HTML5 jumps into mobile gaming with SPIL Games
One of the world’s largest casual gaming companies today unveiled HTML5 versions of 47 of its games websites, proclaiming that it will be the new standard for gaming devices within three years.
SPIL Games has thrown its considerable weight behind HTML5 and the upward trend in casual gaming, with users now able to play its games on mobile browsers supporting HTML5 (ruling out devices running Android pre-2.0).
Previously, mobile visitors would have been taken to the full browser window displayed in Flash – but that would be slow to render with most phone browsers, and incompatible with Apple devices.
But close to a million mobile users try accessing a SPIL gaming website every month, a company spokesman tells us. More than half (52%) of these visits are from Apple devices, 15% from Android, 15% from Symbian (ie Nokia and/or Sony Ericcson) and 6% from BlackBerry devices.
The company, which currently has more than 4,000 games in its portfolio, is offering developers prizes totalling up to ,000 (£41,000) for the best HTML5 game, encouraging the potential it says is “hampered by different protocols, operating systems, and platform-approval processes within the mobile world”.
An aside: Nick Jones, Gartner analyst, has an interesting take on that very subject:
“Native platforms will certainly become less important relative to the web platform because HTML5 supports a wider range of applications than the last-generation web.“But native platforms can stay ahead by evolving faster than HTML5, and in different directions to HTML5, it’s not hard to outrun a snail driven by a committee. So although HTML5 will be important the native platform will retain a big edge if you want to develop clever apps. And the native platform owners want it to stay that way.”
“Openness is at the core of everything we do,” says Peter Driesson, chief executive of the Netherlands-based company.
“We are aware that HTML5 is still at an early stage, but already developers can use it to make great games, and we are confident that the industry will quickly embrace it. Within three years we expect HTML5 to be the standard in gaming devices.”
Analysts at Forrester predict the Western European mobile gaming market to grow from €746m (£616m) at the end of 2010 to €1.46bn (£1.2bn) by the end of 2015, due to the growth in paying mobile gamers (31 million to 45 million over the same time frame, Forrester predicts) and a growth in smarphone adoption.
Mark Watson, chief executive of mobile internet specialists Volantis, suggested that the significance of SPIL’s move should not be underestimated.
“With one of the largest providers of mobile video – YouTube – and now one of the largest providers of mobile gaming on board, the endorsements for HTML5 are rolling in,” says Watson. “Judging the right moment to move with these trends is always difficult, but our own consumer research, which found that gaming is going to be one of the top drivers of mobile internet take-up in the next 24 months, suggests that SPIL are taking the initiative at the right time.“Crucially, SPIL’s decision to launch HTML5 versions of their sites shows that the barriers to running mobile games through mobile browsers which existed in the past are now well and truly broken. It is also becoming clear that Flash is only a stop-gap technology when it comes to online gaming – the adoption of HTML5 over Flash is part of a larger developer movement away from proprietary towards open technology.”
• Another noteworthy HTML5 development: Ephemeral rockers Arcade Fire have teamed up with Google Chrome to put together a personalised music video. Nice.
Technology news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk
HTML5 version of YouTube launches for mobiles
The move will speed up access for people using the site via iPhones or Android
Mobile users in the UK, Europe and Middle East can now access an HTML5 version of Google’s YouTube video site, speeding up access for those accessing it via iPhones, Android or other mobile devices with browsers able to render HTML5 video content.
The launch comes as mobile use of the web is growing rapidly: Google says that YouTube’s mobile site, m.youtube.com, gets more than 100m video playbacks a day – roughly the number of daily views youtube.com was getting when being acquired by Google in 2006 – and every minute an hour of video is uploaded to the site from a mobile device. Mobile video playback also grew by 160% in 2009 on the previous year, along with an increase in adoption of devices able to stream video.
The US version of the HTML5 site for mobiles was launched last month.
Across Europe, the Middle East and Africa, the UK consumes the most YouTube videos on mobile devices, followed by France, Italy, Netherlands and Switzerland.
The original mobile version of YouTube launched in 2007, but relied on versions of Adobe’s Flash for playback – which was too taxing for most devices. Since then, the development of the HTML5 web standard, and of mobile browsers – notably WebKit, used by Apple in the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad, and by Google in Android – able to play back embedded video content using the H.264 codec, rather than Flash’s usual Sorensen or VP6 codecs, has meant that HTML5 video use has become feasible.
Google says the decision has been driven by the dramatic growth in mobile access to YouTube, which is more than doubling every year.
Several short-form video sites are building players in HTML5: Vimeo brought out a hybrid HTML5 version of its player earlier this month, designed for better mobile playback. But when US-only TV and movie streaming site Hulu unveiled a major revamp of its display earlier this year, it did so using Adobe Flash, saying HTML5 “doesn’t meet our customers’ needs”.
The use of HTML5 does not mean that Flash is shut out of YouTube’s mobile version: Adobe’s product can encode video in H.264 as well. But the growing use of desktop browsers such as Google’s Chrome and Apple’s Safari, which can render H.264 video – and with the forthcoming Internet Explorer 9 also offering it – poses a long-term question about Flash’s continued widespread use.
Brightcove, the video hosting service for many media organisations, began offering an HTML5 version of its site in March this year. The New York Times and Time Inc were among the first media outlets to integrate it – allowing playback on Apple’s popular mobile devices, which do not use Flash.
Closer to home, Erik Huggers, director of BBC future media & technology, recently defended the corporation from accusations that its widespread use of Flash – on the iPlayer, in particular – betrayed a commitment to open standards.
“Our use of Flash is not a case of BBC favouritism, rather it currently happens to be the most efficient way to deliver a high quality experience to the broadest possible audience,” Huggers said, adding: “The fact is that there’s still a lot of work to be done on HTML5 before we can integrate it fully into our products. As things stand I have concerns about HTML5′s ability to deliver on the vision of a single open browser standard which goes beyond the whole debate around video playback.”
Though the BBC does deliver H.264-encoded video to Apple mobile devices, it does not do that for Android devices, citing concerns about copying of content via the Android platform, and instead serves Flash-based video to them.
However YouTube has said that HTML5 is still some way from becoming the new standard for streaming long-form video content, such as BBC iPlayer content. “While HTML5′s video support enables us to bring most of the content and features of YouTube to computers and other devices that don’t support Flash Player, it does not yet meet all of our needs,” said John Hardin, software engineer at YouTube, in a blogpost published in June. “Today, Adobe Flash provides the best platform for YouTube’s video distribution requirements, which is why our primary video player is built with it.”
Microsoft has put its eggs in the HTML5 basket with next year’s release of its internet Explorer 9 browser. Ryan Gavin, Microsoft’s senior director of internet Explorer, said in May this year: “We’re all in on HTML5. We’ve been co-chairing the HTML5 working group, and we’re actually leading the HTML5 testing group.”
Technology news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk
BlackBerry poised to sign deal with Indian authorities
Officials say BlackBerry firm Research in Motion will permit Indian authorities partial access to some of its services
BlackBerry manufacturer Research In Motion will allow Indian authorities partial access to its Messenger chat services to placate security fears, a senior government source has told the Reuters news agency.
The Canadian company is reportedly ready to allow authorities more access to data transmitted between its handsets, and is talking about how to allay government fears over BlackBerry Enterprise email services.
India’s Department of Telecommunications – the body orchestrating the discussions – has asked at least three mobile operators to put in place monitoring capability for the BlackBerry Messenger and Enterprise email by 31 August.
RIM has said it will provide a “technical solution” to the worries this week, a government source told Reuters. India has said it will shut down some BlackBerry services by 31 August if no settlement is reached.
A senior government source, who asked not to be named, told the news agency: “They have assured partial access to its Messenger services by 1 September and agreed to provide full access by the end of the year.”
Last week RIM issued a public statement to its approximately 800,000 BlackBerry users in the country, saying any negotiations over increased access to data transmitted between its devices would abide to four principles: that it was legal, that there would “no greater access” to BlackBerry services than other services, that there would be no changes in the security for Enterprise customers, and it would not make “specific deals for specific customers”.
India’s main concern is thought to be with data passed between corporate BlackBerry devices using Enterprise services. When using the BlackBerry Enterprise Service (BES), an organisation hosts its own server and encryption key for access to transmitted content, offering a higher level of security.
RIM said neither it nor the mobile operator has access to these encryption keys, meaning the only organisation able to decrypt data is the company hosting the server.
India is seeking a solution where it can lawfully intercept messages passed between the devices, which may involve using internal servers hosted by a third party.
Security fears over BlackBerry services in the country are thought to spring from the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attack in which 116 people died. Officials suspect the culprits used encrypted Blackberry services.
RIM is facing the threat of a ban on some BlackBerry services in India, Indonesia, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates.
Technology news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk
Google and Verizon offer give and take over net neutrality
Google and Verizon offer to uphold net neutrality while giving more power to wireless and private network operators
After last week’s excitement – when the New York Times boldly but inaccurately claimed that Google and Verizon were cutting a sweetheart deal over internet traffic – the truth has turned out to be less dramatic but potentially more worrying for US consumers and net users.
Instead, Google and Verizon have announced a joint policy proposal, intended as a framework for the future regulation of US internet provision.
In a nutshell the two companies are putting forward a system of regulation that suits them both, as you might expect. One cynical way of reading this is to think of Google and Verizon as two syndicates carving out a piece of the action: Google gets a commitment to net neutrality over the standard, wired internet that people access via computers at home or at work, while Verizon gets far weaker regulation on wireless networks accessed via smartphones.
Why does Google feel it needs to work with Verizon on this? Verizon in the US is in a uniquely powerful position of straddling both wired and wireless access, since it operates one of the two major wireless networks (AT&T running the other), while also being a major wired ISP competing with the likes of cable provider Comcast.
All this is a far cry, though, from the New York Times’s suggestion that a specific deal between the two was in the works, which was bluntly denied by both companies.
In fact, the joint policy framework suggests the complete opposite, in certain respects. What the Google-Verizon proposal seeks to do is define current thoughts on net neutrality and apply them to what the document calls “wireline broadband”, while placing fewer such restrictions on wireless provision and what it terms “differentiated services” offered in addition by an ISP.
The details are vague – the whole proposal is only two pages long – but here is how it would apply to users.
The proposal would split net consumption into three categories: wireline internet (accessing the internet via wires to a modem – DSL connections, for example), wireless internet access (via an iPhone or a wireless data card), and the hitherto unknown “differentiated services” (over Verizon’s Fios fibre-optic network maybe?) of specialised content or services.
The proposal suggests four areas of regulation – but the first three would only apply to “wireline internet” users:
• Consumer protections, to safeguard users’ access to legal content, devices and applications (hello, Comcast?)
• Non-discrimination requirements, to guarantee net neutrality:
In providing broadband Internet access service, a provider would be prohibited from engaging in undue discrimination against any lawful Internet content, application, or service in a manner that causes meaningful harm to competition or to users.
• Network management, in which broadband providers would also have to meet “reasonable network management” standards and practices.
Only the fourth area would apply to both wireless and wireline users:
• Transparency, with ISPs “required to disclose accurate and relevant information in plain language” about what they are offering.
A provider which met all four of those conditions could be rewarded by being able to offer “additional or designated services” for additional fees (presumably), as well as “traffic prioritisation,” which is what the original NYT story maintained. The examples for these suggested by Google and Verizon today included “healthcare monitoring, the smart grid, advanced educational services or new entertainment and gaming options.”
Needless to say, the lack of regulation applying to wireless access and the possibility of future “designated services” doesn’t please anyone outside the telecoms industry, or indeed at the FCC.
Susan Crawford, a specialist on internet regulation, blogged:
The key trade-off being made here is between the treatment of wireless services, on the one hand, and the treatment of nondiscrimination, on the other. Google gave on wireless, and so there’s no policy suggestion for wireless net neutrality that has been provided by the companies. That’s a huge hole, given the growing popularity of wireless services and the recent suggestion by the [FCC] that we may not have a competitive wireless marketplace.
Meanwhile, Dan Gillmor is concerned the “designated services” might turn into a “parallel network that could, in the long run, become the default network”:
For Verizon’s part, the acceptance of what sounds like fairly serious neutrality rules on current wire-line networks was welcome. But I see the rest as a Trojan Horse for a modern age. Verizon and other carriers have every incentive, based on their legacies, to push network upgrade investments into the parallel Internet, not the public one.
The FCC isn’t happy either, so this proposal may not go much further. If it spurs the FCC into action, for a change, that would be something.
Technology news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk
Android steps up pace in mobile market share grab
Google’s Android mobile OS finally overtakes Apple’s iOS in new purchases, figures gathered before release of iPhone 4 show
Google’s Andoid mobile operating system has continued its growth in US market share, according to new figures, with a continued drop for Microsoft’s Windows Mobile and waning loyalty among BlackBerry owners.
Apple’s iPhone remained the most desired smartphone on the US market in the second quarter of 2010, Nielsen figures gathered before the release of the iPhone 4 show.
But it’s three cheers for Google as the increasingly popular (among consumers as well as manufacturers) operating system continues an upward trajectory on both sides of the Atlantic. Retail watcher Gfk said last week that UK sales of mobiles running Android had risen by more than 300% this year.
It would, of course, have been more newsworthy for Android to have dropped in market share, given the scope of devices and operators it caters to. The chart of US smartphone subscribers in the first half of 2010, below, shows a steep incline for Android adoption.
Towards the end of June, Android nosed ahead of Apple’s iOS as most-adopted operating system in the US smartphone market – but these figures take in only a week of iPhone 4 sales.
Among US owners of a BlackBerry, 57% are planning to abandon the smartphone and opt for a different operating system, quarter two figures show. The news puts added importance on RIM’s press conference today, with the expected launch of the BlackBerry 9800, thought to have both a touchscreen and a slide-out qwerty keyboard.
Technology news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk
ISPs pulling a fast one on broadband speeds: Ofcom
• Average speed 46% below that promised by ISPs
• Mandatory code and clear penalties vital, experts say
Millions of broadband users are being sold short by providers that are delivering speeds far below those advertised, according to research published today.
Data released by Ofcom, the communications regulator, shows that the gap between the headline broadband speeds customers sign up for and the connection they actually receive has widened sharply in the last 12 months. The average actual speed is now just 46% of what was promised, down from 56% a year ago.
Internet service providers are even advertising maximum speeds which in practice no customers receive, according to Ofcom, which is now pushing for tighter controls on selling broadband in the UK.
“There is a very big difference between the headline services that are advertised and the actual speeds that are delivered,” said Ed Richards, Ofcom’s chief executive.
Consumer groups said the research showed that many ISPs were letting their customers down.
“If consumers pay for a Ferrari-style internet service, they should not get pushbike speeds. Broadband users should get what they pay for,” said Robert Hammond, head of post and digital communications at Consumer Focus.
Peter Vicary-Smith, chief executive of Which?, demanded an end to “misleading claims” about broadband.
“Some internet service providers continue to advertise ever-increasing speeds that bear little resemblance to what most people can achieve in reality,” he said.
There is growing demand for faster broadband packages as more computer users watch television and play games online, or share their connection between several PCs. This has led ISPs to offer faster services – promising “up to” 20Mbps, for example, rather than the standard maximum speed of 8Mbps. However, the UK’s communications infrastructure appears incapable of supporting such services.
Ofcom reported that nearly a quarter of broadband users said they received a slower service than expected, and this was the most common complaint to ISPs.
The only ISP delivering close to the maximum speed advertised, according to Ofcom, was Virgin Media, with the advantage of a relatively new cable network in many urban areas. There was a stark difference between the performance of Virgin and the various ISPs such as AOL, BT, O2, Orange and Sky which all rely on BT’s ageing “last mile” local network.
While the average speed of an “up to 20Mbps” cable service is 15.7Mbps, this fell to just 6.5Mbps for a typical “20Mbps” DSL package, which uses copper phone lines.
Ofcom said that copper lines that connect homes and small firms to the local BT telephone exchange were being “stretched to the very edge of their capability” to support high-speed internet access. Longer phone lines can only support slower speeds.
An Orange spokesperson said Ofcom’s findings were “disappointing”, and questioned their accuracy as only a small fraction of its customers were tested.
Another issue is that many homes will effectively share a large broadband “pipe” in the local exchange, so average speeds fall at busy times.
John Petter, managing director of BT’s consumer division, insisted that the company “continues to invest heavily in our network, bringing speed improvements to customers nationwide”.
“Rip-offs must end”
ISPs typically offer broadband services promising speeds of “up to” 8Mbps, 20Mbps or 50Mbps. In a damning indictment of the current situation, Ofcom wants these advertising rules tightened up so that an ISP can only promise a maximum speed if “at least some” people can receive it.
“Our beef is that people were being offered up to 8mbps, and nobody actually got 8Mbps,” said Richards. He also wants broadband services to be advertised with a “typical speed range”, to give people a better idea of what they will get in practice.
Jon James, executive director of broadband at Virgin Media, agreed it was important that the way broadband is sold should be tightened up quickly.
“We need to ensure people are not being ripped off, as the lack of transparency in broadband advertising risks damaging consumer confidence in superfast broadband. The Advertising Standards Authority has announced a review into the way broadband is advertised and the need for change is now urgent,” he said.
Ofcom has also put together a new code of conduct for the industry. This would allow consumers to cancel their broadband service with no penalty within the first three months if the speed was significantly below what was promised. Richards said this would encourage ISPs to improve their service. Some experts argued a voluntary code was not enough.
“Simply strengthening it does not cut the mustard – we need a mandatory code with clear penalties for those that breach it,” said Matthew Wheeler, communications expert at uSwitch.com. Ofcom’s data also showed that Britain still suffers a significant Broadband Divide, ten years after the first high-speed services went on sale. Average download speeds of 5.8Mbps were recorded in urban areas, versus just 2.7Mbps in rural areas – where average line lengths are greater.
Richards warned that this gap was “likely to extend further before it narrows”, as BT starts to build a next-generation fibre-optic network in towns and cities that will offer speeds of up to 100Mbps in some locations.
BT plans to spend £2.5bn installing fibre-based broadband in two-thirds of the country by 2015. Richards said today’s data showed the importance of investment to bring fibre to as much of the country as possible.
The coalition government has said it expects the market to take the lead in delivering fibre across the UK, but BT has warned it cannot extend coverage further without some form of government support.
• This article was amended on 27 July 2010. We originally referred to “Virgin Mobile” in paragraph 11 – this has been changed to “Virgin Media”
Technology news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk
Police crack down on computer support phone scam
Nineteen websites offering fake computer support have been closed down by the Metropolitan police e-crime unit
Nineteen websites which were used to perpetrate a phone scam offering “computer support” that defrauded people across the English-speaking world have been closed down by police.
In the scam, reported by the Guardian today, teams at Indian call centres rang computer users claiming to be from tech support. The computer users were then told there were problems with their PC, which could be fixed.
After being told to download a programme that handed over remote control of their computer so the caller could install “fixes”, the PC users were told of the £185 charge for subscription to “the preventative service”. But the “fixed” computers never had any problems, and the value of the service was dubious.
The Metropolitan police e-crime unit acted in April to take such sites down. Among those shut was supportonclick.com, registered to Pecon Software, a firm based in Kolkata. The company has now opened another support website, called onlinepccare.com, which is the subject of numerous online complaints about cold calling, “bullying”, and claims that the caller is from Windows PC care.
But the police are unable to effect refunds for people who were scammed by the cold callers, though they do class the crime as “obtaining money by deception” – in other words, fraud. “Those who believe they have been mis-sold a product or service online should report the matter to trading standards, via its website (www.consumerdirect.gov.uk),” said the PCEU in a statement. “If a criminal offence has clearly been perpetrated the matter should be reported to the police.”
The Guardian spoke today to Pecon’s customer relationship manager, Vikas Gupta. He said the firm employed 400 people, of whom about 200 worked in telesales, cold calling to generate business for remote PC support. He would not say from where they derived the lists of names and insisted that none of the callers would say they were from Windows tech support. However he admitted there had been “a couple of instances” where “people [from Pecon] did try to influence the customer [to believe] that they were … from Microsoft”, and there was “some quality-related feedback” from agents.
Pecon set up its remote support scheme in April 2008, saying it had had an “overwhelming response” from customers in the UK, US, Canada and Australia, and used the supportonclick site – now closed by the e-crime unit – for the service.
Gupta denied knowing of supportonclick, though it was running before he says he joined and shut while he worked there. He said that, as part of a prepared script, the call-centre teams would show people details from the Windows Event Viewer, a program that can worry uninitiated PC owners. He said this was just to help people decide whether to take Pecon’s services.
Gupta said he was aware of sites and call centres in Kolkata operating a “support” scam. He said some pretended to call on behalf of onlinepccare.com. “I’d say 80% of the sites are using content stolen from us. They’ve copied spelling errors from us.”
Sources close to the Met e-crime unit said there was “clear evidence of criminality” from the sites taken down.
Technology news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk
Facebook facing lawsuit as New Yorker claims 84% of firm
Facebook is in court to defend yet another claim to ownership, this time from a web designer cum wood pellet distributor who says a previous contract entitles him to 84% of the company.
Filed in the Supreme Court in New York’s Allegany County last month, the lawsuit details how Paul Ceglia signed a contract with Facebook in April 2003 to design and develop the website TheFacebook.com for an agreed ,000 (£665) fee and a 50% stake in the site.
The contract stipulated, Ceglia claims, a further 1% stake for each day until the site was finished on 4 February 2004. Facebook is valued at an estimated .5bn, so an 84% share would be worth around .46bn.
Following Ceglia’s lawsuit, acting New York Supreme Court justice Thomas Brown issued a temporary restraining order that blocks Facebook from transfering assets. The case has now transferred to a federal court and Facebook is trying to have it annulled.
Facebook dimissed the case as “frivolous” and “outlandish”, said it will fight it vigorously and pointed out that a lawsuit over a contract broken in 2003 is “almost certainly barred” by the statute of limitation.
There are a number of reasons that success for Ceglia sounds unlikely – not least waiting until the site reaches 500 million global users before bringing his case, waiting until the outcome of the (successful) Winklevoss claim and the rather bizarre sidenote that a restraining order was granted against him in 2009 by an attorney who alleged Ceglia had defrauded customers of his wood-pellet fuel business to the tune of 0,000.
But imagine, for a minute, that Ceglia succeeded, and moved in to take 84% of Facebook. We might have a new entrant in the MediaGuardian 100…
Technology news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk
BBC websites cost users 67p per month
The BBC spent £199.3m on its BBC Online service in 2009/10, according to its annual report – 12% more than the previous year.
The outlay is 6% of the £142.50 annual licence fee, or the equivalent of £0.67 per month…
BBC Online spend breaks down as: £126.7m content budget, £22.3m on distribution and £50.3m on infrastructure and support.
Future media and technology director Erik Huggers’ salary totalled £407,000 – that’s £330,000 base pay, £15,000 in taxable benefits and £62,000 in cash-based pension supplements.
More stats…
• BBC Online reaches 37% of the population each week and therefore costs 8.9 pence per user hour.
• On a per user user basis, that makes it amongst the most costly of the BBC’s main services, with only BBC Alba costing more.
• More than 18m iPlayer requests per week.
• Monthly mobile users up from 4.4m to 7.8m.
• External suppliers received 26% of BBC Online spend – slightly more than its 25% quota.
Coinciding with the annual report, the BBC Trust has published its response to the BBC’s Putting Quality First strategic review proposals. Regarding online, it says: “The Trust endorses the Executive’s proposed 25% budget reduction, although it will want to understand and approve the editorial changes involved. In line with the Executive’s proposals, the BBC should sharpen online’s focus so that it is truly distinctive and has clearer editorial vision and control….
“The BBC needs to identify future tipping points where reassessment of the structure will become necessary, such as full digital switchover in 2012 and 50% of viewing on a non-linear basis.
“The case has not been made for the closure of 6 Music. The Executive should draw up an overarching strategy for digital radio.”
Meanwhile, BBC is now rolling out “BBC Fabric”, “a desktop-based digital production tool that allows content to be accessed, edited, and shared remotely across the entire BBC” and “will fundamentally change the way we make programmes”, according to the annual report.
Technology news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk
Canada’s copyright laws show Britain’s digital legislation is no exception
It’s not just our government that can be bullied into voting against the public interest by big content’s power-brokers
A few months ago, Britain’s archivists, educators, independent artists and technologists were up in arms over the digital economy bill, a dreadful piece of legislation that ignored all the independent experts’ views on how to improve Britain’s digital economy; instead, it further rewarded the slow-moving entertainment companies that refused to adapt to the changing marketplace and diverted even more public enforcement resources to shoring up their business-models.
The bill was passed despite enormous public outcry, without real parliamentary debate, in a largely empty house, hours before parliament dissolved for the election. Despite reassuring promises to their constituents, huge numbers of MPs just didn’t bother to show up for work that day, allowing the bill to slip through (my own MP, Meg Hillier, sent me a letter to tell me that she was “concerned” that the bill was up for a vote without debate, but she voted for it anyway).
Well, here’s some good news for Britons: you’re not the only country whose laws are for sale to oligarchs from the entertainment industry. In my native Canada, a farce worthy of the worst moments of the Digital Economy Act is playing out even as I type these words.
Some background: there have been two recent attempts to reform Canadian copyright law. Both failed, due in large part to an unwillingness on the part of lawmakers to conduct public review or consultation on their proposals (though they were happy to have closed-door meetings with lobbyists representing offshore entertainment giants). The minority Tory government is now fielding a third attempt, called Bill C32 (Canadian bills have much less interesting names than their UK counterparts; here, we’d probably call it The Enhancement of Digital Life Through Extreme Punishments for Naughty Pirates Bill of 2010).
C32 follows the widest-ever public consultation on Canadian copyright. More than 8,300 Canadians filed comments in the consultation, and they spoke with near unanimity: “We don’t want a US-style copyright regime.”
The US’s copyright law was last reformed in 1998, with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which provided for near-total protection for “digital locks” (also called “DRM,” “TPM,” “copy prevention,” “copy protection” – this explosion of names being the legacy of two decades’ worth of attempts to rebrand an unpopular idea in the hopes of making it stick). In the US version of the law, breaking a digital lock is itself a crime – even if you’re breaking it for a perfectly legitimate reason.
For example, Apple uses digital locks to make sure that the only programs you can run on your iPad and iPhone come from its own App Store. The App Store has lots of conditions on it that are ripe for competitive challenge – it scoops a hefty 30% commission from software creators, and imposes prudish conditions on the presentation of “adult” content (previously, Apple has rejected an ebook reader because it could be used to call up the Kama Sutra, a dictionary because it contained “naughty” words, the Pulitzer-winning political cartoons of Mark Fiore because they “ridiculed public figures” and a comic book adaptation of Joyce’s Ulysses because you could see the characters’ willies – in each case, they reversed themselves after public outcry).
But breaking the digital locks on your iPad so that you can buy apps from someone other than Apple is against the law – even though there is no copyright infringement taking place. Quite the contrary: marketplaces where creators exchange their works for money is the kind of thing you’d expect copyright law to encourage, rather than prohibit.
Nearly all of the respondents to the Canadian copyright consultation said that they didn’t want to repeat America’s 12-year-old mistake. Yes, they said, let us have protection for digital locks, but only if you’re breaking them in order to commit an act of actual copyright infringement. Protecting the locks themselves is bad policy.
I was one of those Canadians. As a Canadian author (my latest novel, For the Win, is presently on the Canadian bestseller lists), I believe that I should have the major say in the destiny of my copyrighted works.
If I want to authorise a reader to break a digital lock to move her copies of my books from a Kindle to a competing ebook reader, that should be my call. Certainly, the mere act of putting my works into a digital locker shouldn’t give a company the right to usurp my copyright: copyright protects authorship, not assembling electronics in Pacific Rim sweatshops.
Only 46 of the 8,306 commenters thought otherwise. These 46 commenters advocated replicating America’s failed experiment in Canada; everyone else thought the idea was daft. You’d think that with numbers like 46:8260, the government would go with the majority, right? Wrong.
When minister of industry Tony Clement, and minister of heritage James Moore, published the text of their long-awaited copyright bill, Canadians were floored to discover that the ministers had replicated the American approach to digital locks. Actually, they made it worse – the Americans conduct triennial hearings on proposed exemptions to the rule; Moore and Clement didn’t bother with even this tiny safeguard.
The ministers have been incapable of explaining the discrepancy. When confronted on it, they inevitably point to the fact that their bill also establishes numerous “user rights” for everyday Canadians (for example, the right to record a TV show in order to watch it later), and suggest that this is the “balance” that Canadians asked for. When critics say, “Yes, you’ve created some user rights, but if a digital lock prevents their exercise, it’s against the law to break the lock, right?” the ministers squirm and change the subject.
It’s enough to leave you wondering whether the ministers understand their own bill. Indeed, Clement recently appeared on the public broadcaster TVOntario show Search Engine and promised that his law allows journalists to break a digital lock for the purposes of investigative reporting (according to lawyers, scholars and everyone else who’s read the bill, he’s wrong).
If they don’t understand their bill, perhaps it’s because they weren’t really in charge of what went into it. According to the former head of staff for minister of foreign affairs Maxime Bernier: “The prime minister’s office’s position was, move quickly, satisfy the US; we don’t care what you do, as long as the US is satisfied.”
It’s clear the US government has made a top priority out of ensuring other countries cut their throats just as stupidly as America did with the DMCA’s digital locks rules. Last week, the Obama administration’s newly minted IP enforcement czar, Victoria Espinel, reiterated America’s priority to use its trade muscle to force countries into adopting US-style copyright rules.
American industry is pleased by this. A shadowy new Canadian “citizens’ group”, Balanced Copyright For Canada, looks to be the work of the big-four labels, with a membership composed of employees and executives of the labels’ Canadian subsidiaries (the membership lists were taken offline hastily after this was publicised).
Moore seems to be cracking under the strain of supporting the unsupportable. He has publicly denounced opponents of his bill as “radical extremists” (these “extremists” include the Canadian Bookseller Association, the Retail Council of Canada, the Canadian Library Association, the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada and MPs from all the other parties). He then denied having made the remarks, blocked voters from following him on Twitter when they asked him about it, and has remained silent on the subject since videos of him making the remarks surfaced.
So, Britain, rejoice. It’s not just our government that can be bullied into voting against the public interest by big content’s power-brokers – Canada’s just as weak and pitiful.
