[okfn-discuss] OFCOM Public Service Publisher (PSP) consultation response

Wed Mar 21 16:03:44 UTC 2007

On 3/19/07, Saul Albert <saul at theps.net> wrote:
>
>
> How about something short and relatively simple like this:

short and simple sounds good... :)

-------------------------
> The founding of a Public Service Publisher (PSP) is an opportunity to
> make a significant ongoing investment in the vast landscape of publicly
> owned knowledge and the public knowledge infrastructures already
> developing on the Net.
>
> We, the undersigned would like to see the PSP joining the international
> communities of individuals, organisations and enlightened states
> investing in:

the role of the PSP as part of an international community is the key thing
here, IMO, we need to emphasise the public benefit of opening access outside
the UK (in order to avoid a similar situation to the Creative Archive).
Paula was talking on Saturday about the PSP being a 'node on a global
network', which might be a nice way of phrasing it. In any case,  I think we
should emphasise that opening the PSP's services up internationally would
increase the public benefit for UK citizens, rather than decreasing it.

- Free, Libre and Open Source (FLOSS) technologies and systems.

I heartily agree! Also, an emphasis on reusing existing infrastructure would
be good too (eg. not building a PSP-branded you-tube clone, when youtube /
blip.tv are already there and perfectly fit-for-purpose. I'd like to see the
PSP taking part in developing some sort of metadata standard for
community-generated media, and perhaps providing some sort of aggregation
service for it, however I don't think it's necessary for the PSP to
implement it's own publishing platform when there's services available that
will do the job already.

(see p.45 of the discussion doc, para 5.33: "It is not envisaged that the
PSP should be set up as a distribution platform in it's own right..."

- Advocacy and educational initiatives about viable alternatives to
>   restrictive Intellectual Property (IP) for publicly funded projects.
> - Advocacy and educational initiatives for people, companies, local
>   government and organisations to publish their materials and public
>   data in open, traversable formats, using open APIs.

This would be great... I'd like to see the PSP fulfilling a similar role to
the British Library (ideally to a far greater extent) in terms of providing
consultation on IP policy that reflects the public interest. Might any
involvement in legislative process / lobbying run counter to the PSP' s
public service remit though?

- Decentralized systems for the distribution of data and metadata (peer
>   to peer systems) for publicly funded and user generated content.

See comment above. Zoe (from transmission.cc) might have something to say
about this, are you on-list, Zoe?

> - Open Source Semantic Web services and infrastructures for greater
>   association and interlinking and searching of online resources.
>
> We feel that the PSP could have a vital role in addressing the strategic
> concerns of the Net as a global and national infrastructure; exploring
> and protecting the educational, commercial and societal possibilities of
> what 'public service' might mean in this new context.

As above, I wholeheartedly agree. Also, I think it might be worth adding a
paragraph applauding their decision to use liberal licensing, and to request
that they use a CC licence rather than a scheme similar to the Creative
Archive (which is erroneously described as 'a variant of the
creative-commons' licence on p.42, para 5.21) - referring back to the
importance of being part of a global community. It might also be worth
noting that we'd encourage a PSP which was more concerned with providing an
infrastructure for community creativity, rather than commissioning works
from established media outlets that operate in the 'new media' space.

Happy to draft these in, if everyone agrees....

Cheers,

Tim
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