved TiVo’s new content sharing facility, TiVoToGo. Possibly the ugliest neologism I have ever seen TVTG (I’m not typing it again), allows TiVo owners to share recorded programming with a limited number of approved associates and friends over the internet. The FCC has approved the security features that only last week were causing the MPAA and NFL to throw their toys out of their prams.

The FCC is now satisfied that digital broadcast television is adequately protected by TiVo, and that content should be made conveniently available to users – but without indiscriminate distribution all over the internet.

TVTG limits sharing to nine other users, who must have a certificate and be registered with the host TiVo before they can view content.

The MPAA is still disappointed though – they’d like to see tighter controls as programmes can be streamed to users outside the intended market: “technologies that enable redistribution of copyrighted TV programming beyond the local TV market disrupt local advertiser-supported broadcasting and harm TV syndication markets.”

A breakthrough for consumers? Not so fast. Even if the FCC has approved the technology there are still plenty of opportunities for the MPAA or anyone else who doesn’t like TVTG from reaching the market, or crippling it when it gets there.

TiVo on the FCC news

FCC Votes to Wiretap VoIP

The Federal Communications Commission has voted 5 – 0 to subject voice over IP communications to the same laws that apply to eaves dropping over conventional telephone calls.

Whilst VoIP is cheap alternative to making standard telephone calls, especially over long distance, it is rather difficult to tap. The vote means that VoIP is now subject to the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), and that assistance is basically a requirement that your VoIP chat has a back door in it so that federal law enforcement agencies can listen in without telling you.

FCC chairman Michael Powell said: “Our support for law enforcement is unwavering. It is our goal in this proceeding to ensure that law enforcement agencies have all of the electronic surveillance capabilities that CALEA authorizes to combat crime and terrorism and support homeland security.”

The FCC’s statement

EU: Interactive TV Standards Will Wait

The European Commission has stated that it will not make a decision on imposing interactive TV standards until the end of 2005. Currently, there are several platforms in use throughout Europe, though the Commission does not see this as a problem, instead promoting interoperability on a voluntary basis. As some of the platform proponents are competitors, it remains to be seen if this will be successful.

Whilst the Commission hopes that everyone will share and get along, they are strongly advocating the Multimedia Home Platform. MHP is currently employed by RTL in Germany.

Developing for multiple interactive TV platforms does no-one any good – content has to be rewritten and retested for every platform and each system has different capabilities. As final content has to work on all platforms it is likely to encounter, it is often as simple and demanding as possible – stifling innovation.

There are five interactive APIs in use across Europe today, deployed in 25 million set top boxes, yet the Commission does not see this as a problem:

“In view of the complexity of the technological and market environment, the very different perceptions of interoperability held by market players, and the fact that interactive digital TV has not yet taken off on a larger scale in many Member States, we felt that the digital television market should continue to develop unhindered for the present” commented Enterprise and Information Society Commissioner Olli Rehn, “Digital television networks (satellite, terrestrial and cable) have the potential to offer delivery of multi-media information Society services, alongside 3G mobile and other networks, and we welcome all future investment in this important technology. We will however revisit the issue at the end of 2005 in order to see to what extent market developments have contributed to interoperability and freedom of choice for users.”

Europa Press Release