The NFB may never replace YouTube in the minds of most when it comes to Internet video, but a series of innovations have highlighted the benefits of an open distribution model and the potential for Canadian content to reach a global audience online.

Last year, just months before the NFB celebrated its 70th anniversary, it launched the NFB Screening Room, an online portal designed to make its films more readily accessible to Canadians and interested viewers around the world.  To meet its objective, it committed to be as open, transparent, and accessible as possible, including making the films freely available and embeddable on third party websites.

In January 2009, the site started with 500 films.  Today, the number of available films has nearly tripled, with almost 1,500 films, clips, and trailers.  The growing selection has been accompanied by a massive increase in audience. There have been 3.7 million online film views over the past year - 2.2 million from Canada and 1.5 million from the rest of the world.  That number is set to continue to grow as daily views have jumped from 3,000 per day in January 2009 to more than 20,000 film views per day in January 2010.

The site also uses mobile technology to increase public access and exposure to Canadian films.  In October 2009, the NFB launched an iPhone application that has been downloaded more than 170,000 times and led to more than 500,000 film views on the ubiquitous mobile device.

Interestingly, the NFB reports the most popular viewing time is in the evening hours, suggesting that watching a film online is an effective substitute for conventional television programming.   

The NFB also rolled out new participative initiatives.  For example, it launched an "open content" project called GDP, an interactive one-year effort to document the economic crisis. The NFB invited Canadians to submit their own videos discussing the effects of the economic downturn, leading to more than 25 videos along with hundreds of photos and text comments.

The NFB success story is noteworthy for two reasons beyond the impressive statistics.  First, the project is instructive from a public policy perspective.  As the NFB’s content manager recently noted, the Screening Room “puts the films back in front of the people who paid for them in the first place - Canadian taxpayers.” 

That philosophy ought to be emulated by other publicly funded cultural bodies. For example, CBC.ca recently began promoting an online licensing system that charges sites as much as $250 per month to embed a single article on a website.  While the desire for additional revenue is understandable, the goal for a publicly funded body surely must be to make public access the priority, rather than to garner small incremental revenues.

Second, the NFB has demonstrated the potential of the Internet and new media to attract new audiences for Canadian content.  The old regulatory models premised on scarcity that led to Canadian content requirements are disappearing quickly, replaced by a world of abundance in which artificial barriers do little to keep content out. 

As the NFB recognized, remaining relevant in that world requires ensuring your work is accessible as possible. While there are unquestionably risks, there are tremendous potential benefits for Canadian creators and the export of Canadian culture.

Canada was once thought to be part of this group - national digitization working groups were established and a strategy seemed imminent - yet plans have languished to the point that it feels as if someone has hit the delete key on the prospect of a comprehensive Canadian digital library.

Canada's failure to keep pace was made readily apparent by the release late last month of a European consultation document on its digitization efforts.  In September 2005, the European Union launched i2010, a digitization action plan.  Several years later, Europeana debuted, a website that provides direct access to more than 4.6 million digitized books, newspapers, film clips, maps, photographs, and documents from across Europe.  The site plans to host 10 million objects by the end of next year.

The majority of the materials included to date are in the public domain - ie. they are no longer covered by copyright and can be used and accessed by all.  In fact, the European Commission has emphasized "works in the public domain should stay there once digitized and be made accessible through the Internet." It acknowledges, however, that this is not always the case since some groups claim rights to digitized copies of public domain works or charge for downloads.

The European consultation document grapples with difficult issues such as guaranteeing access to public domain works and identifying ways to improve access to works that are still subject to copyright protection but are out-of-print, or for which the copyright owner cannot be located.

By comparison, Canada seems stuck at the digitization starting gate.  Library and Archives Canada was given responsibility for the issue but was unable to muster the necessary support for a comprehensive plan.  The Department of Canadian Heritage, which would seem like a natural fit for a strategy designed to foster access to Canadian works, has funded a handful of small digitization efforts but has shown little interest in crafting a vision similar to Europeana.

Digitization law and policies have also gone missing-in-action. The national copyright consultation wraps up next week, but the digitization issue has scarcely been raised.  

The European Commissioner for Information Society and Media Vivian Reding has called for the creation of "a modern set of European rules that encourage the digitization of books."  Yet in Canada, few have placed the spotlight on the legal barriers to creating a national digital library. These include the danger associated with extending the term of copyright or providing overbroad legal protection for digital locks that could render Canadian culture inaccessible.

Supporters once talked about the dream of a national digital library comprised of every Canadian book ever published.  Years later, they are still dreaming.

2.    The paper takes on several longstanding myths about the economic effects of file sharing, noting that many downloaded songs do not represent a lost sale, some mashups may increase the market for the original work, and the entertainment industry can still steer consumer attention to particular artists (which results in more sales and downloads).

3.    The authors' point out that file sharing may not result in reduced incentives to create if the willingness to pay for "complements" increases.  They point to rising income from performances or author speaking tours as obvious examples of income that may be enhanced through file sharing. In particular, they focus on a study that concluded that demands for concerts increased due to file sharing and that concert prices have steadily risen during the file sharing era.  Moreover, the authors' canvass the literature on the effects of file sharing on music sales, confirming that the "results are decidedly mixed."

The authors were one of the first to challenge the early claims about the effects of file sharing.  Years later, many other economists have followed suit (including the study funded by Industry Canada).  This latest paper does a nice job of expanding the discussion, by using the data to examine incentives for creativity and the effects on aggregate creator and industry income.