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August 2002 - Volume 14, No.3
APC in the Information Age
Dale Spender AM is a knowledge-making consultant with a specialist interest in intellectual property. She has specific expertise in elearning and its capacity to empower learners within traditional education and in the corporate sector. She advises on the management of the culture of technology and elearning readiness, and on education and training policy, for the future. She customises policy for the transition from the print to the digital medium in public education institutions and in businesses, and develops strategies for dealing with cultural change and its impact on the organisation. She is interested in developing a secure framework in Australia, for trading in intellectual property, and in changing the culture so that there is a greater appreciation and awareness of the reality of intellectual property and a means for quantifying, measuring, and registering it. Along with this is her commitment to ensure that Australia enhances its ability to generate digital content and to export IP, particularly online. She also researches and comments on the way individuals learn online and the implications that this has for knowledge management, content development, and educational organisation. With Fiona Stewart, Dale Spender has written the report on elearning and universities, for the Australian government, and the elearning report for schools (sponsored by the Commonwealth Bank); they are also the authors of the Online Learning section for The Australian Higher Education supplement. Dale Spender is currently preparing a report on an elearning strategy for TAFE colleges and another for corporates. She is the Chair of the Board of the Copyright Agency Limited, and a member of the Queensland Communications and Information Advisory Board. She has been appointed to the advisory board of the new ABC Education channel, and she is on the board of Queensland Industry Training Advisory Board for ICT - Enabling Queensland. She is a member of the reference board for the BCC portal. She is also a director of Digital Style, along with IndeltaGOLD, a partnership between Indelta (USQ) and GOLD (Guide to Online Learning Delivery) to provide online learning and knowledge management strategies to the business sector. (She is a past member of the board of the Australian Society of Authors and the Australian Internet and Multimedia Industry Association.) She has given expert advice to the Governments of Australia, New Zealand and Queensland. She was a member of the Australian Government Superhighway Roundtable, has provided advice to the Council of Europe, and undertaken workshops on Information Policy with the CEOs of the Public Service of the New Zealand Government. She has given evidence to the Canadian Human Rights Commission and written research reports for the British Equal Opportunities Commission etc. She has advised the Ministers of Education of NSW. Victoria and Queensland, and currently the Queensland Minister for Employment, Training, Youth and the Arts. Dale Spender's Address I wouldn't want anyone to be disappointed, so of course I am going to talk about the Australian Press Council and the Internet. Or more precisely, the challenge the web represents to the Press Council, in the Information Society. It's almost become a mantra to state that the global information revolution is transforming every aspect of our society. Every day, whether it be because of my personal or professional interests, I find myself engaged in discussions, research - or presentations - in relation to the massive cultural changes that we are all confronting. And while I had not previously speculated on the future of the Australian Press Council, in a web-based world - I have found this exercise fascinating. It's an exercise we face routinely at the Copyright Agency Limited (CAL), where we are also trying to come to terms with a digital environment. CAL, a company which was established to collect money from photocopying, and charged with the task of distributing it to those who created the content, is having to adapt to the notion that more and more 'copying' is now downloaded from a screen - rather than printed on paper. Indeed we have even had to think seriously about the concept of copying itself. One of the meanings of copying (OED) is that of an imitation of an original work. It has the sense that there is one original form - which is highly valued - and all else are imitations: inferior reproductions of the work. Yet such a notion of copying - such a linear process, with one after another sheet being reproduced - has little or no meaning in the digital world. Where reproductions are not imitations; where they can be multiplied almost miraculously and simultaneously, and can all be perfect. All of the same quality as the so-called original. To the point where there can be no way of distinguishing between the original and all else. So when your business centres solely on copying - and then you begin to realise that copying is not really what you do any more - it has the effect of concentrating the mind on the problem of redefining the role of the agency, in the new information culture. And the same changes apply to the Australian Press Council. Although I had not read the aims and principles of the Press Council until relatively recently - I did find myself reassured. And I did of course start to rethink the future role of the agency - as the pressures of the information era increase. The Press Council doesn't just handle complaints of course; it operates within an impressive framework. It's stated aim is to uphold the freedom of the press, which in turn facilitates the freedom of the public to be informed. But equal attention is also paid to the obligation of the press to assess the value and validity of the information; to decide for example, what is in the pubic interest. And here a warning note is sounded: Liberty does not mean licence, the handbook states. And this pronouncement is followed by a clear outline of press responsibilities - some of which I would like to refer to. They are that
For those of us here I am sure that this commitment to a free and fair press (and the means to complain when this is not the case) are the foundation stones of what we see as our free and democratic society. And there can be no doubt that for the past few centuries, while print has been the primary information medium, these principles have been proclaimed, and defended. But it is worth noting that even these cherished values may need some rethinking and re-jigging, as the boundaries between traditional print, and the new digital journalism, start to blur. In its current publication on its aims, principles and complaints procedures, the Press Council makes it clear that it deals only with newspapers and magazines - and that "complaints about advertising, the electronic media, and individual journalists should be directed to bodies established to deal with them." But I also wonder whether in the digital environment - just how much longer this distinction between print and electronic can be maintained. As with the concept of 'copying', I suspect that any dividing lines between print and electronic, are increasingly irrelevant. [Editor's note: In the Council's view, 'electronic' means radio and television. The Council deals with all material published by its members, whatever the media of delivery, print or on-line.] For the on-line news is not the preserve of the new dot.coms. (Although Crikey.com with its 40,000 page requests a week, and which is used by over 2,000 journalists a day, is something of an exception.) It is the established media (including print) which have the resources to build these new on-line newspapers. And their growth is so great that it really is anyone's guess as to whether the primary form of the near future will be the print or the online version of the publication. Indeed much of the success of the print media now depends fundamentally on its ability to use the web to keep 'readers' or 'users' up to speed, by breaking news on-line, and even by posting on-line afternoon editions. And here we have the crux of the change - and the challenge. For many of the responsibilities of the journalists and the print media demand time - and a set of ordered procedures; two elements which are not characteristic of the Net:
And, as we hurtle into the global information era, where more than ever, yesterday's information, even this morning's information, so quickly gets dumped in the trash, it is starkly obvious that, on the Web, time and organisation are not readily available. On-line journalism, says Bob Giles of Harvard University ('Journalism in the Era of the Web', Nieman Reports, Nieman Foundation for Journalism, Harvard University, April 2001, p 1), is feisty and combative. And its style and round the clock news cycle raise questions as to how this is compatible with the traditional responsibilities associated with press freedom. For on-line, the modus operandi is immediacy. Mainstream news organisations are struggling to apply old fashioned news standards to the Web, but are discovering it is not easy to translate the virtues of accuracy, balance, and clarity, to a medium where the advantages of speed and timeliness prevail. (ibid.) The current charter of the Press Council emphasises that its brief does not cover complaints against individual journalists. Only those who are employed by a newspaper or magazine. And even here we can find another example of convergence. For when the fastest growing industry in the United States is that of self-employment, it's easy to see how the old 'freelancer' has been transformed into the ubiquitous 'fee agent'. And that's only the start of the online story. The remarkable feature of the new technologies is their capacity for interactivity. Newspapers don't just broadcast one-to-many any more. While much of the information goes out - a great deal of it also - comes in! From non-journalists; from free agents; from people all over the place. Another boundary line between the information makers and the information receivers is breaking down, as we enter the realm of interactivity. Journalists put their email addresses in the newspaper and on the Web page. This brings instant feedback. Stories are added to - subtracted from - praised and criticised. So - it might not be so much a case of journalists protecting their sources; a more accurate description might be - that the sources have become the journalists. In the arts, we are talking about these new possibilities as the enfranchisement of the content creator. No more need of a traditional middle man. On-line the artist can go direct to the audience. In education we are talking about 'do-it-yourself' learning; where with the aid of the new technologies, students are becoming consumers. Choosing from the global information resources the packages they want to solve their problems, to come up with new solutions. Often without the benefit of the traditional teacher, or the traditional educational institution. The print media are also being subjected to the same change processes. And, whether you call it the deprofessionalisation of journalists or the enfranchisement of the information making public, the results are much the same. The links with the Web will lead to less order and regulation, and the participation in news creation by many more information makers. And this might not be inconsistent with the new public interest. For there is increasing evidence that suggests that the preference in a knowledge age is for raw data now, with all its flaws; rather than the finished product later! Much of the work of the Press Council depends on maintaining the line between the old and the new and, in a climate where the information media are converging (and I haven't even mentioned the role of text messages), I suspect that keeping print and digital apart, is pretty much a losing battle. I speak from experience at CAL where we have been the collecting society for print. For stable, unchanging text. For photos and illustrations. And now we have authors who are creating text not for a page but a screen. Where text is just another image. But where there is also sound and movement and interactivity. All the characteristics of multimedia. And in this context, we don't even know if it is a sensible proposition to tease out the words that are being copied, and to collect just for them! Should CAL - along with other collecting societies - follow the trend and converge? So there's a one stop collecting shop for content creators within the new technologies. Or do we all go along with the old dividing lines, with cultures and procedures that reflect an information medium that is being displaced? These are difficult questions. And there are no ready answers. But if I had to place a bet: history suggests that the odds are with the new. So at this reception of the Press Council, I would like to conclude by saying
And if you do develop a strategy for the information revolution, I would be delighted to use it. Paying you a licence fee, of course. Dale Spender [ return to top ] Return to APC News 2002 Index Documents with the |
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Chair of the Copyright Agency Limited, Dale Spender, 
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