ARCHIVED — OnDisC Alliance

The OnDisC Alliance recognizes the importance of specific questions and issues raised in the discussion paper. However, we anticipate that this discussion would be aided by taking into account the research findings the OnDisC project will be able to provide on or before June, 2002. We hope that time will be provided to ensure that discussions may be informed by the research results, rather than preceding them.

The following quote from The Digital Dilemma summarizes the key issues we hope to address:

The OnDisC Alliance is a unique Canadian collaboration of content owners/suppliers and digital media users in the education sector who are working together to create a model system for content distribution, tracking and compensation. The results of this remarkable two-year experiment in digital new media accessibility, copyright protection, and payment for use will be available for general application in June 2002.

OnDisC stands for Online Distributed Content, a system that makes it easy for owners of text, pictures, video, music, and computer files to make these available on digital networks at educational institutions. OnDisC has been designed to distribute any type of content that exists now or may come into use. Today, that includes the electronic formats of books, journals, newspapers, magazines, sound recordings (music, spoken word), animations and simulations, photographs and graphic images, videos, radio shows, television programs, and films, CD-ROMs, DVDs, and complete educational courses.

OnDisC has attracted committed and enthusiastic members from among Canada’s best content creators and distributors, who have supplied materials from a vast and varied collective database to create an OnDisC "catalogue" of content.

The ever-growing list of content partners includes:

Canadian Heritage Information Network (Canadian galleries and museums)

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (sound and video archives)

TVOntario (video archives)

Sonoptic/Magic Lantern (film and video library)

Canadian Film Centre

CCCA (Centre for Contemporary Canadian Art, on-line visual arts database)

Irwin Publishing (books)

Canadian Music Centre (music and scores)

Encyclopedia of Music in Canada

Muffin Music

Other OnDisC participants are directly involved with licensing and copyright payments and include corporations and collectives such as SOCAN (Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada). Digital Content Management Services, in collaboration with RightsMarket, is providing an end-to-end system of protection, tracking, and reporting that will assure content owners that all uses of their materials are logged and reported. The end users/consumers of digital information are also represented in the OnDisC Alliance.

The OnDisC model addresses the challenges of:

• identifying and locating copyright holders;
• the difficulties of clearing on an individual basis when many holders of many different rights and types of material are involved (experienced, for example, by faculty, multimedia producers etc.);
• tracking use;
• encouraging the mediating role of the instructor, who, as with textbooks,  will select the digital content which their students will be asked to use; 
• and distributing appropriate payment.  

OnDisc is testing practical solutions to these issues and conducting research to help resolve them.

The basic features of the model may be divided into three key areas:

• Metering: Measuring usage will provide valuable information.

• Pricing: What is the relative price of different types of content?
• Distribution of Royalties/Income: How will we distribute it? Do we want distribution to be coupled, one to one, with content usage or not?

OnDisC aggregates the metadata (information about the content) so that users see a single unified catalogue that they can search, although the content materials are dispersed throughout the network. This distribution system is radically different from the way materials have been delivered in the past.

In proposing licensing on an institutional level, we parallel another instance of mediation. A good specific example is the college or university librarian selecting the electronic journals to make available within their institution. This provides a resolution to the problem that in the digital world, useful content comes at much smaller granularity than textbooks, and so -- if sold at retail to students, as textbooks are -- would require many transactions by the student.

The problem for the instructor in selecting from a large universe of digital items is obtaining useful "catalogue information" or metadata about the items, in a consistent form that can be used directly to describe the content to the end-users, the students. In the OnDisC model, the instructor's institution acts as a distributor of content licensed to it and provides a single catalogue for instructors.

At present, the educational setting provides the clearest examples of mediated distribution of digital content, but governments should expect other examples to become increasingly significant -- e. g., health information systems  in which health professionals develop and select content for patients;  legal  and fiscal information systems; government sites which create and select explanatory  content about regulatory and tax issues.

OnDisC is primarily a content distribution and use tracking system, not a payment service. The negotiation and payment of royalties to content owners will be done by collectives, producers, publishers, and other suppliers.

OnDisC is designed for intranets - digital networks with firewalls - that can control unwanted access from the Internet and that have enforceable agreements with users. Initially these will be at colleges and universities. But, the OnDisC network architecture can be easily extended to primary and secondary schools, governments, corporations, and even ISP intranets such as AOL, cable modem, or DSL networks. With digitization, all media take on the same format. OnDisC’s technology and business models have commercial application far beyond the scope of the demonstration project which is housed at Sheridan College and will be tested there and at The Canadian Film Centre.

Any efforts to develop a comprehensive solution should include five key elements, as suggested in the quotation cited at the beginning of this document:

1) Technology

2) Law

3) Economics

4) Public Awareness and Perception

5) Public Policy

We pose some questions and offer our key recommendations and principles:

The OnDisC Alliance framework provides a neutral "round table" around which content providers and users can negotiate the relative value of a page of text, a minute of music or video, and the like. This forum for content e-commerce on networks is a significant value of the Alliance, in addition to its distribution system and digital property management.

• We respectfully suggest that consideration be given to the question of how to encourage alliances such as that represented by OnDisc to facilitate copyright transactions for all parties.

Already, the OnDisC participants have created a content base for demonstration and testing purposes and the OnDisC E-Commerce Committee is researching and reviewing current and alternative business models. The OnDisC Board will make recommendations based on its experience in its June 2002 Report. Its recommendations will be based on real experience, with real content providers (commercial and non-commercial) in a real -time user environment in a Canadian context and will represent the consensus of all the participants--leaders in their respective fields--owners and users alike.

At this stage in the national debate about Canadian content distribution via the internet, there is significant value in this project for all players and interested parties. The OnDisC experience will provide invaluable information to current and future projects and creates, through its unique collaborative format, an essential foundation for ongoing discussions of copyright and other related matters. We welcome the opportunity to share our experience with all who are currently working to develop national models and national policies for distributing content online.

The OnDisC Alliance invites all content suppliers and users, governments and public and private institutions to join with us in designing an efficient, fair and effective system for all Canadian producers and users of digital content.