 Hi there, I'm Alex Clark. I'm here to share a research project I've been doing about the future of online content distribution. So this has been conducted within the School of Information Management at Victoria University under the supervision of Brenda Trawner. So there's a bit of background about the project. So it was initiated to explore how creators share their content online. In particular we wanted to explore the relationship between openness and restriction and the dynamic between those two. Looking at people's attitudes towards access and reuse of their work, their opinions about copyright and licensing, and the impact of different funding strategies on the level of openness of their work. One of the key things we looked at was open licensing. So there was a lot of support among creators for open licensing. They pointed out the benefits of remix culture and how it enables people to build upon their work and to give their creation new life in other contexts. And a lot of people pointed out that it provides a strong alternative to the all rights reserved model and it allows creators to actively encourage other people to build upon their work. Most people also pointed out though that they do want control over commercial reuse and they also want to be acknowledged and they want to have attribution there so they want to know what's happened with their work and they want to be recognised for it. Some of the concerns that were raised though is that a lot of creators do have a desire for permission. There's a lot of fear about their work being used in the wrong context in ways that might not align with their moral compass or there's a whole range of reasons that they might not be comfortable with the reuse. There's a bit of fear around poor quality of derivatives and how that might impact on the reputation of their work. And a very small number of people pointed out that their belief that remixes aren't real creativity and though they have a very pure belief in the idea of creation as being purely original. Other people brought up issues around culturally sensitive works as well. And one of the biggest issues was if you're going to make your work freely available it kind of throws up in the air the way that you fund work so it's very different to traditional business models and it makes it very difficult to fund what you do in the system of livelihood. Even though they were concerned most people said that they would allow reuse if they were asked directly and even if they weren't asked most people said they wouldn't pursue legal action. They accept that some things are going to happen on the fringes regardless. We also talked about copyright with each interviewee. So people who supported copyright they pointed out that it rewards and incentivises creativity. It upholds creator rights. It standardises acceptable uses and reuses so each of those uses don't need to be negotiated every single time. And it also provides a foundational framework for licensing and that includes open licensing. You need copyright or some kind of rights regime to then build upon. But most people said there are some quite significant changes that are needed for copyright to be fully effective. In terms of the concerns a lot of people pointed out that strict copyright hinders creativity and it stops other people building upon their work. There are a lot of concerns about copyright being unbalanced and favouring rights holders and corporations rather than the producers of content and the users and the audience. A lot of concerns around the length of protection and most people thought their copyright was last for too long. Also people brought up how copyright ignores the collective nature of culture and how it's not a pure type of property as some people try to put, try to assert. We also pointed out punishments are too harsh and they don't like the idea of their fans being punished for trying to access their work. But most people agreed with the underlying concept of copyright and they think that most people that I interviewed thought that it was good. In terms of copyright reform so people think there should be a rebalance towards user rights, decrease the punishments, increase the copyright exemption so there are a wider range of fair uses that people are allowed to do. With the length of protection most people said it should be brought back although there were a couple of exceptions. Some people thought copyright should last for eternity but on the whole most people thought it was a little bit too long. Other people pointed out that copyright law in New Zealand needs to be for New Zealanders and it needs to meet our needs not the interests of overseas governments or corporations. And also a lot of recognition that copyright law hasn't quite fully adapted to a digital environment and there needs to be further changes around that. And also it's not just about the law the way we use copyright and enforce it and deal with it so it has to be about a cultural change not just the letter of the law. In terms of funding content everybody bought up the creative destruction that's occurred with the advent of the internet. So there are a lot of threats there in terms of the traditional business models most of those have been thrown out the door and it's very difficult to fund your livelihood if you are created. But there's also opportunities. It creates a lot of hope and there's a lot of new ways to share your content and a lot of ways to fund it as well. There's also the difficult balance of how do you maximise revenue without impacting the number of people you can reach because at the moment a lot of the monetisation strategies online involve restrictions and if you have too many restrictions what's the point of creating content? Pretty much everybody I talk to wants to reach as many people as possible. They also pointed out how distribution costs are zero and a lot of people have said while everything should be completely free but there's still the issue of how do you fund things in the first place? Completely free might work for some hobbyists but in terms of really in-depth and comprehensive reporting and what have you and music, it's difficult to fund yourself. People have also mentioned it's very difficult to price your own creativity if you make the price too high are you being arrogant and shutting off your fan base? And if you don't put a price on it are you kind of disrespecting yourself as a creator? There's no clear answers there. In terms of alternatives people talked about making their work free to build an audience or having pay-as-you-like, merchandising and going on tour, crowdfunding or you can eat bundles such as Spotify or Netflix and a lot of people pointed out that this might be a good middle ground where you're still paying but you get unlimited access to fees and content taxes with that money going back to creators and then micro payments and then also a number of people pointed out public funding still has a role and should potentially be expanded because there's a lot of content that can't be funded by the free market but yeah, there's no one silver bullet it's extremely difficult as a creator you need to balance a whole range of monetisation strategies if that's what you're looking for there's not one thing that's going to work and pretty much everyone I talked to they have other sources of income they can't sustain themselves just through creation and that impacts their ability to create new works I think I forgot to mention at the start so I had 26 interviewees most of those were creators so musicians, journalists and authors also talked to publishers people from the record industry and media commentators and it was about 18 hours of interview time and 150,000 words of transcripts which I will get through eventually in terms of contact details feel free to reach out if you've got any questions or want to contribute or anything and here's the details of my supervisor too she initiated the project so feel free to reach out to her thank you