Publishing in the Knowledge Economy - DTI Home Page

Issues for competitiveness
Publishing in the knowledge economy
“The BBC has done a fantastic job online. It is
high quality content. We just can’t compete with
the £90 million investment it took to create it.”
Publishers have learned to live with, and
in many cases, benefit from the BBC’s
conventional publishing activities, although they
believe that a much more open relationship
between the BBC public service and BBC
Worldwide is needed in order to maximise the
potential partnership opportunities. That modus
vivendi has not been attained in the online
environment, partly because there is a sense of
not knowing where the BBC may choose to
expand next, and what the attitude of the
Government and the regulators will be. This is
very apparent in the case of Curriculum Online.
There needs to be a re-establishment of trust,
based on clarity about what the ground rules
are and equally importantly, that they will be
enforced in spirit as well as letter. In drafting our
recommendations we are very aware of the
timing of this report, coming in the midst of the
creation of a new regulatory framework centred
around Ofcom, and that is why the stress is laid
not so much on detailed organisational
suggestions as on the fact that there is a
worrying breakdown of trust which any
regulatory set up will have to try to resolve.
Action points – BBC
26 Recognising the power of the BBC brand to
inspire consumer trust in new media, the BBC
could harness this in the interests of a vibrant
independent multimedia sector by commissioning
significant amounts of online/broadband content
from independent producers. This should be
monitored by OFCOM.
27 Independent research should be commissioned to
examine the impact of cross-promotion from BBC
broadcasting services to its online content and
suggest remedial action if necessary.
28 Electronic learning credits should be large enough
to prevent BBC from dominating the market. The
Publishers Association and BESA to encourage
private sector collaboration to provide a coherent
managed learning offering.
29 DFES to ensure its bidding processes for digital
curriculum activities are open and well publicised.
Action points – exploitation of government
information and government publishing
30 Government should establish as soon as possible
an advisory panel to HMSO, consisting of senior
private and public sector representatives to
monitor policies and practices in the public sector
information trading environment as recommended
in the Information Review.
31 Government to implement interoperable
standards on government content.
32 Non-exclusive licences on the use of raw
government information should be effectively
implemented, stimulating competing value-added
publishing ventures. Having stimulated valueadded
publishing ventures, the Government
should not undercut these. The panel of industry
representatives should monitor this
33 The Government should ensure that the principles
of the Information Review are widely
promulgated, and HMSO should propagate best
practice case studies on the respective roles of
public and private sectors in relation to publishing
as technology and the marketplace changes
34 Publishers should actively support and
government ensure the extension and
improvement of the Information Asset Register to
constitute a comprehensive resource discovery
service usable by the industry.
17.2.3 Copyright protection
Copyright protection in a digital world is a major
challenge: digital copies are perfect and highspeed
networks and file sharing services such
as Napster have the ability to disseminate
content across the world in an instant. The
effects of copyright infringement and file sharing
on the recorded music industry are well known,
though not all its recent poor performance can
be ascribed to this.
19 Government should maintain the UK’s strong
legal framework of publishers’ intellectual property
rights over all content and encourage UK and
international enforcement schemes for the >
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