A new approach

Open media

Clearly, there is a balance to be found between the rights and expectations of creators and the potential public benefit which might arise from the PSP adopting what has been termed an "open rights model". Such an approach would be aware of the fact that much of the value of content created for the participatory media environment is derived from sharing and modification. We are already seeing that much content not designed for these purposes is in fact already being appropriated by the culture and recycled and developed. This process of reiteration has always taken place within cultures - and is in fact the foundation on which much of culture is built - but it presents particular problems in the digital age. In order to side-step these issues and to maximise public benefit, it's important that everything which the PSP does should be share-aware; meaning that the rights and other models which it takes should embrace the reality of a participative media environment and not struggle against it.

An open rights model is the best solution to the issue of how the PSP might treat intellectual property rights. It would involve a step away from the way in which rights are treated by broadcasters but that is not necessarily a problem so long as a number of questions can be tackled by the new model. These include:

There are several licensing approaches which are able to facilitate many of the needs of the PSP. Before looking in a little more detail at the requirements for the licensing approach of the PSP, it is probably useful to consider a comparison between the role proposed here for the PSP and institutions elsewhere in the public sphere. One example would be the funding of scientific innovation.

In much the same way as our major cultural institutions have a role in the shaping of our culture, the way in which a society funds basic research in science is illustrative of how centrally it places the public good relative to private commercialisation. The world of science funding has existed within an open, peer-reviewed model for much longer than the media - which is one of the last bastions of top down control. Within the science world, a number of approaches are taken but a common approach often applies when it comes to the distinction between basic research and applied research or product development and the relative positions of commercial and public benefits in these processes. The Human Genome Project gives us a valuable case study to illustrate the way in which basic scientific research - which is beneficial to all and often state supported - can then be leveraged by commercial organisations. Some funding institutions in the science field have begun to shift the balance between public and private benefit which is derived from their funding. The Wellcome Trust, for instance, has stated that it "supports unrestricted access to the published output of research as a fundamental part of its charitable mission and a public benefit to be encouraged wherever possible."

This approach - which has come after much consideration and in response to the increasing tendency of scientific publishers to charge for online access to journals - is designed to maximise public benefit in the Wellcome Trust's field. It is proposed that the PSP should similarly place public benefit at the heart of its mission by releasing content free of charge from where it can then be shared, modified or integrated into new services by others. The commercial implications of this will be discussed below. What would happen if we considered the PSP's potential to be akin to becoming a supporter of the basic elements of our participatory culture along the lines of basic scientific research? I suggest that this isn't just an interesting sideshow to the current proposal, but rather the main event.

It is important to remember the following factors when considering the validity of this notion of the PSP as an "open media" organisation. Firstly, no creator or other body will be forced to use PSP funding in any given project. There will remain a number of sources from which funds could be drawn. Secondly, the fact that the PSP might make content and services available for free does not necessarily mean that commercial services could not or indeed should not be built on the basis of the PSP's investment by others. Indeed, there are many examples from around the world where commercial players have used their skills to add to the public benefit created by civic investment. One example might be of the ice cream seller who sets up shop outside the gate to a public park, thereby adding a service to some park visitors, creating commercial potential and, arguably, enhancing the value of the original public investment in the park. A second, more technological example, would be the way in which many software companies have sprung up around the Open Source software movement. Multinationals like IBM have developed considerable service businesses around Linux, as an example, and the Linux distribution company, Red Hat, exists largely to add value to a "free" product by bundling all the parts a user might need into a simple package and then providing support.

It is important not to confuse the PSP's mission by bringing in a half-hearted attempt at commercial decision-making into the structure of the organisation itself. It should be sufficient for the PSP to invest in order to deliver public benefit - if others can build on this investment to create commercial goods then so be it.

However, it does not necessarily follow that we must abandon the potential of such ongoing product development to return some funds to the PSP and - more particularly - to the creators of content and services funded by it. Systems are in development - often alongside alternative copyright licensing regimes - which are increasingly able to track the lineage of content from the original source material as it is used and reused over time. Such systems will never be perfect, but they could provide a valuable way of returning value to creators in the event that major commercial benefits do arise from their work. Naturally, it should also be said, creators themselves will be just as free as anyone else to develop commercial services - and almost certainly best placed to do so - from the work funded by the PSP. The precise boundaries between commercial and non-commercial here will be a matter of judgement - but decisions of a similar ilk have been made within the PSB landscape for decades.

Whilst there could well be a central PSP service and site - in order to showcase projects for instance - it is not envisaged that the PSP should be set up as a distribution platform in its own right. There is no compelling argument for a market failure in interactive media content distribution certainly once the non-commercial nature of the PSP's mission is taken into account. Instead, the PSP would partner with organisations large and small from the public and private sectors as well as syndicating content and services to individuals - along the lines currently operated by many blogs and video services such as Google Video. These partnerships might also extend to co-production relationships. For instance, a broadcaster might see sufficient value in running audio-visual content on a closed platform such as broadcast whilst working with the PSP to release content online or mobile in a non-commercial way.

This approach would mean that the PSP would not fall into the trap of many public sector initiatives in digital media of spending large proportions of budget on technology per se. Commercial partners, open source communities and others would all be free to engage with PSP-supported work as and when, with the PSP's role limited to showcasing.

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