Digital Media and the, ahem, Business Model of the Future

Nicholas Sheppard

I worked for some years as a researcher in copyright protection technology, though my funding has long ended and I've since moved on. Digital copyright issues probably don't generate quite the fuss they did back in the hey-day of Napster, and this year I discovered that the ACM Workshop on Digital Rights Management — where I think some of the most interesting work in this field was presented back in its own hey-day — is no longer on the calendar. Does this subsidence indicate that issues of copyright and digital media have now been settled to everyone's satisfaction, or just that my former co-travellers in digital media and security have gone off to write about more current headlines, like Facebook's privacy policy?

One recommendation that I heard over and over again is the one that the music industry must combat infringement of its copyrights by "getting new business models." Ironically, perhaps, one of the original hopes for rights management technology was that it would enable new business models based on paradigms other than the exchange of physical copies, not usher in an era of confusing and inconvenient rules of use.

Retailers have, in fact, tried a number of different business models — possibly more than critics give them credit for — including subscription services like Rhapsody, ad-supported services like Spotify, "viral" services like PotatoSystem, and bundled-with-device services like Nokia's Comes with Music (now largely defunct). Well-known bands Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead even tried giving their music away for free or in return for a donation, though neither of them is doing it any longer.

By all accounts, though, the most successful retailer of digital music is Apple's iTunes, which charges a one-off fee for a recording to be kept and played as often as the buyer likes. Sounds rather like the old business model to me.

Might it be that music listeners — or the ones willing to pay for the pleasure, at least — are not as interested in new business models as would-be copyright reformers thought they would be? And did we go through all of that Napster-inspired anguish only to find ourselves doing exactly the same thing as before?

Not quite, obviously, since Rhapsody, Spotify and others do have customers — even if it's not so many as iTunes — and there may be factors other than business models contributing to iTunes' success. One certainly hopes that we've learned a thing or two from the experience.

The video industry, intially protected from file-sharing networks by the time it took to download a video around the turn of the century, is one that has had chance to learn from the experience of the music industry. The trend for copyright protection technology here has been towards so-called "rights locker" services like the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem's Ultraviolet and Disney's KeyChest, along with infringement-detection systems like YouTube's Content ID, rather than the copy-prevention technology that the software and music industries experimented with in times past.

A rights locker is, in essence, an Internet database that records a buyer's right to use a song, video or book. When the buyer wants to access the item, his or her device checks with the locker that its user has, indeed, purchased the right to use it. If well-designed and -implemented, rights lockers might eliminate some of the inconveniences that customers experienced with copy-prevention technologies, including incompatability, an inability to format-shift, and an inability to make back-ups. They also seem to fit nicely with the pay-once-for-eternal-usage model that we have become accustomed to.

Rights lockers, however, don't actually work very much like the books, CDs and DVDs that got us used to the pay-once model in the first place. Since the right to use something is governed by a record in a database rather than possession of a physical copy, it looks more like an "access right" than a "copy right".

How much does this matter? It certainly matters to lawyers, for whom an "access right" and a "copy right" could be quite different things (see Marcella Favale's analysis of EU law for a recent example). But will the average user continue to think that he or she owns something, even if it is an entry in a database rather than a physical book, CD or DVD? Or will the user get used to the idea that "this work is licensed, not sold", in the words of many a software agreement? And, if the latter, will he or she be more likely to explore alternative business models?

A Universe of Data is Not Enough

Colin Picker

Humans have always recorded information (or data). From early cave drawings to Edison’s phonograph cylinders to the photos and music on I-phones, data recordation and storage seems to be a human attribute. But today we live in furious period of data storage. That data today includes pictures, video, music, documents and records of almost every type of human activity and thought (though, a very large percentage is, as has always been the case, pornographic – there are even pornographic cave paintings).

Today that information is increasingly stored at the electronic level. In the future we can expect almost all data to be stored electronically, and even sub-atomically (utilising the smallest constituent parts of the universe). While occasionally we record over past recordings, we more and more produce data that will be archived, eventually producing archives that will be able to last forever—or at least until the end of the universe (assuming there will be such an end, more on that below). As our technological needs increase, more and more data is needed, more and more is therefore going to be stored. But, is there an upper limit to the amount of data that can be stored? I don’t mean the limit on a hard drive, or a very large data storage array. I wonder whether there is a theoretical limit imposed by the very nature of the universe.

I first started to think about such an upper limit when considering the non-existence of infinity (more on that later, though admittedly an unusual thought experiment for a law academic). In any event, my ruminations took me to a place and time where we, humanity, had already moved to store our data at the quantum level, utilising the smallest sub-atomic components to represent the zeros and ones of data (assuming the correctness of quantum limitations). One quark, or whatever will at that time be the smallest unit, would represent one piece of data; another quark, or its specific absence (a non-quark), would represent another piece of data. But, if the universe is finite in size and composition, then there are a finite number of quarks available for use from the existing matter of the universe—including that used in the memory portion of our brains and that which can be converted from the various forms of energy in the universe. There is therefore a finite amount of data that can be stored on that finite number of quarks. True, utilization of that large capacity is a long way off, but it is, critically, a finite long way off. Furthermore, once imagined, it then exists—and that limitation has some very significant metaphysical consequences.

One consequence ties in with my original concern about infinity. One way to consider numbers is that they only exist if they can be represented (in our memory, on paper, as data, as cave drawings, etc). But if there is a data limit on the total representations of numbers, then there is a limit on those numbers. In other words, there is a finite number of numbers that can be expressed, and hence that can exist, a number limited by the data storage capacity of the universe. True, it is a large number, but it is a finitely large number. In other words: not infinite.

But back to the data storage issue. Perhaps the most important consequence is that eventually, when we do hit that data storage capacity, all new knowledge has to displace some of the previously recorded knowledge. Thus, while the composition of that knowledge may change, it can never exceed the total finite storage space. Once replaced, the data will then be lost forever (assuming no duplication, which we should assume, for until we have eliminated all excess duplications there really is no storage problem). While much that will be lost at first will be inane, eventually all the inane and frivolous pieces of data and knowledge will have been deleted to make way for more serious and important information. What happens then? We will need to be careful about the creation of new data (including new memories), for it will then require us to make hard choices about what other data must be erased to make room for the new data.

So, every time you download an “app”, create a new document, take a photo on your camera and then download them to your hard drive or into some data cloud or other, you are hastening the day when we run out of data, and hence limit our collective collection of new knowledge. Maybe, like fossil fuel conservation, we need to start thinking about data conservation – not for us, but for our children. A good start would be to delete this comment from your computer and then to forget all about it.

Living with our heads in the Cloud

Hadeel Al-Alosi

Technology has led to rapid advancements in our society.  While reading this, many of us will probably be scrolling through a Facebook page or flicking through an iPhone.  Much of the data we are accessing may well be stored in the Cloud.

At its broadest level, cloud computing is the provision of computing resources as a service over a network, usually, the Internet. Cloud computing services have been made available for a number of years, including by well-known organisations such as Google, Microsoft and Hotmail.  These services allow consumers to access data and applications without having to install or store these on their personal computers.

The personal cloud promises many benefits. It allows you to manage all of your PC and mobile devices, and to have every piece of data you need at your fingertips, so that you can share your information with friends, family and colleagues in an instant.

But before becoming over-excited by all the benefits that cloud computing promises to deliver, there are important issues to consider.

Theft and loss of data: should cloud service providers be bound by some minimum security standards that ensure personal information is not lost or stolen? Should service providers be able to limit their liability contractually for lost or stolen data? What if the service provider is forced to close down due to financial or legal problems, which causes customers to lose their data? Who should be responsible in having back-up and recovery processes in place?

Data location: the fact that data is stored by a cloud provider, which may be located overseas, means that individuals and businesses have less control over their data. Users should be questioning who is actually holding their data and where it is being located. With the growth in reliance by Australians on cloud computing services, it may be worth choosing a provider based in Australia. This would reduce risks in storing data with overseas providers, which may be in countries that have inadequate privacy laws or are prone to natural disasters.

Privacy issues: there are endless privacy issues raised by cloud computing, such as who will have access to your data and whether (and which) privacy laws will apply. Are there circumstances that justify the disclosure of data (for example, to aid law enforcement)? Also, what happens to data once a contract with a cloud service provider is terminated? For example, Google Docs states that it “permanently deletes” data from its system. However, it also warns that “residual copies of your files and other information may remain in our services for three weeks”.

Most individuals and some businesses overlook these important issues. As is often the case with e-commerce transactions, many people blindly click on the “I agree” button when signing up for services without reading the terms and conditions provided. We tend to think more about these issues when something goes wrong. For example, when someone's Facebook account has been hacked into by a revengeful ex-partner, or when precious data has been lost.

As to the future of cloud computing services, I think it is timely that we generate some solutions to these problems. Perhaps, somewhere over the rainbow, we can find solutions that allow us to reap the benefits of the cloud, while ensuring we are protected from all external threats.

So, what do you think? – is cloud computing a threat or an opportunity?