Keeping a watchful eye on the media moguls

Date: 12/12/1996

By Chris Johnstone

DAVID Philipson may not have seen playwright Dennis Potter's last television drama Cold Lazarus, forseeing a world of the future in which a few all-powerful media barons vie to screen the memories of a long-dead writer from his preserved brain.

But Potter and Philipson appear to share the same apocalyptic vision.

That much becomes clear when listening to the director of Swedish communications company Telia InfoMedia Content Centre warning of the threats posed by current negotiations over copyright and trends in the information society.

Philipson's company is a small player in the multimedia world. It generates a turnover of 4.5 billion ecu from cable television, yellow page directories and audiotex services in Scandinavia, the Netherlands and the Baltic states.

But he fears that current World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) talks in Geneva, due to be completed this month, could take Europe and the rest of the world a long way down the road towards Potter's Cold Lazarus scenario.

Various battles are going on at the Geneva talks over copyright and other intellectual property issues.

The developed countries are trying to impose their copyright protection on the rest of the world. There is a tussle between Europe and the US over the nature of developing copyright law in the technologically-advanced states. Finally, there is the biggest battle of all: between the owners of copyright material, such as record and film companies, and those that want to use them, such as cable television distributors.

The latter are pressing for greater rights to control the use of material in the new world of digital technology where perfect copies can be made.

For Philipson, the current preliminary text of the WIPO agreement on copyright represents a dangerous diversion of the information highway along a path which would strengthen copyright owners' control over their material to the extent where they could turn the tap on and off at will.

“Intellectual property rights are not natural rights. They are rights given by society as a monopoly right to encourage creativity,” says Philipson, adding that when that privilege looks like being abused, European Commission competition watchdogs should intervene.

So far, the philosophical Swede has been disappointed by the Commission's attitude and the apathy surrounding the whole WIPO conference. The Commission is backing the current WIPO text, partly through fear that any alterations could cause the talks to collapse.

“The major owners of intellectual property rights are in the US. As users, we are depending on the Commission to inject some sense into the discussions because the US will not,” says Philipson.

Although the WIPO battle may be lost this week, the war will not be over until all the national delegations ratify the text.

WIPO is only one of the elements which threaten to concentrate information in the hands of the few at the expense of the many, according to Philipson.

He says that concurrently, big media and software companies - especially in the US - are buying up copyright material wherever they can. “There are about ten major actors who are trying to control the whole information chain.”

Rupert Murdoch, Germany's Kirch, Disney, Time Warner, and Microsoft figure amongst the big buyers.

“Microsoft is buying up the rights to material in libraries and art galleries across the world. The rights last for 70 years after the death of the author. That is quite a difference from the 17 years' patent protection that is offered at the moment,” says Philipson. “I do not think the Commission is doing enough to monitor this.”

He argues that software companies such as Microsoft are also insidiously strengthening their hold on information markets by offering their software free to content makers (such as the people who produce games). The companies' programmes, such as Internet browsers, thus become almost obligatory for those who want to access content on their proprietary software.

This is another path for the software giants to create dominant positions, says the Swede.

He believes the message is clear: without fast action, or at least greater awareness of the stakes being played for, the Telia InfoMedia Content Centres of the world will disappear.

“We have not got the economic muscle to bid for the intellectual property rights under the new rules,” he insists.

And, according to Philipson, when diversity of information supply disappears, so does democracy.

“If we head towards monopoly situations in this area, it will destabilise democracy and the acceptance of the market economy.”