[okfn-discuss] public service publisher discussion documents out

Fri Jan 26 00:34:55 UTC 2007

On Thu, Jan 25, 2007 at 06:10:44PM +0000, Saul Albert wrote:
> Hi All, I wrote this as a blog post for okfn. Would you all be terribly
> embarrassed to be associated with it if I posted it?

Hm. Replying to my own mail :P

Sorry for the over-long post, and for the grammatical and spelling
errors. I think I was too angry about the whole PSP fiasco to write
email effectively.

Today I went to an event where the author of the PSP consultation
document Andrew Chitty was presenting.

http://www.unexpectedmedia.com/2007/01/15/insync-event-rights-will-make-you-rich-january-25th-2007/

'Will Rights Make you Rich?' - purportedly a debate about rights models
in the UK new media 'industry'. As you might imagine, it was fairly
one-sided - until I had my little tantrum.

The first presentation of http://www.englandallstars.com/ from a new
media 'agency' - whose 'interactive' content consisted of creating video
that you could actually download from a website (*wow!*) was too
depressing for words. Apparently, this is innovation: a watered-down
mash up of prior art.

The second presentation - by Andrew Chitty was about how he was really
hoping that the public sector would be providing finance for his dead
end derivative re-implementations of eyespot.com and some
too-awful-to-describe teen 'interactive' (read. downloadable video)
proto-soap. His dream is to get funding from the public sector - the BBC
in particular, which will allow him to retain global IPR rights, which
will make enough money to buy him a Greek island.

My resolve never to pay the license fee was affirmed when the BBC online
bloke sitting in front of me, who Chitty kept nodding at whenever he
said the word 'commissioning' told me 'I thought we were here to talk
about how to make money' when I asked (in not so many words) if giving
money to sleazebags like Andrew Chitty constituted any kind of public
service.

I left quite soon after that.

At least my conviction was affirmed that these people wouldn't know
innovation if it was pissing on their shoes.

I should try to calm down and sleep now.

X

Saul.

-- 
The People Speak   | 17-25 Cremer St.  London E2 8HD | http://theps.net
studio +44 (0)20 76133001 | saul: +44 (0)7941 255210 | ms at theps.net