BPN1149 Digital ex-libris as social DRM

There is some excitement in the e-book world. The publisher O’Reilly will create another sensation. From early July, and I believe that it will be on Thursday July 10, it will release DRM free e-books. And not only that. The publishing house will release them in PDF with two other formats (EPUB and Mobipocket), so that the user can put them on other platforms in the preferred format. So you buy one and get three. According to the announcement, O’Reilly will start with a small selection of seven e-books, followed by a few dozen later on, so that they can measure the effect. They will also sell through Amazon for the Kindle e-reader.

In the e-book world this is a big step, comparable to the music companies switching off DRM protection. In the music world this was only possible after that Apple had introduced iPod and iTunes, offering a huge library of songs, an acceptable price per song and per album as well as a reliable download facility. At once you did not have to download songs illegally any longer. This effect did not come about in the e-book world. Publishers are still scared of their e-books being copied illegally. And there is not an industry champion like Apple in the e-book world. Of course Amazon is fine candidate, but with the Kindle it has not provided a global device for downloading e-books, e-magazines and e-newspapers. More than half a year after the launch of the Kindle, the device has not reached Europe let alone the other continents.

But this announcement of free DRM and the sales through Amazon are not the only announcements. There is also another rumour going around. O’Reilly as publisher and conference organiser is considered to be the organisation that coined the word Web 2.0 and all social things that come with it like social media and social net. So the e-books will be free of technical DRM, but they will get a social DRM.

The technical DRM is linked as a technical facility to the publisher and/or machine. DRM products like music and e-books might be installed on an iPod or e-reader. But when you loose the iPod or e-reader you loose also all the songs and e-books for which you have paid. In most cases you could not make a home copy of them on your desktop computer. It might even get worse, when a provider stops the service, as users of Zune recently noticed when Microsoft announced not to support the format any longer beyond 2011. While you paid for that format, you will have to pay for a new one after 2011.

Social DRM is not a digital rights protection system in the proper sense. It is based on social control. Instead of having a technological protection on board, the first page of the e-book might bear the name and e-mail address of the buyer. Copies can be made, but the name and e-mail address of the first buyer will also be copied. Advantages of this system are that the reader can put the content on any device or machine, store a copy in his own library vault and does not have to worry about limited storage life.

Pragmatic programmers are doing social DRM already with their Pragmatic Bookshelf. You buy an e-book by credit card. A one-time copy is prepared for you with the indelible stamp bearing your name and credit card number. When you receive it you open it only one time with your name and credit card number.

The question remains whether it will work. Of course we know that technical DRM does not work and that copies are faster out of the production system and in the torrent system that legal copies. But with a digital ex-libris as a social DRM, the e-book world gets more civilised.

Blog Posting Number: 1149

Tags: DRM, social DRM

Flash: Firefox in Guisness Book of Records

Firefox did succeed on June 17, 2008 in registering for a record in the Guinness Book of Records. 8.002.530 computer users downloaded Firefox 3 within the first 24 hours of the browser becoming available.

BPN 1148 Smart grids to surpass white elephant powerlines?

Powerline technology has been a long promise. I usually call thos type of projects white elephants: they promise a lot, but never get hot. I heard about powrlinetechnology for the first time in 1980, when in a conference on videotex smart metering was mentioned. But in the same breath electronic banking was mentioned, which did come about in The Netherlands in 1986. But smart metering is yet in a rudimntary stage in The Netherlands, let alone Broadband over Powerlines (BPL). It all comes together under the key word smart grids. My Dutch Australian friend Paul Budde just published an extensive report about it with a summary of smart grid activities. He thinks that 2008 will be a crucial year for smart grids. I copy his press release:

The future growth of Broadband over Powerline now largely rests on smart grid development and in 2008 it is becoming clearer that smart grids will be one of the networks of the future. Utilities around the world are turning their attention to smart grids for internal energy monitoring and management. This is primarily due to rising concerns relating to climate change and CO2 issues and the utilities are now in a race to upgrade their decades old infrastructure to make it more intelligent and efficient.

At the same time, many utilities involved in this market have become unwilling to take on the telcos in the broadband market and the support for BPL as a third broadband access for the home is waning. Applications for BPL technology now revolve around smart grids and Demand Side Management services. Utilities are looking internally and using the technology and skills to upgrade their networks for smart grid purposes. The utilities involved in these developments are embracing the concept of an end-to-end solution in the total energy chain.

BPL offers benefits in home networking due to its ubiquity. Utilities and access providers around the world are aggressively deploying HomePlug in BPL applications for electric grid management, automatic meter reading applications, Command and Control and broadband to the home. The regulatory and social environment today favours energy conservation which is pushing utilities toward DSM as a way to reduce costs, minimise investment in new power plants and improve customer service. There is growing requirement for a more sophisticated management of energy in people’s homes and businesses.

A smart grid will also offer smart meter features which will allow users and utilities to utilise information about usage, supply and real-time price, as well as allowing them to better manage energy use both from an end-user and a supply perspective. However governments need to ensure that smart meters do form part of an overall smart grid strategy. Smart meters on their own could be an expensive dead-end investment if this hardware eventually has to be removed from homes to be replaced with IP-based, software-driven meters with two-way communication over the Net.

Key highlights:
· Significantly one of the key US BPL Internet deployments in Dallas collapsed earlier this year. The assets were to be sold off to a local utility which planned to use the technology to monitor an electrical grid instead of providing Internet access to around 2 million residents.
· The first smart grid project was launched in 2007. Today Australia, Italy, France, Germany, Hong Kong, USA and Russia are considered to be some of the leading markets in terms of smart grid development.
· Applications for HomePlug technologies include home and business control of lighting, appliances, climate, security and energy consumption. HomePlug product shipments have doubled in the past year or so.
· In Africa, some power utilities are billing as little as 30% of the electricity actually being consumed.
· Countries in South and Central America that have started to develop smart grid technology include Brazil, Colombia, and Venezuela. Latin American utilities are interested in smart grids particularly with a view to reducing theft, a major regional challenge.
· While Middle East Gulf countries are making little use of the technology at home, investment companies from the region are funding smart grid technology companies around the world.

Blog posting Number: 1148

Tags: Powerline technology, Broadband over Powerline

BPN 1147 Internet phone calls popular in European homes

An EU-wide survey of 27,000 households from 27 EU countries, conducted from November to December 2007 has revealed the emergence of new consumption patterns in telecoms services in Europe. Technological progress and competition have brought more choice to European consumers; 24% of households have given up their fixed telephone in favour of mobile phones while 22% of them are using their computer from home to make phone calls over the Internet.

In an increasing number of Member States, European households are using wireless access to connect to the Internet, via mobile or satellite networks. Meanwhile, 29% of European households buy bundled telecoms and media packages, an increase of nearly 10% since last year. Nevertheless, the top priority for consumers in this fast evolving environment remains the quality of services.

Here are the key findings of the third EU-wide household survey published by the European Commission:
- Users are increasingly switching from fixed to mobile phones with around 24% of EU 27 households just using mobile. The proportion is significantly higher in the new Member States (39%) than in the EU 15 (20%), with the exception of Finland (61%) and Portugal (48%). In some Member States this increase is accompanied by an increased use of wireless access to the Internet via the mobile phone network or satellite (Czech Republic, Slovakia, Austria and Italy).
- 22% of European households with Internet connections now use their PC for making phone calls. This figure is twice as large in Latvia (58%), Lithuania (51%), Czech Republic (50%), Poland (49%) and Bulgaria (46%).
- 29% of European households buy two or more telecom and media products from a single service provider (an increase of 9% since winter 2007), the combination of fixed telephony and Internet access being the most common.
- Almost half of European households have access to the Internet (49%) and an increasing majority enjoy a broadband connection (36% of EU 27, an increase of 8% since winter 2007). Most connected households access the Internet via an ADSL line (59%, an increase of 4% compared to last year). The main reason quoted for not having an access at home remains the lack of interest in Internet (50% of respondents).
- 22% of European households have difficulty contacting their Internet service provider about connection problems. A similar number said the cost of the support they get is not affordable.
- One in four mobile users is not always able to connect to the mobile network to make a phone call. 28% are sometimes cut off.
- More households are receiving digital terrestrial television: an increase of 5% since winter 2007 to now 12% of EU 27 households. The share of households with analogue television reception via an aerial has fallen from 45% to 41%.
- One in ten EU households receives television by more than one means (aerial, cable, satellite, Internet). The figure is even higher in France (25% of households), UK (22%), Italy (19%), Sweden (19%), and Cyprus (16%).


Penetration rates for key telecom services
Average EU 27 households Winter 2008
-Overall telephone access (fixed and/ or mobile): 95%
-Mobile telephone access: 83%
-Fixed telephone access: 70%
-Both fixed and mobile telephone access: 57%
-Mobile but no fixed telephone access: 24%
-Fixed but no mobile telephone access: 14%
- Broadband internet access: 36%
-DSL access: 29%
- Cable-modem access: 7%
- Television: 96%
- Aerial: 41%
- Cable-TV: 34%
- Satellite: 22%
- Digital Terrestrial TV: 12%


Blog Posting Number: 1147

Tags: Internet telephone

BPN 1146 The last days of Planet.nl

One of the oldest ISPs in the Netherlands Planet Internet will be phasing out this month and be transformed into KPN Vandaag (Today). The exercise is part of a rebranding strategy of the telecom company KPN. The make-over has been prepared since the beginning of the year and will be definite by August. Technically nothing changes for the Planet subscriber as he/she will maintain the same e-mail address and can use the same access code as well as password.

KPN has been working on its brand strategy.This has lead to the merging of services and brands. Brands as Tiscali and Speedlinq merged into the low-end market brand Telfort. Now Planet and KPN ADSL will merge into KPN Vandaag. So far the telephony brands Simyo, Hi and Ay Yildiz will continue in the market. Also the ISP XS4ALL will remain independent; merging this ISP would create havock, as the ISP has been one of the best, most progressive and the most independent Dutch ISPs.

Planet Internet was one of the first consumer ISPs, but it distinguished itself right from the beginning. The existing services such as Nlnet, XS4ALL, Knoware and Euronet*Internet offered all access to the Internet highway, but did not provide the users with maps. A complete new approach came from Michiel Frackers (see phtograph on the cover of hi book In search for the Holy Grail), a a graduate in communication science. Together with some other students he developed a business plan, which was refined by Maarten van de Biggelaar, the managing director of the publishing company Quote, where Frackers had been an intern.
The service should become a consumer service or even better an online publishing company. The service was new as it offered content, online access and marketing. In other words, consumers would get road maps, passed on by a editorial staff, consisting of cybrarians (a term coined in 1993 by Michel Bauwens, an former BP information manager in Antwerp). Journalists of the first hour were Francisco van Jole and Peter Olsthoorn. Another partner in the venture was KPN, which provide money and telecom facilities. The marketing knowledge came from the magazine publisher Quote and newspaper publisher De Telegraaf. This led to a first month free starter pack in bookshops and newspaper booths.

The service became operational on June 20, 1995. A subscription for six hours was 26,95 Dutch guilders (roughly 13,50 euro) with every additional hour 4,95 Dutch guilder. By October 1995 a country wide telecom network was realised and the service had picked up already more than 14.000 subscribers and was the largest Dutch ISP. On January 1997 Planet Internet merged with World Access into World Access/Planet Internet, starting the consolidation phase and a spade of Internet illerate managers. The publishers Quote and De Telegraaf left as ashareholders as well as many of the employees of the first hour, among which the founder Michiel Frackers.

By 1999 the name was shortened to Planet Internet. The service had 300.000 paying subscribers and by 2002 the number rose to 665.000. They yer 2002 was a year for plans: cooperative projects such as Planet Travel and Planet Money. There were also expansion plans to Great Britain, Germany and Belgium. But all these plans failed.

Over the years Planet Internet lost in importance. The quality of the news service went down, while other better news service were started up. The traffic went down. In 2005 Planet.nl attracted 57 million visitors monthly, while two years later the number went down to 19 million monthly. But the traffic number recoverd a little bit by January 2008 with 22 million visitors.

With the make-over of the branding the names Planet Internet and Planet.nl will be ready for the weblog museum. The service will be remembered for its initial excellence in online journalism.

Blog Posting Number: 1146

Tags: online journalism

BPN 1145 New internet domain names

He had told me that he was going to attend the meeting of ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) in Paris. The meeting lasted till last Thursday. Upon his return to Gent in belgium, I put two questions to my World Summit Award colleague and friend Rudi Vansnick (left on photograph, taken at the GP circuit in Bahrain in 2005). Rudi is president - CEO Internet Society Belgium and vice-chair ISOC-ECC.

JB: From some news items I understood that the domain question was high on the list of the ICANN meeting.
RV: Indeed, the following topics where listed on the priority list and have been discussed largely within the different constituencies during the ICANN meetings :- Internationalized Domain Names (IDN)- new gTLDs (generic Top-Level Domains)The launch of the IDN is a very important step in the expansion of the existing Internet. Use of Arabic, Cyrillic and other non-Latin scripts will make the Internet world accessible for non-Latin speaking people. People who do not speak English or other Latin-based languages will in the near future register and use domain names with characters that reflect their preferred language of communication. IDNs already exist at the second-level and work is underway to extend that to the top-level domains for both gTLDs (generic) and for ccTLDs (country code). Sample of an IDN url : http://نمونہ.آزمایشی/صفحہ_اول or and email : mailtest@مثال.إختبار . The impact of the IDN on the Internet will be quite important and will involve the global world.Introducing new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) is central to fostering choice and competition in domain registration services, and as such is significant to the promotion of ICANN’s core values. Since 2000, there have been several new gTLDs added to the DNS, including general purpose domains such as .info or .mobi and .aero. Each new gTLD must be proposed by an organisation, which will launch and administer it if approved. To be selected to operate a new gTLD the organisation must satisfy the requirements ICANN set out. Among other criteria, the organisation should have strong technical abilities, a sound business plan and a commitment to implement ICANN policies.

JB: I understood that ICANN talked about other domain extensions. But how does this question relates to the IPv6.
RV: Ipv6 is designated to be the successor for Ipv4 that boasts the ability to support billions times more than IPv4. It is a fact, within a few years all IPv4 addresses will be used. The implementation of new gTLDs, the usage of IDN will certainly affect the consumption of IPv4 addresses. Up till today many hardware vendors are not IPv6 compliant, work only in one or the other way but mostly not together (IPv4 & IPv6). Software vendors are progressing more quickly and as such will certainly force hardware vendors to speed up the convergence and technical functionalities of existing and new equipment. The impact of IPv6 on ISP's will be quite important, but also for registries and registrars it will imply they have enough knowledge. At-Large (in which I'm active - EURALO) has a working group focussing to enable At-Large to work with other ICANN stakeholders to ensure that all the necessary works be done. Questions as "Are developing countries with huge potential of growth and/or lots of population not being pushed into disadvantageous situation?", "Isn't there a fear of remaining precious IPv4 addresses to become way very expensive with speculation and/or un-authorized trading outside RIR policy framework?".

Blog Posting Number: 1145

Tags: domain

Monthly stats blog Buziaulane

Blog: Buziaulane is a daily blog in English
Period: 1-6-2008 till 30-6-2008

Stats
Pageviews: 1192 (May1464)
Visits: 949 (May1138)
Unique Visitors: 830 (May 1008)
Countries: 70 (May 73)

Pageviews from the following countries
Rank/country/percentage

1. Netherlands/36,58%
2. USA/18,71%
3. UK/7,72%
4. France/3,86%
5. Canada/2,68%
6. Germany/2,68%
7. India/2,52%
8. Spain/1,59%
9. Belgium/1,43%
10. Rest/1,34%
11. Australia/1,34%
12. Italiy/1,17%
13. Thailand/1,17%
14. Poland/0,92%
15. Israel/0,84%

Most visited pages
1. other/49%
2. http://buziaulane.blogspot.com/17,37%
3. ...buziaulane.blogspot.com/2006/07/serious-games-for-seniors.html/2,27%
5. http://buziaulane.blogspot.com/2006_08_03_
archive.html/1,59%
6. http://buziaulane.blogspot.com/2006/12/tta-2006-games.html/1,43%
7. http://www.blogger.com/blog-preview.g/1,26%
8. http://buziaulane.blogspot.com/2006/03/new-p2p-software.html/1,01%
9. ...e.blogspot.com/2006/12/iliad-and-de-tijd-enewspaper-close.htm/1,01%
10. http://www.buziaulane.blogspot.com/0,92%

Stats generated by Onestat and ClustrMaps

Flash EUROPRIX Multimedia Awards deadline extended

Due to the large amount of enthusiastic requests from young multimedia whiz-kids across Europe, the deadline has been extended to July 30 2008! But get a move on! If you want to associate yourself with the best of the best in European multimedia, you have until July 30 to enter! You have to be in it to win it!

All you have to do is to click on this web-link: http://www.europrix.org/reg-2008/reg.asp?Registration=1 , complete the registration process and you could fulfil all your hopes and dreams of recognition and success. The multimedia scene is increasingly competitive. Companies are begging for new ideas, fresh content and sparkling technical innovations. Get to the head of the pack by entering the EUROPRIX Multimedia Awards.

For more information and registration please visit: http://www.blogger.com/www.europrix.org

BPN 1144 E-books change academic life

In Spring 2008, ebrary collaborated with more than 150 college and university librarians throughout the world to develop an informal survey to better understand students’ usage, needs, and perceptions with regard to e-books.

Colleges and university libraries of all types, worldwide, were encouraged to invite their students to participate in the survey. ebrary did not promote the survey directly to students. The survey was promoted primarily through ebrary’s newsletter distribution list, which includes more than 12,000 college and university librarians, representing approximately 2,100 individual institutions. Approximately half of these institutions are located in North America, the other half in the rest of the world. A total of 6,492 students completed the survey, representing nearly 400 individual institutions, from approximately 75 countries.

Librarians were also invited to participate in a “cloned” student survey to see how their responses differ from those of students. A copy of the “cloned” report, will be available later this summer. This survey is not about e-readers, but about electronic books, ranging from Word, PDF to Mobypocket format.

From the librarians survey it was known that 63 per cent have over 1000 e-books and 37 per cent has less than 1000 e-books.

The student e-book survey was completed by a total of 6,492 students, representing nearly 400 individual institutions, from approximately 75 countries. It sounds impressive, but when you look in detail the survey can hardly be called represetative. Respondents came from the US (2143) and Italy (2707) and 73 other countries with participants ranging from 1 to 529. From my own home country only 2 prticipants have been registered. When you look at the primary subject/major of study, the lit is dominated by engineering (1983 rspondents). On the far end of the list are mortuary science, oceonography and criminal studies each with 1 respondent. Only 23 students languages and literature partook in the survey.

Half of the respondents (3122) fall off from the start, when they are asked how often they use e-books provided by the library. They never use them. Ome 2700 respondents say that their library does not have e-book; or they do not know about it. So only some 3200 students answered the rest of survey.

Remarkabl of the rest is that 2517 rate e-books assecond resource for research and class assignments. And when asked about th trustworthiness (accuracy and reliability) of the resources, e-books (279) almost equals print books (2845). Resources as Wikipedia, wikis and blogs as well as social web applications score very low in trustworthiness. When asked for the option of using the e-book or a print book, more than 2500 respondents indicate sometimes (974), often (868) and very often (698).

Th respondents could indicate whether 19 statements were true for e-books, print books or both. No less than 1905 respondents listed environmental friendliness of e-book the highest; as said before in a posting, this is utter nonsense. Any time, any where access is a fine second followedby easy to search and find information. Interesting for any e-book producer and e-reader manufacturer are the 19 features list as very important to e-books (see illustration).

Asked on what would make e-books usage more suitable for use in thei area of study, the students answered: more titles in my subject area (2465), less restrictions on printing (2073) and copying and more current titles (1902). Only 1150 students demanded better e-readers.

In the concluding summary of the surveyAllan W. McKiel Ph.D, dean of librray and media services of Western Oregon University draws some intersting conclusions on the change in scientific behaviour. Books, print or electronic, are holding their own as a preferred resource. E-books were in second place as a resource used for research/class assignments with 78 per cent of the students selecting them. Print books followed closely at 77 per cent (2478/3208). It is noteworthy that e-books are just behind Google as an important format for students. It is a hint of evidence suggesting that the format may endure in the context of the Internet. In ebrary’s 2007 Global Faculty E-book Survey, e-books were the sixth element (53 per cent) in the list of the electronic resources that faculty indicated they used for research and course preparation. Seventy-nine percent (658/829) of the faculty reported that print books were preferable for reading the entire work.

Student and faculty usage diverged slightly over the use of e-journals. They placed second in the faculty survey with 86 per cent of the faculty selecting them. Only 65 per cent of the students indicated that they used them for research/class assignments. Faculties are moving to the Internet but the traditional format of the journal organized in the context of the Internet appears to have a stronger utility for them than students.

Other inferences appeared in the student data. Wikipedia scored just behind Google as a tool of choice for assignments. E-reference resources like online dictionaries, encyclopedias, and maps are firmly established tools. Textbooks are fading as a central course resource. Both students and faculty skew toward a preference for working online. And both students and faculty view instruction in information literacy as important. Fifty-six percent of students selected very important while 85 per cent of the faculty indicated that it was very important.

From the student survey it is clear that something is changing in scientific behaviour. The librarian survey is most likely more conservative, but will reflect the immediate tendencies.

Blog Posting Number: 1144

Tags: e-books, e-readers

BPN 1143 Geotagging meets online novel

Sometimes you wonder about applying applications. Geotagging looks obvious for indicating where you are living or indicating destinations. Another application is discovering neighbours on internet: who is doing what on the net. Through wifi I can see which neigbours have a wifi active, but I do not know what they are doing on the net. Perhaps I do not want to know this. But recently I discovered an appication which did arouse my interest somewhat: the application GeoURL links geotags, so that you know who is blogging in the neighbourhood and which company has a site.

But geotagging has gotten a creative sibling. It is now also a tool for novel writers. I recently saw two applications, an English language novel and an online German language novel. On the Penguin site there is The 21 Steps, a thriller by Charles Cummings that uses Google Maps as its storytelling medium. The thriller tells the story of Rick, a man with a checkered past who has to go from London to Edinburgh to smuggle a mysterious vial into Scotland. A series of satellite images from Google Maps is the red thread of location markers on the trip. The book hs become famous now. The 21 Steps has now been read over 150,000 times online which is more than all of Charles Cumming’s book sales put together. The 21 Steps is part of digital fiction series We tell stories: six authors, six stories, six weeks from Penguin; a real laudable project by a classic publisher.

The German author Christoph Benda looked in a different direction. He wrote the interactive book Senghor on the Rocks the German Language. The text of his novel has on every page a Google Map illustration, which shows the location where the story is playing and when the location changes, an animated illustration of the rote is shown. Day and night changes are shown in line with the story line; even the morning maps are lighter than the eevning hours. The online book will contain three volumes, of which the first one comprises no less than 421 pages. The roman has been published under a creative commons license. The background to the story is Senegal and particularly Dakar in 2001. Poet-President Senghor has died in Paris and Senegal awaits the awarding of the Football World Championships.

Blog Posting Number: 1143

Tags: geotagging

BP N 1142 Dutch judge forbids downloading

Every Dutchman who downloads protected songs, movies or software from internet, infringes on the law. That is the ruling of a court in The Hague. It is for the first time that a Dutch judge marked unauthorised downloading of copyright protected material for private use as illegal. The ruling goes against the government’s position of tolerating downloading for private use.

The court case concerned the conflict of blank media levies. In the Netherlands manufacturers of blank media carriers have to compensate rightful artists by paying a levy. In this way artists are still paid for the music which is recorded on the media carriers like CD-ROMs and DVDs. The manufacturers thought that the levy was too high and started a court case against the collecting society Homecopy (Thuiskopie), which distributes the money among the claimants.

However it came as a great shock that the judge expressed himself so explicitly about illegal copying. So far in The Netherlands only uploading unauthorised material was illegal. However downloading concerned the recording of a home copy was tolerated. This has been the position of the government also so far. The court ruling now says that downloading is liable to punishment. However how can this position be consistent with the copying levy? The consumer compensates the artists at source, when purchasing a blank media carrier. And at the moment that music is recorded on the blank media carrier, he is again liable to punishment.

The music recording companies are very happy with the ruling. They can now start prosecuting any downloader. And it will give the piracy watchdog Brein more clout in prosecuting downloader. However the execution of the ruling will be a problem, as the anti piricay officials just can not knock on everyone’s door to check who is busy downloading what. So privacy will be an issue. The piracy watchdog might go to the ISPs to worm data of individual trespassers out of them.

The ruling comes at a moment that the government is studying the collecting societies and the blank levy issue. Also the European Commission is making an inventory of the collecting societies and the blank levy issue. In France the minister of Culture piloted a very strict download law through the ministers’ council. In the UK, British ISPs and music rights holders are engaged in serious negotiations, being pressured by legislators, who have threatened to enact their own measures to resolve massive piracy issues if the industries cannot devise their own solutions.

Blog Posting Number: 1142

Tags: piracy, blank media levy

BPN 1141 Tough talk for telcos by two EU ladies

Lower charges, greater consistency, more competition; that is the matra of the two tough female commissioners of the European Commission, Viviane Reding (photograph left) and the iron lady Neelie Kroes (photograph right). They have asked the Commission to have a round of consultations on bringing down mobile phone tariffs in Europe. In the past years the telcos were forced to bring down costs of telephone calls from abroad. Recently the telcos were asked to bring down the costs of SMS originating from abroad.

Now the Commission, after assessing over 770 regulatory proposals by national regulators over the past 5 years, warned that price regulation of termination markets across Europe lacks consistency. It said that gaps between fixed and mobile termination rates and between mobile termination rates imposed by national regulators cannot be altogether justified by differences in the underlying costs, networks or national characteristics. This could have the following negative effects:
- Legal uncertainty and increased regulatory burden for operators providing cross-border services.
- National regulators bringing down mobile termination rates in their country risk punishing their own mobile industry if a neighbouring regulator still allows higher rates.
- Investment in new networks and services hampered if operators face different regulation in every country.

At present, fixed operators and their customers are indirectly subsidising mobile operators by paying higher termination rates for calls made from fixed lines to mobiles. This cross-subsidisation is estimated at €10 billion in Germany for 1998-2006 (WIK Consult) and €19 billion in the UK, Germany and France for 1998-2002 (CERNA-Warwick-WIK).

The Commission yesterday presented a draft Recommendation for convergence of termination rates in Europe, including clear principles on which cost elements should be taken into account when national telecoms regulators determine termination rates, an efficient costing methodology, and symmetric regulation (where the same price caps apply, within a country, to mobile and fixed operators, respectively). This will help foster an effective regulatory environment and avoid distortions such as cross-subsidies from fixed to mobile consumers. The advice of the European Regulators Group (ERG), which has made several attempts towards more consistent regulation of termination rates since 2006, was taken into account by the Commission in the draft Recommendation and the Explanatory note.

The Commission will issue the final text of the Recommendation on the regulatory treatment of fixed and mobile termination rates in October under article 19 of the Framework Directive of the EU Telecom rules, which allows the Commission to further harmonise the application of EU Telecoms rules in the single market to promote competition and consumer benefits. Member States have to ensure that national regulators take "the utmost account" of Commission Recommendations.

Blog Posting Number: 1141

Tags: telecommunications, mobile termination costs

BPN 1140 Effective Network Competition Freeway to the Future

On June 25, 2008, EU Commissioner Vivianne Reding addressed the annual conference of European Competitive Telecommunications Association (ECTA) in Brussels.

The main messages of her speech were:
* The technological and economic developments paving the way for high-speed broadband networks have the potential to increase competition to the benefit of consumers. But they can also lead to new bottlenecks and re-monopolisation of end user markets.

* A key element in my vision for Next Generation Access (NGA) regulation is to ensure that all parties, entrants or incumbents have sufficient incentives to move in these markets.

* Regulatory restraint as a carte blanche for incumbents to re-monopolise markets where the buds of competition are flourishing is not a policy option if we want competitive markets.

* It is very important that the conditions to invest exist and regulatory certainty is one of those conditions. Today, the regulatory landscape in Europe is unfortunately heavily fragmented in this respect.

* Regulatory guidance by the Commission is therefore required and appropriate in order to foster investments and maintain competition between infrastructure networks and service providers in the broadband area.

* In the forthcoming Commission Recommendation on Next Generation Access, the Commission intends to ensure consistency of regulatory approaches by establishing three principles of NGA regulation for the next 5 years:
First of all, access regulation which has been imposed in the past on dominant network operators will be continued, extended and if necessary reinforced also in case of a switch by the dominant player to a next generation network. Technological change should not, in itself, lead to a change of the regulatory rules in place.
Secondly, we want to encourage investment into next generation access networks by a stable and predictable regulatory environment. We are still discussing the final details of this in the Commission, but I believe that the best way for encouraging long-term investment is to establish a priori a number of principles that national regulators should take into account when regulating access prices with regard to next generation access networks. In my personal view, these should include a risk premium of around 15 per cent.
Thirdly, we must manage the transition from the system of measures applicable to SMP operators [= operators with significant market power] to tomorrow's next generation access measures. We have to recognise that the "ladder of investment" that has brought us to unbundled local loops will in the future have to adapt to the different end-to-end network architecture. Alternative operators will increasingly be given an incentive to roll out their own infrastructure closer to the customer. Or, where this is not feasible, will have to go back to bitstream remedies. In order to manage this transition in a predictable fashion for both SMP operators and alternative network operators, regulators must impose transparency obligations on SMP operators so that they cannot use these 'informational asymmetries' to thwart or delay alternative infrastructure investments or to destroy the competitive potential of alternative players.

EU Commissioner Reding concluded: "A competitive race to invest is the best way to ensure timely investment in next generation networks. I believe such a race to invest can happen even where there is currently only one infrastructure so long as adequate access is given to passive infrastructures. But I also believe that the geographic reach of competing infrastructures is likely to be limited and so access regulation in other forms will need to continue in this case.

Competitive operators have served Europe well in the past and a vibrant, competitive market is what Europe needs if it is to continue to prosper and deliver on its promise".

Blog Posting Number: 1140

Tags: telecommunications, broadband, Next Generation Access

BPN 1139 Creative Campus around the corner

It is next month two years ago that we moved our offices and living apartment to the new town Almere, the sister city of Amsterdam. We have settled in and love it here. People, most of them from another part of The Netherlands, speak rather negatively about the city. The newspaper De Volkskrant last year published a survey saying that Almere was the ugliest city of The Netherlands and Amsterdam the best. Oh well, the majority of respondents were, most likely, Amsterdam singles, who look in the morning at each other’s breakfast table. You do not have to do that in Almere; here is still space (see photograph).

Almere has now some 190.000 inhabitants and should double this number in the coming years. There is space enough for houses and for industry. Business wise Almere is a pushy city. It wants to be in top leagues. So it attracts industries and companies and takes care about the living environment. Almere sells itself as a high-tech city. It has since 1998 the Institute of Information Engineering, specialising in digital life, and has many IT companies and consultancies like Accenture within its municipal borders.

In order to execute high-tech plans Almere has an organisation, Almere Knowledge City, which thinks up projects. There has been a project to streamline the ICT infrastructure of public schools. There is a two year project going on, linking up every company and household to a glass fibre network. By 2010 it should be ready (Our offices are due to be connected by October 2009). And there are many more projects. But most of these projects are technical.

In the creative business field there were some signs of activity. A well known television personality established his studio in Almere in 2006. But now it looks like there will be a great impulse and that just around the corner of our offices! On the business park De Vaart, the Creative Campus has been established by MAC3PARK Businesscenters. The company will transform an enormous plant, formerly owned by a farmaceutical company, into a creative spawning place with international flair. The campus will encompass 50.000 square metres, six soccer fields. And the creative campus has a bright future. Its position with regard to the creative centres of marketing and publishing Amsterdam and broadcasting city Hilversum are only half an hour by car or half an hour by train, when there are traffic jams. But Almere has the also the advantage that it still has space in abundance; and that is something that Amsterdam and Hilversum do have not. Besides a square metre in Almere is cheaper than in Amsterdam or in Hilversum.

From July 1, 2008 the plant will be remodelled for offices, labs, construction and exposition halls. And the first companies have already signed up. Go Crossmedia, a new publisher in social networking, internet marketing with video and audio streaming, Go Facilities and Divi systems, an ICT supplier, will be the first companies to establish themselves at the Creative Campus from September 1 onwards. A spokes person for the GO Crossmedia company said that the companies could have looked for separate buildings. However they expect synergetic effects from being in one building; a foregone conclusion which had already be drawn in cities like Helsinki and Manchester.

Blog Posting Number: 1139

Tags: Northern Wing

FLASH: Last call EUROPRIX entries

Only one week to go to send in your entries for the prestigious multimedia competition EUROPRIX! Please remember the deadline for submissions is June 30 2008! Great prices and unique networking opportunities are waiting for the nominees & winners:
- All-inclusive trips to the Top Talent Festival (November 27-29 2008) in Austria;
- Microsoft/Adobe software;
- EUROPRIX Roadshow and much more!

Please tell your friends and networks now!

To register and for more information please visit: www.europrix.org

BPN 1138 From txt to vids

One of the last speakers at the MPJC 2008, was Marianne Zwagerman of the Dutch media company Telegraaf Media Group with its flagship, the daily newspaper De Telegraaf. She told the story of how a newspaper company was changing into a media company, crossing from traditional media to a hybrid paper/digital media company. It is one of those company stories of conversion from a traditional medium into a digital medium in search for a digital product portfolio, while making money on the traditional media. De Telegraaf is not a small media company, so it is like changing the course a mid range tanker in a small (language) channel. And it is not just simple to say: from analogue to digital, from paper to bits and bytes, from texts and pictures to sound and video.

D Telegraaf Holding has a vast range of traditional publications: 100+ newspaper titles, 4 radio stations, 100+ puzzles and game titles, 12 magazine titles, 20 events. De Telegraaf was an early bird in the field of digital media; yet the turn-over of the digital media is less than 15 per cent of the 800 million euro turn over of the company. Besides these activities De Telegraaf Holding has a substantial share in SBS television company.

While the traditional media still bring in money, the digital media are working their way up. The activities are brought together in a digital division, which has a turn-over target of 15 per cent this year. De Telegraaf has been on internet for 12 years now. In the meantime the digital range has broadened from a simple extension from the printed newspaper to a pdf version to a special classified ads site, Speurders. But the company has also extended to narrowcasting and its subsidiary LibriumTV takes for example care of the McDonald network, the underground stations, Total gaz stations, buses of a particular company and shopping malls. The advantage for De Telegraaf in this activity is the combination of news and advertisement. .

Reigning the digital department is video in general and mobile video in particular. With the narrowcasting (or out-of-home TV) activities, De Telegraaf got into the video business. Now it operates Dumpert, the Dutch YouTube, but under editorial supervision. Dumpert has 550 uploads a month, 2,5 million visitors and 100 million watched videos.

But De Telegraaf also invested in the shockblog Geenstijl.nl and Geenstijl.tv. The reasoning behind this investment is curious. The newspaper De Telegraaf has always set the tone in the public discussion in The Netherlands. With Geenstijl.nl De Telegraaf shapes the talk of the day, showing that we know what make people tick.

For De Telegraaf there are three principles on their road from text and pics to sound and vids: branded media, hybrid business models and journalistic independence.

Blog Posting Number: 1137

Tags: newspaper, narrowcasting

BPN 1137 A social media hub

An interesting presentation during the MPJC 2008 was given by Idse de Pree, one of the three partners in recently formed company The Crowds. All three partners have a television background and all three have been pioneers for their broadcast company: Ids de Pree for the TROS, Wessel de Valk for VARA and Erwin Blom for the VPRO. Now they have started their own company on the basis of social network strategy.

Media have changed over the past years. Some five years ago they have started to move from Media 1.0, existing from purely sending to the TV viewer, to Media 2.0, which consists of sending and responding. But now Media 3.0 is coming up, which means co-operating with the audience. People are already linked through internet and there is an immense amount of knowledge available: 3 billion search assignments every day, 10 hours of new video mounted every minute on YourTube. The New York Times contains more information in one week than in one lifetime in 1800. In the past year no less than 40 exabytes (4 times 10to the 19th) content was produced. This is all quantitative. But also qualitative things are changing. In fact the best information is no longer per se with specialists in companies. In fact some cases are proving that the best information is outside the company. One of the companies is LEGO, which used to have an R&D department of 100 employees, developing 300 designs every year. Now the company has moved the department to internet and has 1 million designers producing 3 million designs. A site like innocentive.com solves 1 out of the three industrial problems with the help of people from other disciplines. Predictify.com has developed a system for predictions, of which the reality level is filtered.

This method is called crowsdsourcing. You use the crowd to solve a problem. And The Crowds is exactly doing that. One of their top projects is the building of a new neighbourhood in the North of the Netherlands. The Crowds will use the audience, existing of potential inhabitants, interested people, students and experts. A planning group will keep the overall direction.

Another project is to use the crowd as a coach for a soccer team. (Perhaps The Dutch Football Association should have used the principle and should have used the collective insight of 16,5 million Dutch soccer coaches. But with the Dutch out of the European Championship is too late.).

Crowdsourcing can be interesting for companies and institutes as it uses bonding with the audience. With the method money can be saved or better spent and products and services can be improved. But the proper approach to the audience/crowd should be used. On most sites there are contact opportunities, mostly to lodge complaints. Or people can send in their reactions to a product or a service, but these reactions are hardly used. This is the repressive tolerance principle, which will not deliver anything. But in sourcecrowding the audience should be tackled in their passion, their experience with a product or a service and in the reputation they can build up.

Blog Posting Number: 1137

Tags: crowdsourcing, collective wisdom

UPDATE: Dutch soccer team out of EC

The Dutch soccer team is out of the European Championships. Last night the team lost after an extension with 3-1 to the Russians, being coaced by Guus Hiddink, another Dutchman. The Dutch will return to normlity. The garlands will disappear. And the consumer electronic shops will notice a slow down in the acquisition of plasma and LCD screens.

BPN 1136 Computer music from 1951

When I got introduced to personal computers, I got a bonus with an introduction to computer music. At Christmas time 1980, I had an Apple IIe, which had a demonstration bundle of music songs, amongst other the songs of Switched-on Bach. I knew the songs as in 1969 I had bought the record with songs performed on a Moog synthesizer. Although I had worked with mini computers before, I had no idea before the personal computer, that computers could be used for making music. Of course I had one excuse; working for a business information publisher, music was not exactly a daily gadget.

Yet there was computer music from early on. So far a historic listing of computer recordings has been established. The honour for the oldest computer machine, rendering music, goes to CSIRAC, Australia's first digital computer, which rendered the Colonel Bogey. But no one has yet unearthed a recording of CSIRAC in action. Until that time the UK can claim to have the oldest recording of computer music. In June 2008 a recording of a computer music rendition has been unveiled in the UK as part of the 60th Anniversary of "Baby" (see illustration), the forerunner of all modern computers. The songs, God saves the queen, Baa Baa Black Sheep and a part of In the Mood, were captured by the BBC in the Autumn of 1951 during a visit to the University of Manchester, which was a hotbed for computing in those days. The tunes were played on a Ferranti Mark 1 computer, a commercial version of the Baby Machine.

The music program is ascribed to Christopher Strachey, a maths master at Harrow, a friend of the computing legend Alan Turing. However there are two versions about the music program. One says that Mr Strachey wrote a program for playing draughts, but which also could be used as a music program playing God Save the King. Others contend this version and say that the program was solely for playing music. Now the recording has been unearthed and is available on internet.

Computer music really established itself from 1957 onwards, when music was made on an IBM mainframe computer at Bell Labs, of which still recordings exist. Making music on computers was not easy as computer music programs typically did not run in real-time. Programs would run for hours or days, on multi-million dollar computers, in order to generate a few minutes of music. It is only in the early 90s, that the performance of microprocessor-based computers reached the point of real-time generation of computer music.

Blog Posting Number: 1136

Tags: computer music, digital heritage

BPN 1135 4K: new genration cinema

I thought that I had a big screen with my 40 inch Sony Bravia HD screen, especially bought for the soccer matches of the Dutch national team. But at the Media Park Annual Conference I saw a demonstration of 4K cinema on a large screen. On the screen movies were projected in the highest available resolution possible at present.

The demonstration was given by CineGrid Nederland, a project by SURFnet, University of Amsterdam and Waag Society. They had organised an enormous 4K projector and proudly introduced the Cinegrid Exchange, a collection computer discs with a capacity of 96 Terabyte. The Dutch Cinegrid Exchange is coupled with already existing Cinegrid Exchanges in the United States and Japan.

The image is larger and very sharp and compare to normal television ten times better and four times better than HDTV. Also the sound is better. The claim of 4K cinema is that it offers new opportunities for visualisation of science projects, in education, but also for cultural and entertainment events. From the first viewing it looked to me that the new opportunities are incremental and not really innovative.

During the demonstration a series of movies was shown. In the series science projects the visualisation of a part of the universe was shown; beautiful due to the resolution. For education a hurricane was visualised, based on scientific data; it looked great, but had the effect to me as the first break-out design of Mitchell Beazley in the seventies. Also the Dutch artist Jaap Drupsteen had produced a graphic animation (see illustration). A cultural movie came from the Holland Festival. Last year the opera Era La Notta was recorded in 4K (see illustration). An impressive movie. But also existing movies are scanned and upgraded for 4K showing. During the demonstration the movie Baraka, a movie containing images of 24 countries from 6 continents was shown (see illustration). At the end a movie was shown by an artist who had drawn a helicopter view of a town. All over the screen, cars are crawling; busses run their course, while bridges over canals are opened for passing boats.

4K cinema has the problem of a big screen, while the audience will have to be in close range. To see the crawling effects of the last movies you have to get very close. So projection for large crowds might be a problem.

All in all, I loved what I saw. Great resolution and beautiful effects. But also the drawback of close viewing. But it remains an incremental innovation, but will not be a substantial leap forwards.

Blog Posting Number: 1135

Tags: 4K cinema,