Formal response to the revised Project Canvas consultation
Today the BBC Trust published the additional information it had received from the BBC Executive regarding Project Canvas and re-opened the consultation until 1st September.
What follows below is my formal response to the revised consultation. I’ll leave this hanging around for a few days before submitting it to the trust, in the event that there’s a fatal flaw in my arguments, or have missed something obvious.
The revised consultation documents published today by the BBC Trust provide a much clearer picture of the BBC Executive’s intentions with respect to Project Canvas than the original consultation document. Essentially, the joint venture will have four primary areas of responsibility:
- Devising a set of technical standards which govern the project
- Developing a software platform for the project
- Managing and maintaining licensing of the Canvas brand
- Acting as gatekeeper for providers wishing to deliver content across the platform
With other broadcast media, there have traditionally been three primary aspects to consider: the technical standards which govern the format broadcasts must take and the means for broadcasting them, and responsibility for actually carrying the broadcasts (either directly, or through an intermediary), and regulatory compliance. In general, these three areas of broadcasting are (with some exceptions) distinct from one another—technical standards are devised by independent bodies, though with representation and input from industry; broadcasters enter into (either directly or otherwise) commercial agreements with those who own the broadcast infrastructure, and a regulatory regime governs the legal compliance processes.
This broad separation of responsibility has ensured that both competition and interoperability are not compromised. Where joint ventures and consortia have been entered into, it is typically due to high costs of implementation which must be shared between broadcasters in order to be cost-effective. For example, the costs of maintaining a terrestrial broadcasting system are high enough that one broadcaster cannot, in general, undertake the necessary financial commitments alone. In contrast, the costs of delivering content via the Internet are rarely prohibitive, even for a smaller business or sole trader. The primary purpose of an Internet operator is to make it possible for peers to exchange traffic with one another as cost-effectively as possible without compromising infrastructure.
It is not clear from the proposals why the BBC and its Project Canvas partners view it necessary to comingle these areas of responsibility with one another, and indeed doing so ultimately raises more questions than it answers.
Typically, in the contexts of standards processes relating to both the Internet and to broadcasting, technical standards are devised and maintained by broadly independent not-for-profit bodies, drawing from the experience of experts in the field. Creating these standards is not in itself a costly exercise—especially in terms of the standards which govern the Internet and many of the protocols which operate upon it, where experts’ time and resources are often freely donated thanks to a shared desire to advance the state of the art. Indeed, the original Project Canvas proposal document indicated the desire to draw upon existing standards where possible. As effective delivery of multimedia is an area of interest to a great many parties, various working groups have been formed and standards developed over the course of the past decade or so. The standards process insofar as Project Canvas is concerned, therefore, is not one of developing standards so much as agreeing upon which are suitable for the stated purpose, although it is true that where specifications relating to user experience are concerned (for the purposes of licensing the Canvas brand mark), these would need to be developed by the project itself. It should be noted that two partners in Project Canvas—the BBC and BT—are by no means strangers to the various standards processes which relate to their work.
Once a set of standards have been agreed upon, and they are agreed to be fit for purpose, then from a consumer protection and confidence perspective it does indeed make a good deal of sense to create a recognisable brand which can be used to refer to products and services which adhere to the standards. By way of a straightforward licensing process, existing trademark law makes ample provision for such an exercise—and provides adequate protection in the case of misuse—and the results tend to be good. Again, this operation is not one which is costly in and of itself (except perhaps temporarily, where legal action must be taken).
For the absence of doubt, it should be noted that the partners involved in Project Canvas quite clearly have a vested interest in seeing widespread adoption of a universal Internet-based delivery platform for both linear and on-demand content within the UK consumer marketplace, and yet what is not explained by the proposal and supporting documents is why these two—comparatively low-cost—areas of responsibility are not sufficient for the project.
For example, were the standards and licensing agreements to detail how a content provider must publish Electronic Programme Guide information, what format media streams should take, how they are transported, and so on, and also specify how compliant equipment must present its interface to the user, again which formats and publishing mechanisms are supported, and so forth, there is no obvious answer as to why this would be insufficient as a platform in and of itself: broadcasters (and would-be broadcasters) adhere to one part of the standards, and equipment manufacturers adhere to the other; service providers wishing to act as both parties can implement both parts as appropriate. This is the means by which the standard protocols of the Internet were developed and implemented, and is proven.
Initial consultation responses indicated concern with the level of control that the joint venture itself would exert over content and programme guide information. Given the updated information, the question is not whether the control exerted by the joint venture would be open-ended enough to allay concerns from competitors, but why such control is necessary at all—the presence of a gatekeeper in this context is indicative of an intention to develop a set of standards which run counter to established practice in both of the industries that Canvas seeks to marry to one another.
The documents make it clear that membership of the joint venture would, subject to financial constraints, be a broadly open-ended affair, and this is laudable; it is obvious (and, indeed, stated) that the financial constraints have been put in place to ensure effective cost-recovery. However, the costs of operation would be significantly lower if the venture did not have such ambitious and unnecessary goals to begin with. Similarly, the documents state that Canvas would require a license under the terms of the Broadcasting Act for its provision of EPG data to devices: yet, if devices were communicating with broadcasters directly, without the aid of Canvas acting as a gatekeeper, none of this would be necessary.
If the BBC and its partners wish to develop a system for broadcasting content across the Internet, then it is—of course—welcome to do so; if it wishes to engage with device manufacturers to ensure interoperability, it is welcome to do so; if it wishes to operate an Electronic Programme Guide service for its programming, it may do so. In the context of the Project Canvas proposal detail, it is evident that the Canvas partners do indeed wish to do so, and would stand to benefit from this. The question which remains is why these things are directly contingent upon one another and why the result—with its significant financial constraints—are being termed an open platform, when it is clear that its intention is to broadly maintain the status quo in terms of linear broadcasting, whereupon the barrier to entry is one of financial resource rather than talent and creativity.
Indeed, the notion that the project should be developing a software platform itself—where the primary benefactors, despite the indications to the contrary, are obviously the initial Project Canvas partners, not least thanks to its two-tier arrangement of linear and on-demand services—and then impose conditions upon further prospective partners in order to recuperate the costs in doing this is an affront to the competitive landscape the proposals ostensibly seek to create.
The proposals are, in short, deeply disappointing. By shunning the basic principles of both broadcasting and Internet architecture, Project Canvas seeks to ensure that rather than creating a true platform for innovation as would be fitting for both the BBC and BT, given their histories for doing so, that the barriers to entry afforded by physical limitations (such as spectrum allocation, laying cables, and satellite provisioning) are replaced by an artificial limitation and needless control.
Put simply, Project Canvas should concern itself with technical standards and branding, as many inferred from the original proposals; allow the national regulatory regime to deal with the legal aspects of linear broadcasting and electronic programme guide provision; and specify a user experience which allows for consumer choice. Failure to do this is likely to achieve the reverse of the stated aims, and, rather than creating a platform open to all those who adhere to the standards, instead create one which nobody wishes to take part in.
