Transcript: Lord Puttnam's speech

Speech
By Lord Puttnam of Queensgate, CBE.
As delivered at:
The Creative Archive Seminar,
28 Portland Place,
London W1,
Wednesday 13th April, 2005.

The Creative Archive

First of all it’s a pleasure to have been asked to speak to you this afternoon.

At the outset I should say that I’m here as a passionate advocate of public service content, and of the idea that access to that content is a fantastic tool for creative expression and learning. But I also speak as a rights holder –and although I’ve now retired from active film production I’m still the beneficiary of revenues from many of the films I’ve produced over the years.

I’m also someone who, having survived a somewhat awkward personal “digital switch-over� from the analogue world of the letterhead and the fountain pen, has grown very comfortable with the idea of the Web as an incredibly rich source of content. This is partially the result of my time chairing NESTA, and partly as a consequence of downloading literally hundreds of songs for my IPod.

So I need no persuading that the Creative Archive is an idea whose time has come, and I’m personally convinced we should be doing all we possibly can to support the efforts of those who are driving it forward.

But if we really are going to seize the potential of the digital world then we need to develop entirely new business models for delivering images, information and stories to audiences.

I stress new models because, as has proven to be the case in the commercial sector, those who succeed will be those who don’t just take an existing model of content delivery and plonk it online.

The key to really capitalising on the opportunity is going to be delivered by those who, with a leap of imagination, find the means to deliver compelling content in a way that plays to the specific strengths of the online world.

I think we’re only just beginning to explore what these models might look like – in the public and in the commercial sector.
At the moment most serious discussion around those new models is being inhibited by the fact that, whilst enormous amounts of energy are being expended to protect intellectual rights online, there hasn’t been anything remotely resembling that energy going into discussions around the use of digital technology to enhance access, and diversity.

The obsessive focus on the threat has continued to blind many to the opportunity. The commercial music industry has already paid a high price for that. The public sector cannot afford to make the same mistake.

This time it’s not just ‘revenues’ that are at stake, but a far bigger prize; the whole realm of “public interest� and a chance to radically enhance and enrich the lives of citizens across the UK – and, as I’ll argue a little later, potentially even beyond. That being the case we simply cannot allow the lazy dogma of the past to blind us to the possibilities now on offer to literally transform our collective future.

As a former film producer, I believe passionately in the concept, indeed the sanctity, of the creators’ rights. But I’ve long wanted to see similar commitment and imagination go into exploring a generous regime for sharing the treasure trove of knowledge that’s locked up in dusty vaults throughout the UK. And achieving that in a way that’s not just about passive consumption, but instead becomes a massive catalyst for creative collaboration and learning.

We have to achieve a defensible and sustainable balance between rights and access, and I don’t for one moment pretend that’s going to be easy – one reason being that much of the debate has become so fractious and shrill that it’s all but impossible to pursue a balanced and constructive discussion.

I sense that those involved with the Creative Archive know how important it is to get that balance right. They are not jumping on a bandwagon and demanding that content is just given away. But they understand that when public resources have been used to create content, then the overwhelming objective should be to maximise the benefit of that content to the people who helped pay for its creation in the first place.

The crucial issue for all sides is not to get trapped by short-term thinking. The opportunity here is a long-term one; we need to be thinking about the impact that digital technology is going to have on models for content creation and delivery 10, maybe even 15 years from now.

We’ve got to work on the basis that all our existing models around rights, windows, revenue splits are in play in the long-term. It may be a hazardous business predicting the future, but we can at least plan for change. That’s to say plan by being prepared to interrogate the most cherished assumptions we have about how content is made and how it gets to market.

With that in mind we need to come up with solutions which are “fit for purpose� in a longer timeframe, not just a series of “quick-fixes� which will inevitably amount to little more than a series of messy compromises.

For those of us who work primarily in the public sector that also means we have to think hard about the objectives we want to achieve through the exercise of public policy.

Public benefit, above private gain, must be the guiding principle that informs the use of content that is financed by the public purse. The Creative Archive is an opportunity to demonstrate that ethic in practice. It brings together four organisations, the BBC, the British Film Institute, Channel 4 and the Open University, all of whom are absolutely committed to the public interest.

Here in the UK we possess a truly extraordinary depth and breadth of intellectual resource which, if made more freely available, could be used to the benefit of citizens the length and breadth of the country – and I stress “length and breadth� because for me one of the real opportunities offered by initiatives such as the Creative Archive is the ability once and for all to reach down into the roots of local communities. This also offers the opportunity to create new communities of individuals, united by their interests rather than by their geography. Communities engaged with a huge variety of inspiring and engaging content.

So when my friend Greg Dyke first mooted the idea of the Creative Archive a couple of years ago, I for one, leapt at it with enthusiasm, not least because of its potential to deliver another step-change in the way that education and learning is delivered.

The ability for schools and young people especially to use video and audio ‘clips’ from creative work of all kinds can only be an enormous spur to innovation as well as to the development and training of new creative talent, by nurturing skills such as editing and sound production. It’s the equivalent of “clip art� but in a context that’s governed by a clearly-defined set of protocols.

The importance of skills learnt in this new world of the creative media goes far beyond their value to the medium itself. Creative people are curious about the world, they enjoy discovery, and they are generally better able to cope with uncertainty. It seems to me that all of these characteristics have value for every one of us as citizens in the early 21st Century.

The kind of creative engagement that I am talking about is also made easier by the fact that technology is driving down the price of equipment. To build a functioning television “studio� five years ago, cost between £800,000 and £1 million. To build and equip the same studio today would cost a quarter to a third of that. Put another way – you can go into Dixon’s and, for about £2500, buy a digital camera with better resolution than anything the BBC owned just five years ago.

The Archive will also help develop ‘media literacy’. Because at it’s heart media literacy is about empowering people by providing them with the creative skills, cultural awareness and critical knowledge which will help them to understand the way the media shapes the way in which we are all encouraged to view the world.
Its my opinion that encouraging creativity will also help people understand the value of Intellectual Property – both its potential financial value and its ability to contribute to broader public purposes.

In the past, much of the premium attached to IP rights was a natural consequence of its scarcity.

It is a far greater challenge to ensure that the value of IP is still respected in a world in which the IP itself is infinitely reproducible, frequently at zero marginal cost.

Unless citizens value IP it becomes all but impossible to maximise it’s potential to contribute to an equitable, prosperous and diverse society. The Creative Archive will, I believe, make a positive contribution in helping people across the UK to understand and appreciate that value.

Finally I’d like to say a word or two about the broader implications of how we treat IP in relation to disseminating knowledge and ideas to the benefit of people in other parts of the world.

As president of UNICEF here in the UK I’m keenly aware that this whole issue of how we treat intellectual property has enormous implications for our relationship with the developing world.

The sharing of creativity and knowledge in the form of IP must be at the heart of any approach to sustainable development on the broader international stage. I’m not at all comfortable with the idea that, in a sustainable interdependent world, any one nation could or should advance at the expense of others. Any nation that sets out to do that would soon discover that such a strategy is in the long-run, self defeating. It could also be represented as veering uncomfortably close to neo-colonialism.
We cannot once again drift into being the economic beneficiaries of the suffering of others, as if it were some irresistible “force of nature�.

The question of IPR and the developing world is a massive one. It was addressed by the report of the Commission on Intellectual Property Rights undertaken for the Department for International Development in 2002. Suffice to say these broader questions around the relationship between IPR and international development cannot just be pushed under the carpet.

As I said at the outset, I believe that the Creative Archive is an idea whose time has come.

In fact, in many ways people have been dreaming of it ever since the creation of moving images.

Not long after the birth of cinema, Thomas Edison, a man who knew a thing or two about the distribution of content and about protecting his Intellectual Property rights, predicted that the principle value of cinema would be as an educational tool.
As he put it:
"It may seem curious, but the money end of the movies never hit me the hardest. The feature that did appeal to me about the whole thing was the “educational� possibilities. I had some glowing dreams about what the camera could be made to do and ought to do in teaching the world things it needed to know - teaching it in a more vivid, direct way."

As it happened, within a decade of its invention, cinema had become established as above all a medium for story-telling and the development of moving images as an educational tool only really began to take shape with the birth of public service broadcasting. Only now, one hundred years after its invention is it being fully understood as a really powerful driver of learning.

The principles upon which the Creative Archive is based are fundamental to our future. Those principles are also intimately connected to the role that ideas, creativity and learning will play in the development of a genuinely sustainable ‘Knowledge Economy’.
The opportunity is enormous. It requires energy, vision and imagination to seize it.
But if we get it right with the Creative Archive, then the future really could be there for the taking.

Thank you very much for listening to me.

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