Access versus Control: DVR, eBooks & Online Reporting

25 September 2009 :: J.E. Robertson

DVR is an increasingly popular consumer-oriented technology which simultaneously liberates viewers from strict TV viewing schedules and also imposes new constraints on recording freedoms (including sharing). DVR is a concession by content providers, advertisers and infrastructure (connectivity) providers, to the advantages of digital technology, and to the common individual demand for more freedom to control when information (content) is accessed. And the technology is framing a new logistics of consumer access and corporate control.

When DVR allows one to rewind only that which is being viewed (because the program in question was not pre-recorded), then cuts off the rewind and saved material if the channel is switched, deliberately or accidentally, the viewer experiences this feature of DVR technology as punitive. The viewer is punished for not correctly interfacing with the efficiency-oriented technology, which is provided by entities that prefer the programming be viewed in the allotted time-slot and not recorded or viewed later.

This type of control flies in the face of what consumers expect to get from such digitally enhanced technologies. There are competing views on the salient function of digital content delivery: that it is designed to liberate content, and thus the end-user’s access to informatioon, or to control it, and thus dictate or pre-determine the end-user’s freedom of access.

Even now, late as they are catching on, ebooks are being treated by some as a means by which to charge per chapter, per page, per word, or even per viewing “session”. Major multinational corporations, like Google, are digitizing massive amounts of text, from throughout history, in the hopes of being able to build a business model around access to digital text. Google wants to deliver a free service, but it wants to profit from that service as well, likely by advertising or by commercial tie-ins — online books sales and the like.

Microsoft was beginning to initiate its approach to digitized text, ebooks, and digital text-reading devices, before the year 2000, and its plans counted on being able to “own” or “control”, with full licensing rights, 90% of all text ever produced throughout history, within 50 years. It foresaw a world in which hot new content might be worth hundreds of dollars, or where one would pay a penny per word, or pay a unit-cost every time a given portion of text was called up and accessed.

Google’s digitalization plans and licensing agreements may preclude that dystopian world of wholly owned and controlled textual content… or it may help bring it into being. So, there is an effort to prevent Google’s gaining too vast an influence over textual content. The web, we know, operates on the principle that content is free, and netizens are passionate and quick to form flash protest movements, beyond borders, when such freedoms are threatened.

But the tension between access and control is not going away. The Associated Press (AP) —which exists in part to foster the free flow of reliable information around the world, to counter repressive environments of censorship, public or private, and to make sure reporters doing that work have a viable means of professional empowerment, that they are rewarded— has declared it will charge for content to the extreme of banning unpaid quoting.

The policy will likely find its way into the federal court system in the United States, as copyright laws allow for the use of information from news sources, once the information is published. The rule of thumb in digital publishing has normally been that if words are quoted for informational purposes, the quote is justifiable, so long as the original source is cited. In most cases, digital publishers and reporters go as far as to link back to the original source.

The AP has been criticized by freedom of information advocates for hypocrisy. Its online business has grown exponentially through viral quotes and linking, but it now demands that no one, anywhere on earth, not even for educational purposes, quote five or more words without paying the AP for the right to do so.

The problem of protecting the earning rights of AP reporters is understandable. The news organization has to be able to profit from publishing its material, which is harder to do if whole stories are quoted and reposted free of charge. But the AP’s response to this problem might pose the most serious threat to the free flow of information seen since the Internet went global.

The problem with such attempts to clamp down on and control the user’s access to information is that, although digital technology enables such efforts, the overarching trend, and the real purpose of digital technology, is to liberate content and grant increased access to the end-user.

Digital text should not be harder to pick up and put down, free of punitive charges and pop-up ads (including “display ads”) than would be printed text… any such blockages run counter to the liberational logic of digital technology.

Similarly, digital video might be constrained by ads that block access to viewing, but should move ever more in the direction of the freedom of return access afforded by the printed word or printed still images. The problem facing digital content providers, then, is how to secure a revenue stream in connection with allowing that enhanced access to information, the way newspaper and book publishers do.

This is not a small problem, but the quality of the answer will determine the resilience of any digital content enterprise and the level of freedom of access enjoyed by the end-user broadly, across the landscape of digital publishing. Is there an ethical obligation not to set back the progress toward increased freedom of access? Maybe. But failure to participate in that logic of liberation will set back a business’ prospects over the long term.

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