Below you’ll see some interesting reading material which could be useful one way or the other for our project Images for the Future (and of course other digitization projects). Some of the entries are in Dutch.

August 27th 2008
Kennisland (Knowledgeland) has put together an inventory of social tagging possibilities as an instrument in making photographic collections available. The analysis provides several points of reference by covering both national and international initiatives.  Send us an e-mail (moo@kl.nl) if you like to receive the entire report as PDF (in Dutch).

1. EU investeert 120 miljoen in digitale bibliotheken
2. Cloudspeakers aggregeert legaal materiaal
3. Opening soon: a digital library for Europe
4. ICT-gebruik in musea: digitalisering nog in kinderschoenen
5. Olympische Spelen in Nederland (1928)
6. Media firms find that statistics on internet piracy can be rather useful
7. Alternative film site Raindance.tv raises € 600.000
8. Als het publiek de baas is
9. YouTube-bioscoop selecteert op kwaliteit
10. De virtuele cultuurbezoeker

June 17th 2008
1. ‘Als ik op het bord ga, gaat m’n hart sneller kloppen’
2. Trent Reznor’s Path To Accepting And Embracing New Business Models
3. Eerste cijfers aantal video streams: Q1 2008
4. Topman Microsoft: Papieren krant over 10 jaar verdwenen
5. iTunes opens 700-film UK film download store
6. New copyright agreement provides greater online access to film
7. Eerste onderwijsgame ter wereld als open educational resource
8. Auteursrecht en het recht op informatie verzoend

June 2nd 2008
‘Give It Away And Pray’ Isn’t A Business Model… But It Doesn’t Mean That ‘Free’ Doesn’t Work
Towards Open and Dynamic Archives
Librarians discuss how to store world’s data
New York Times opening APIs to developers: will it catch on in UK?
Microsoft to end Web search program for digitized books
KB wil 8 miljoen krantenpagina’s online zetten
Indie Films, Coming to a Small Screen Near You
Beeld en Geluid presenteert Pro Achive
Thinkbase is a visual navigation and exploration tool for Freebase

May 19th 2008
“Dit is beter dan YouTube”
Music Industry Gurus’ Five Point Plan to Save their Business
Gamers teach search engines how to see
Het jaarverslag van de Stichting DEN
Congress Report “Digital Heritage - Crosslinking together”
Nieuwe ‘persoonlijke’ online tv-gids van start
Vooral jongeren kijken online video’s
Teleblik ook komend schooljaar gratis
Je businessideeën crowdsourcen werkt!

May 2nd 2008
“Grand Theft Auto” simplifies song purchasing
Youtube’s wapen tegen copyright schending
Radiohead Pay-What-You-Want Album, A ‘One Off’
Mininova Heads Towards 5 Billion Downloads
GodTube.com haalt 30 miljoen op
Apple verliest op filmverkopen
Are you a European who watches mobile TV?
Hema komt met Rijksmuseum-items
BBC treedt toe tot OpenID Foundation
Widget Rijksmuseum geheel vernieuwd

April 21st 2008
Auteurswet moet veranderen voor digitale bibliotheek
Samenvatting eindrapportage DE BASIS – Vindbaarheid
Kinderen willen leren via games
Daily iPlayer requests pass half million
High-tech media finding new traction - Complete MIPTV coverage
German VOD market grows with ProSiebenSat.1-Disney deal
New European TV database should draw in film rights owners
Powerhouse Museum joins the Commons on Flickr - the what, why and how
Something Important Is On The Horizon In The Music Business
MySpace To Launch New Music Joint Venture With Big Labels

April 10th 2008
Web 2.0: de stand van zaken
UK landscape shifts as Warner moves to same-day VOD/DVD
Harnessing the knowledge of others through Wiki technology? ‘Your Archives’
Apple falls short of 1,000 movie rentals
Dear Hollywood Studios: Let My Video Go
OpenCollection
De BBC en het onderbuikgevoel bij UGC
Kennisnet omarmt ideeën TNO voor innovatie onderwijs
Ex-KGB video zoek-technology wint PLUGG startup prijs
Rapporten bibliotheekvernieuwing online

March 25th 2008
To be free, information has to be smart
Prijs van MP3 download afhankelijk van populariteit
Portal Beeldmateriaal Geesteswetenschappen
IPTV markt vorig jaar verdubbeld
Paramount in zee met Facebook
Helft Europeanen laat sociale netwerken links liggen

March 10th 2008
Google opens AdSense to web videos
Sharper focus needed on European cultural heritage
Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business
YouTube goes live to take on TV
Digitale kiosk biedt speelfilms
UK web users demand online distribution - but only for free
Eyespot Attacks LongTail of Video Ads and Mashup Content
BBC iPlayer comes to the iPhone

February 26th 2008
Entertainmentbedrijven spelen in op veranderende consumptie
Video-on-demand - Right here, right now
Open Television Network
Canadese songschrijvers willen downloadbelasting
BBC verkoopt programma’s via iTunes
Onderzoek Dialogic: “Wat doet en wil de breedbandgebruiker?”
European archives release vintage films online
Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) makes popular series available DRM-free via BitTorrent

January 28th 2008
BBC zendt uit op Myspace
BBC Three to start web simulcast
Library of Congress Photos on Flickr
Canon met onbekende filmbeelden
BOM-VL start met het digitaliseren van audiovisueel erfgoed in Vlaanderen
Nationaal Archief: Pilot Bronnenbox online
Pioneering research shows ‘Google Generation’ is a myth
Aboriginal archive offers new DRM
Met dank aan de downloaders

December 13th 2007
De nieuwste leerboeken staan online
European Digital Library Foundation welcomed by the Commissioner
Koninklijke Bibliotheek wil oude boeken kapot snijden
Nielsen in digitale watermerken
BT zoekt nieuwe bedrijfsmodellen digitale televisie
Catalogus Beeld en Geluid verbeterd en uitgebreid
Progress on license interoperability with Wikipedia
France leads crackdown to end illegal file sharing
Live web video: de nieuwe standaard voor webcommunicatie?
Digitisation contract between Boston Public Library and Internet Archive

Last week a report outlining the economic importance of the film industry in Holland was officially presented to government representative Boris van der Ham. The report, commissioned by Filmwereld , an association of filmmakers, theaters, rental stores and other distribution channels, shows a clear but grim picture: in 2005 the film industry lost over 10% (82 million Euro) in revenue through illegally downloaded films. With the report, the association asks for governmental support to help fight the infringement of copyrights. While downloading films is not a crime in Holland, uploading is. Most P2P networks work on the principle that you have to open up your computer for uploading if you want to download, effectively making you a willful accomplice. The Dutch government has alreeds indicated in November that it shares the indicated concerns and that it will investigate the matter (see article in NRC).

While the claims on copyright infringements are legitimate, the whole debate brings back memories of what happened in the music industry, no more than a couple of years ago. A similar sales pattern indicated a clear change in the habbits of consumers. But instead of taking this change for a fact and adapting to this new reality, captains of industry nervously checked their balance sheets and focussed all their attention on legal actions. What followed is history. Traditional powerhouses lost their dominant positions while new players came up with legal alternatives that worked. By july this year Apple announced it had sold more than 3 billion songs, or an average of 87 thousand an hour since it opened in 2003. Granted, this development has not been able to put a complete halt to declining sales in the music industry and illegal downloading and sharing of music still exists. but the point is, there is a legal alternative that allows more music to be available to more people than ever before.

Improved bandwidth is now opening up doors to a similar situation in the film industry. I can find practical any film I want for free on the internet and I can watch it the same evening, if I have the stamina to endure the lousy audio quality, Spanish subtitles and my guilty consciousness…

So instead of focusing our attention exclusively on the illegal side of downloading we should applaud the fact that there is so much demand for the material and provide this hungry audience with some decent legal alternatives. Of course Itunes will be a big player on the VOD scene and so will others that cater blockbusters to large audiences. It will be harder to find distributors of arthouse films that can only exist at the very end of the Long Tail. Nevertheless there are interesting experiments going on that we will watch closely like the Spanish endeavor Filmotech. This VOD site brings spanish film affectionados high quality film through a platform operated by the spanish filmproducers themselves. The Norwegian Film Institute already launched it’s VOD outlet www.filmakivet.no in the fall of 2004. It’s mission is to ‘preserve, make available, and promote Norwegian films’ through the creation of a high quality distribution channel.

So yes, as content providers we should protect the rights of the creator and enforce our copyright laws. But it is in their best interest as well that we should provide serious alternatives to illegal downloading. And the alternative is to provide the highest quality formats in an easy to use environment with lots of added value services such as recommenders and ratings. I for one would be very happy to pay say 4 euro to be able to watch Cidade de Deus in a decent 2k version with readable english subtitles.

Images for the Future has a broader context – all over the world major digitisation projects are creating large-scale online heritage resources. The European Commission acknowledges the magnificent value these resources have if this wealth of material in Europe’s libraries, museums and (audiovisual) archives would be accessible to all.

Since a few years, the European Commission is supporting various initiatives that help realising this vision, dubbed ‘the European Digital Library’. These include research oriented projects such as MultiMatch, projects focussing on providing access such as Video Active and best practice networks on a specific topic, such as COMMUNIA. Knowledge exchange between projects is stimulated by coordination actions like CHORUS.

Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 Generic
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tantek/

Until now, these efforts did not result in one single access point to collections across different domains. The heterogeneous nature of heritage (covering different languages, held by different organisations with their own standards for digitisation and annotation etc.) is the major obstacle. To meet user demands and in order to provide the complete picture, the access point should therefore provide solutions that provide for syntactic, semantic and linguistic interoperability between collections and objects. Needless to say: this is an extremely complex task. Therefore, expectations are high for the EDLnet, the recently launched initiative that tries to overcome exactly these obstacles and create the envisioned single window to the collections and objects. The press release states:

“The project – the European Digital Library network (EDLnet) – runs for two years, and will develop a prototype that demonstrates proof of concept, bringing together content from some of Europe’s major cultural organisations.
The project will be run by The European Library together with the National Library of the Netherlands. The project will look at the political, human, technical and semantic issues that will contribute to the creation of an interoperable system able to access fully digitised content. It will invite feedback from different types of users in order to create a service that enriches the widest public and answers the needs of researchers, students, teachers and the creative industries.”

Through Sound and Vision, Images for the Future is well represented in this network and contributes actively the workpackages around which the activities are organised. Representatives of the Video Active project participate in the workpackages on User Requirements and Interoperability, whilst mr. Edwin van Huis (general director of Sound and Vision and president of the International Federation of Television Archives) has a seat in the Executive Board of the EDL Foundation, the body that has been established to govern the further development of the European Digital Library.

I will– after this introduction – continue to report on the developments within this exiting initiative. Already, trough portals like Video Active, Images for the Future is making sure that we fully comply with the standards defined by the EDL Net. The content we offer online will be a great addition to the collections of others, the real power is enclosed in the relations that can be created between objects from different organisations; contextualisation on a pan European scale in the making!

(Johan Oomen is policy advisor at the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision. Contact: joomen[at]beeldengeluid.nl)