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Darren Waters

Where is the almighty online film archive?

  • Darren Waters
  • 12 May 09, 14:55 GMT

We are, I'm often told, living in a world in which audiences can access the content they want when they want it and how they want it.

ComputerThe "long tail" of the internet, the argument goes, has unlocked a never-ending treasure trove of content that is accessible 24/7 on every kind of platform, on the device of your choice.

Really? The truth is that if you have ever tried to find a particular piece of content, and let's talk specifically about film, then you will be hard-pressed to find it online at the e-tailer of your choice and in the format you need.

John Woodward, chief executive of the UK Film Council, has said that a recently launched "search engine" for films revealed a huge disparity between the films available for download and streaming and the demand among consumers.

He said: "60% of people who asked for alerts were looking for downloadable or streamable films.

"Of the 30,000 films listed on the site, only 1,000 are currently available for download or streaming."

So why the gulf? Part of the problem is the "rights windows" for movies that have had theatrical release - they only go on to video on demand services, or download services, for a limited period. And the whole process for getting content onto online services remains locked in an analogue world that worked for physical formats but not for the digital age.

Stephen McGill, director of Xbox and Entertainment in the UK, said rolling out films to Xbox Live was not always a simple process.

He said: "There's lot of legal red tape, country by country - every publisher and movie house has different timings and different ways of working for each region."

The criticism is that content in the digital age is being as tightly controlled as it was in the analogue age. Certainly, there's no sign of a growing library of film content online in the manner that saw iTunes put millions of songs online in a matter of months.

Mr Woodward told me the message to film studios was clear: "Get the content and get the inventory out there on as many platforms as possible and as quickly as possible."

But there's another snag here. While music is finally being unshackled from digital rights management that severely restricted what users could do with their legally bought content, the same thing is not true of video.

In fact, the great fear among consumer rights advocates is that a rush to putting movies on "as many platforms as possible" could lead to a labyrinthine world of differing video standards and digital rights management technologies.

With Hollywood adopting ever more aggressive copy restrictions, there is a growing feeling that consumers are being asked to pay over and over again for the same content but in different formats.

When Blu-ray was first launched consumers were told that the format would support the provision of "Mandatory Managed Copies" of discs, so that users could put the film onto a portable or a home server.

But there is no sign yet of the technology being implemented. And in the world of movie downloads there is no common standard, unlike MP3 for music, just varying flavours of MP4, some of which are tied to specific platforms and portable devices.

The accusation being levelled at the movie industry is that it has learned nothing from the agonies of the music business and is about to walk into the same traps that befell record companies a few years ago.

Rory Cellan-Jones

Bletchley Park - the Fry effect

  • Rory Cellan-Jones
  • 12 May 09, 09:27 GMT

Which celebrity would you want to back your cause? If you were a Gurkha the answer would obviously be Joanna Lumley, but if it were a matter involving technology who better
than Stephen Fry? A while back I found myself pondering whether Mr Fry could kill a gadget after he made clear his distaste for the Blackberry Storm, now I'm wondering just what impact he might have on the campaign to revive Bletchley Park

Stephen Fry at Bletchley ParkYesterday the actor, writer, gadget-fan and polymath came for a look around the wartime decoding centre, at the invitation of the trust which runs it, and I was lucky enough to join his tour.

Last July, a computing academic Dr Sue Black wrote a letter to the Times which sparked off a campaign to try to restore the dilapidated site.

The campaign has had some success - enough money has been raised to put a new roof on the mansion which served as the original wartime headquarters. But most of the huts where thousands of people worked during the war cracking German codes are still in a pretty dreadful state, and Bletchley Park struggles to give its increasing numbers of visitors a coherent picture of what went on and why it was so important, not just to the war effort but to the development of computing.

In fact, I learned a lot more than on previous visits simply by tagging along with Stephen Fry as Simon Greenish, the director of the Bletchley Park Trust, gave him the kind of tour that we'd all like to have.

First, he got to play with a real Enigma machine, one of those used by the Germans to send the coded messages cracked by brilliant minds like Alan Turing.

Then it was off to every corner of the site - from the gate where dozens of despatch riders arrived each day bearing intercepted German messages, to the restored hut 8, where Turing worked on cracking the codes.

One of the new highlights of the site is now the National Museum of Computing, a modest collection which has just got underway but has a wonderful exhibit as its starting-point, Colossus. The world's first electronic computer, which cracked the Lorenz code used by Hitler to communicate with his generals, has been lovingly rebuilt over the last 15 years by Tony Sale, who was on hand to explain its mysteries to Stephen Fry.

Dorothy Richards and Stephen FryAs we were walking across the site we came across a family group escorting an elderly visitor on her first trip back to Bletchley Park since 1945. Dorothy Richards told us she had been drafted to Blethcley, aged 18, and for four years had worked on a punch-card machine. She'd had no idea at the time - or for decades afterwards - of how important the work was, but she knew it was top secret: "We had security talks every week in the big house telling us to keep quiet."

When I recorded a quick interview with Stephen Fry near the end of his visit, he stressed how little recognition Mrs Richards and thousands like her had been given for their contribution to bringing the war to a premature end, and urged everyone to visit the site and understand its importance. If Bletchley Park had wanted to recruit an ardent supporter to the cause, it looks as though the visit did the trick.

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A few years ago such support would have been welcome but of only minor significance. That was before the social media revolution. Stephen Fry's every move is now followed on Twitter by nearly 500,000 people, and Bletchley Park itself has embraced the micro-blogging service.

Late last year a group of ardent geeks visted the site and decided it needed a presence on Twitter. Among them was Christian Payne (known on Twitter as @documentally), and he was at Bletchley yesterday taking the photos you can see on this post, and ardently tweeting, fliming, and recording every moment.

Screen grab of Stephen Fry's Twitter pageThe moment Stephen Fry turned up by the lake near the mansion another visitor spotted him and tweeted his presence, and what had started as a private visit became a major social media event.

Fry's own pictures of his visit, Bletchley Park's website and the site where Tony Sale explains the Colossus project will all have been viewed many thousands of times in the last 24 hours.

So will this make a difference - in crude terms how much cash will come Bletchley Park's way as a result of the visit? Difficult to say, but what Stephen Fry has done is to reinforce something that was already happening, the building of a virtual community of technically-minded people who are passionate about the place and want to make sure its legacy is preserved. So maybe he can be as helpful to Bletchley Park as Joanna Lumley has been to the Gurkhas. All he needs now is a war-cry to match "Ayo Gorkhali!".

Darren Waters

How damaging is illegal file-sharing?

  • Darren Waters
  • 12 May 09, 00:01 GMT

It's an emotive and nebulous issue - exactly how damaging is illegal file-sharing to the creative industries?

Image of man listening to downloaded musicGenerally, it is widely accepted that illegal file-sharing causes great damage and means artists from all kinds of backgrounds are not being paid for the professional work they have done.

Specifically, the creative industries have gone to great lengths to spell out the damage done by file-sharing copyright content without permission.

In today's joint statement from the UK creative industries, the government is urged to force internet service providers to ban persistent file-sharers and a very specific charge is laid.

It says up to 800,000 jobs in the creative industries, out of 1.8 million in total, are threatened.

That's almost half of the entire industry which, the statement says, contributes £112.5bn in revenue to the economy, equivalent to 8% of GDP.

The quoted figure comes from a report produced by consultants called Europe Economics, which was commissioned by one of the creative bodies.

However, it's not so clear cut.

The 1.8 million figure refers to all jobs in the creative industries and related "upstream and downstream sectors".

The 800,000 figure relates to jobs specifically in the film, TV, music and software sectors, including upstream and downstream sectors.

But nowhere in the Europe Economics report does it say that "up to 800,000 jobs are at threat from illegal file-sharing". The figure is used to simply state the size of the four sectors.

As one of the people involved in that report said to me: "Someone could reasonably say that all these jobs are under threat from piracy but this is not to be confused with us saying that 800,000 jobs would be lost if piracy were not eliminated."

In fact, the report talks about "employment gains to be had from a reduction in piracy being very large indeed". Specifically, the report says that almost 10,000 new jobs would be created if peer-to-peer piracy was 100% eliminated.

Without question, piracy threatens jobs, but have the creative industries been a bit loose with their maths and language in order to strike an emotive point?

In fact, the report is strewn with strong language:

• The alliance is "unprecedented"
• Call for "urgent action to save jobs"
• A "unique coalition"
• "Urgent set of recommendations"
• Once in a generation chance to save existing jobs
• "Unprecedented consensus"
• "Critical time"
• "Lawless free for all"

It is clear that the creative industries have run out of patience with the internet service providers, who have long attempted to avoid being turned into the police force of the net.

The problem for the creative industries is that so many people are blase about the impact of piracy.

For example, when a pre-production version of the Hollywood blockbuster movie Wolverine was leaked on the net an estimated four million people downloaded a copy, and the FBI was called in to investigate.

However, critics pointed out that the film went on to make $160m in five days across more than 100 different countries, including about $85m in North America alone.

Apparently Fox, the studio behind the film, believe the takings would have topped $100m in North America had it not been for the leak.

However, figures like $160m do little to convince sceptics who believe the effect of illegal file-sharing is overstated.

As part of the joint statement by the UK alliance of creatives, John Woodward, chief executive of the UK Film Council, says explicitly that the effect of illegal file-sharing is that "films go unmade, DVD sales deteriorate and jobs are lost in production and distribution of content".

He could not be more clear in assessing the impact of unauthorised peer to peer file sharing. But will anyone listen?

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