Editor's View

Data control

Platform: Internet | Author: Justin Pearse | Source: nma.co.uk | Published: 04.07.08

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What's more secure, a latop or an 'over-the-shelf' hard drive? That may be the question the over 100m people who's YouTube viewing details a US judge had ordered to be handed over - in an 'over the shelf hard drive - to Viacom may be asking today. The long running battle between YouTube parent Google and Viacom climaxed yesterday in the court ruling demanding the search engine giant pass to MTV and Nickelodeon entertainment company...

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... the consumption habits of millions of avid YouTube viewers. The details, which include IP addresses and email accounts, will be delivered to Google in what the judge described as the aforementioned hard drives.

The ruling throws up myriad questions. Most obvious is the privacy issue. The privacy lobby has rightly jumped on the threat to personal privacy such a potential data invasion threatens. After all, the UK has spent most of this year reeling from the careless loss of personal data from government departments losing laptops on trains and CDs in the post.

More important I think is the precedent this sets for internet companies relying on user-generated content. Viacom has gone after Google because it believes the millions the company is raking in, or plans to, from advertising around YouTube content is largely derived thanks to the popularity of its, illegally uploaded, content. When copyright content from top-rated TV shows regularly appears in 'most viewed' listings on YouTube it's easy to understand its point of view.

The defence that this is merely 'clips' that benefit the rights owner by acting as a marketing vehicle, is getting harder to swallow as rights owners increasingly get their own video-on-demand houses in order. Witness, in the US, the NBC/FOX initiative Hulu, cashing in on exactly the sort of content Viacom believes YouTube is using to generate ad bucks. The ramifications of this ruling will play out over the next few weeks but it should act as warning bell for companies still believing they can shrug off responsibility for their users' behaviour.

Quick response - 19.06.08

Everyday I get the tube to work. Most days I read a newspaper or magazine featuring something I'd like to buy, a book or a new album. Most days I get off the tube and forget all about it. For years I've though the ability to buy the product I was reading about on the spot over my mobile would be incredibly useful. Sadly, like mobile commerce in general, this never really took off.

A survey out today from Unisys points to one possible reason why. It surveyed over 13,000 people across the world and found over two-thirds wouldn't consider using their phone to bank or shop online. The UK topped the table of m-commerce apathy, with just 1% using a mobile to conduct financial transactions. The main fears were over security.

Which is, of course, complete rubbish.

Mobile transasctions are as secure as online and far, far more secure than handing your card number over the phone or to a waiter, something millions do happily everyday.

Lack of early m-commerce takeup has stymied further development. An upcoming NMA feature finds blue chip retailers with m-commerce propositions very thin on the ground.

Yet at the Mobile Retail conference two weeks ago, for which NMA was a media partner, over 250 people turned up. So the interest is clearly high. What's needed now is for this interest to be turned into action to revitalise a market that once held so much promise.

Mobile commerce will work eventually. I will be able to order my new album on my way to work eventually. But big brand retailers are going to have to do a lot of consumer education first to convince them this new, safe, efficient shopping platform is open for business.

BBC drives web TV - 05.06.08

There's been much discussion in the NMA office today over the significance of the BBC's announcement that BBC One is to be simulcasted - simultaneously broadcast online and on TV.

The BBC has already done this with BBC Three and the News Channel and it's an obvious next step to extend this to its flagship channel. So for those of us in the industry, it's hardly surprising.

However, I think it does mark a watershed moment in the development of internet TV.

We've already seen the huge impact the iPlayer has had on the UK public's willingness to view the internet as a natural environment to watch TV.

Last month the Corporation announced iPlayer had received more than 75m requests to stream or download BBC programmes via the iPlayer since its launch. This equated to 21m requests for downloads and streams of BBC programmes in April up from 17.2m in March. Even ITV came out to praise the iPlayer for driving online video in general and therefore its ITV.com online service.

While there may be ongoing concern over the impact of the BBC's services on the commercial sector - such as last week's outrageous revelation by the BBC Trust that BBC.co.uk had overspent its budget by 48% - there's no denying the hugely positive impact on consumer behaviour the BBC can have. Joost, Babelgum et al may be extremely innovative, but sadly they're still trapped in the early adopter heartland.

That's why I believe the BBC One simulcast move to be so important. If the general public is already taking to downloading catch-up content in its droves via iPlayer - and less so via 4oD and ITV.com - the launch of one of the world's most iconic channels online is surely going to be one of the final tipping points of internet TV.

Poor support - 22.05.08

When the Byron Review into child safety online came out in March, our main criticism was that it contained nothing much that wasn't already being widely practiced by the digital industry and was merely another example of the headline-grabbing approach to the internet by the Labour government.

This week came another shining example of this.

TV psychologist Tanya Byron had called for a rating system for gaming content based on British Board of Film Classification labels. It turned out this week that the BBFC has spent the past 18 months, in close consultation with the industry, been developing a voluntary online ratings system for digital downloads and video games.

Once again an illustration both that the self-regulatory approach underpinning online media works and of how far the internet has become a mainstream media far removed from its Wild West and Daily Mail bating roots.

The interesting thing here is how little of an impact this is likely to have. Studios like Warner Bros and 20th Century Fox have signed up already and why wouldn't they? They, like all mainstream media companies, no longer distinguish between on and offline as a media for their customers' consumption of their product.

More than this, pure online content, such as MySpace's Beyond the Rave series, in association with Hammer Films, is already controlled by age verification. Even Channel 4 has restricted its online Skins content to over 16s.

When even hardcore online porn outfits like Strictly Broadband are sending out press releases welcoming the BBFC's move you realise how far the online industry has come in its striving to become a mainstream media.

Shame the government still doesn't seem to realise this. On the one hand you have 18 months of hard work behind the scenes hammering out the BBFC scheme. On the other you have the government-commissioned Byron Review three months previously calling for exactly the same the same thing. Is it any wonder our first survey of the digital media industry, in association with YouGov Centaur, found only 31% believing the government supports it.

Full circle - 08.05.08

It wasn't so long ago that a two-screen view of 'interactive TV' was all the rage. Rather than the red button interactivity we all grew to love and then rapidly abandoned when its functional shortcomings were thrown into such stark relief, two-screen meant a combination of TV and PC.

As most things seem to do in the digital world, we've come full circle. An innovation that failed due to the lack of supporting technology and consumer behaviour foundations is finding its feet.

With the mainstream penetration of Wi-Fi connected laptops, vegging out in front of the TV has become slightly more active as people take to their surfboards. In NMA this week research from the IAB and Thinkbox finds 64% of people use the internet while watching TV. While we discuss in this Friday's NMA Podcast, what this means for brands, the rebirth of two-screen should also have a potentially positive impact for broadcasters.

While red button interactivity on programmes has all but disappeared, with the undeniably superb Spooks the only real standout in the interactive category of the recent Baftas for instance, the use of two-screen interactivity should open new creative vistas for broadcasters and production companies. Twin-screen behaviour is now the norm for consumers. It's time for it to become so for the TV industry.

Mixed messages - 04.04.08

Parents around the world breathed a sigh of relief today as paedophiles were finally banned from MySpace and its social networking cousins. Days after government-funded watchdog Ofcom terrified parents with its report on their children roaming unprotected across social network sites, the Home Office today stepped in to reassure with its watertight new policy. The proposals will see convicted sex offender's email addresses passed to social sites, which will block their access.

Well that's okay then. Except, of course, it's far from okay.

Sex offenders have become incredibly adept at using the internet. The complexity and expense, and therefore success, of Operation Ore, is testament to that. Does anyone really believe registering a new email address will be beyond them?

It's easy to knock the government's approach to the internet but the mixed messages being given out are doing nothing but harm.

The mainstream media, from which the majority of the UK is educated about the internet, this morning unquestioningly regurgitated the Home Office release verbatim, under headlines such as 'MySpace ban for paedophiles'. What parents need, in fact what the government itself recommended via the Byron Review this week, is to be provided with the right information and tools to be able to protect their children while online.

Our first industry survey, in association with YouGovCentaur, the first results of which were published in NMA this week, found only 33% believing the government's strategy for child-friendly online content was clear. On recent evidence, I can't see this changing dramatically anytime soon.

Online childcare - 27.03.08

Today the long awaited, well long expected anyway, Byron Review into child safety online was revealed. Unsurprisingly, the buzz words of kids, online and danger ensured widespread coverage and a loud welcome from everyone from charities to Google. But, really, is there anything more in this than the repackaged beliefs and recommendations our industry has been expressing for years?

There is almost nothing in the report that's not already widely being practiced by the industry. The online industry holds the safety of children as paramount. All major websites have solid and largely effective child safety polices. ISPs do already heavily promote parental access control software the report calls on them to do, often giving it away for free.

The report calls for the ad industry to work with online media owners on the CAP Code for under 18s. It's hard to see, with the efforts of such as the Advertising Association's Digital Media Group, how the industry could be doing more.

There is of course no argument that more can always be done to ensure children's safety online. But the Byron review smacks merely as just another example of this government's headline-grabbing approach to the internet.

In an exclusive survey of the internet industry carried out by NMA in association with YouGov, to be published in two weeks, only 18% expressed confidence in the government's ability to legislate around children online.

Which makes me think perhaps Brown's government should rely a bit less on celebrity psychologists and a bit more on consultation with the actual industry. With perhaps a dash more congratulation on the impressive amount it has already achieved.

Rights issues cloud launch of BBC iPlayer - 09.01.08

The BBC's iPlayer has been universally applauded by consumers and critics alike. The ability of being able to catch up on the past seven days programming for free hasbeen enthusiastically taken up by viewers and its success could, as always with the BBC, play an important role in riving the market.

However, an anomaly that's arisen today highlights the remaining complexity of catch-up video-on-demand services. A complexity driven entirely by the tortuous rights processes involved.

The BBC's new legal drama Damages launched on BBC 1 on Sunday and was available through iPlayer. From Monday however, it disappeared. Viewers desperate to catch the episode they missed would though have been able to find it on Apple's iTunes. Although the first episode is free, future episodes will sell for £1.89. So it seems the BBC was unable to secure rights for iPlayer, with Sony Pictures, which owns the series, which struck a commercial deal with Apple instead.

BBC viewers currently being simultaneously bombarded with ads for free seven day catchup on iPlayer and ads for shiny new Sunday night drama Damages are going to be very confused.

If the BBC, which has for so long trumpeted the need and importance of 360 degree commissioning, can't pull it off, it's not the most heartening of news for the industry at large.

Tighten up online security - 03.01.08

Two of last year's biggest internet story themes surrounded social networks and online identity theft. Today the BBC is reporting predictions from security experts that the two will combine this year in explosive fashion as internet criminals turn to social networks like Facebook as a fertile hunting ground.

This unsurprising prediction highlights two separate arguments. First, it seems to support the idea behind Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg's lofty ambition for Facebook to become the 'social operating system of the internet'. Why trawl the wider web for personal information when consumers are increasingly centring their personal social behaviour on these sites?

Second, the news highlights once again the critical role self-regulation, responsibility and education has to play in the development of social networks. With privacy and personal data protection set to become an increasingly emotive issue in 2008, social networks need to ensure they take a continuingly proactive rather than reactive stance. Government, regulators and perhaps most importantly consumers will be watching closely.