TORONTO – When it comes to content and its distribution, what’s open and what’s closed off can be difficult to define – and what’s freely available to all and what’s behind a walled garden can both work as business plans.
That was part of the messages Monday morning during a session at Toronto’s NextMedia entitled: “Open vs. Closed, Content in the Digital Age”.
While many folks often talk about the preservation of the wide open internet and how individual business interests are interrupting that, those same people freely play inside such closed environments as iTunes, Netflix and Facebook, noted Michael Hennessy, SVP regulatory and government affairs at Telus.
He noted that the web and applications, as well as TV and telecom – can be seen as open and closed. “Everything is a bit of both,” he added.
Traditional television, for example, may be closed to everyone but the broadcasters’ employees, but it’s wide open in that it is searching for the largest possible audience and is available for all to see. The web may be open at all levels, but can “be seen as closed” due to the bandwidth constraints which need to be set by carriers and a members-only aspect to many portals and applications
Digital media consultant Richard Kanee (who has worked for CHUM and CTV) had a new word for the likes of Netflix and Apple: “faux-pen”. They give users a sense of openness, but “it’s still gated and controlled and they can build value around that,” he said.
Added Janis Nixon, marketing director of Universal Island Def Jam: “Apple makes it seem to developers there is an open ecosystem to develop apps… but they approve what apps get into the app store or not.”
And the iPod/Phone/Pad maker has convinced 150 million members “to actually purchase content,” she added, marvelling at the company’s business plan and overall success.
Hennessy added he thought Apple’s success, ongoing growth and domination in the music space might attract the attention of competition regulators (the same way Microsoft did a decade ago), but what we really should be worried about is the ongoing trend towards vertical integration of distribution and content companies (Comcast/NBC, Shaw/Canwest, Bell/CTV) and the closed off specs of so many smart phones and other devices.
“The carriers pursuing content integration strategies you should worry about a lot,” he said because they will have the ability to manipulate their networks to maximize their own content or keep some content exclusively for their own customers. However, the vertical integration move, one that Telus is alone among big distributors in resisting, “is the wrong strategy and is not going to work.”
Having certain bits of content available only to one company’s subscribers will not lead customers to preferring one cell phone over another, Hennessy continued. “At the end of the day, it’s not going to attract the kinds of revenues people think.”
However, while content and rights ownership will remain important, the various devices people still need to access this or that content is still a problem, as are the hoops app developers need to leap through in order to gain access to certain platforms.
“We need more open source in areas like handsets and Blu-Ray players… the devices people need to interact with networks… (and content creators) have to create for so many platforms,” lamented Hennessy.
“That’s what we need to focus on.”
– Greg O’Brien
