The Participative Web of Produsage: The View from the OECD

Brisbane.
The post-lunch sessions on this last day of the CCi conference take a somewhat more legal angle. The keynote speaker here is Graham Vickery from the OECD, which has just published a set of high-level recommendations related to making public sector information more publicly accessible, as appropriate to the emerging participative Web environment. The OECD is interested in the economic framework for this new environment (for example, online games, music, publishing, film, video, advertising, and news distribution) in order to identify what aspects (of value chains, business models, etc.) are shared across these environments.

The participative Web, as the OECD defines, it is enabled by new Web services, readily available software, and high-speed broadband, and encompasses the development and customisation of content, the commercial and non-commercial use of the collective intelligence of Internet users, and the contribution by users to developing, rating, collaborating on, and distributing Internet content, as well as to interacting with others. (This participative Web can also be harnessed in developing new government policies, and for distributing givernment information.) User-created content, in the OECD definition (which is narrower than in the commonsense use of the term), has been published by users, constitutes a creative effort by users, and has emerged from outside of professional practices (and outside of an institutional or commercial market context).

In this environment, then, value chains are changing and new business models for user-created content have emerged. User content creation (or what I would call produsage) platforms are accessed (often for pay) through ISPs or mobile providers, using digital devices and softwares, by participating users, but there is only limited readiness by users to pay for access to the platforms themselves, or for the content available on them. Standard ways to extract revenue (fees, also advertising) are disappearing, therefore. Users are pushing back content to the platform, rather than having content pushed to them - this has also led to the emergence of a number of popular artists on and from these platforms.

So, what new business models are possible here? Five models have been identified by the OECD: voluntary contributions based on giving away content (as attempted by Radiohead - this can also be used to promote other commercial elements, such as live concerts); charging viewers for user-created content services (pay per item or content subscriptions, including bundling with ISP and other network access fees); advertising-based services; licencing of content for reuse by third parties; and selling other, additional goods and services online (as it happens in Second Life, for example). A more fundamental issue emerges in all of this, of course - how are the actual content-creating users remunerated (through revenue sharing, content payment, or other options) - and who ultimately owns the intellectual property that is created in the process?

There are some clear economic impacts of user-created content already. Consumer electronics and ICT goods sales are being boosted significantly by the shift towards user-led content creation, as are sales by software producers and ISPs and Web portals; benefits to produsage platforms and sites themselves are less clear at this point, as are benefits to users and creators themselves - some sites remunerate content creators, and search engines and other portals highlight their work, creating social capital, but this may also have a deleterious effect on professional content creators. How user-led content creation may eventually affect advertising, marketing, and brands also remains unclear.

Additionally, there are social impacts as well, of course - impact on information production as media production and interaction with media suppliers is democratised, and as value is produced outside of the conventional commercial marketplace (in purely non-market or hybrid market/non-market environments); impacts on culture; impacts on citizen engagement, policy, and politics; impact on education and information use; impact on ICT and other skills; and impact on social structures.

This raises various issues for business and policy, then. There are new models to foster creativity, R&D, and innovation, and a need to create a pro-innovation business environment to make use of them - public broadcasters, governments, and other public bodies are particularly required to show initiative here. It is necessary to develop a competitive, non-discriminatory framework for the creation, distribution, and access of content, and this also involves enhancing infrastructures. The business and regulatory environment is also important - there is a need to ensure a viable long-term Internet environment, to define the boundaries of legitimate use, to reexamine intellectual property rights, to ensure information and content quality, to uphold freedom of expression, and to highlight and distinguish between mature and illegal content. Virtual property rights and taxation also need to be addressed. Governments themselves are also producers and users of content, of course (and therefore need to engage with the emerging other users and producers in the participative Web space), and are involved in establishing content classifications and tracking user and content statistics - so far, a badly underserved area in this context.

Technorati : CCi 2008, OECD, business, intellectual property, policy, produsage, public sector information, user-created content
Del.icio.us : CCi 2008, OECD, business, intellectual property, policy, produsage, public sector information, user-created content