Task 2: Legal & Ethical constraints within the interactive media sector 10:10

My sector of research choice is Interactive media. I shall study this on how it impacts other sectors as the Interactive Media sector is very diverse and has a lot of impact on many other sectors.


Legal and ethical constraints in the Interactive Media sector include:

• The Computer Misuse Act 1990
• Data Protection Act 1998
• Privacy Law
• Copyright and intellectual property law
• Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
• Obscene publications act
• Social Issues and sensitivities
• Linguistic uses and accesibility
• Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C)
• Accesibility Standards
• Moral and Paternal rights
• Intellectual Property Ownership
• Appropriateness to audiences

 I shall focus on how these standards are put in to practice and shall study recent and notorious case-studies and how the standards came in to focus there.


The Computer Misuse Act 1990
The Computer Misuse Act of 1990 is a law in the UK which makes certain types of computer activity illegal. Some of the things that the act focuses on include the breach in to systems you do not have access to breach, the misuse of software for an unintended purpose, assisting somebody to gain access in to a network they do not operate including the access to protected files and directories.


The act is made in to three different sections and makes the following actions illegal under the computer misuse act:

• Unauthorized access to Computer Material.
• Unauthorized access to Computer Systems with intent to commit another offense.
• Unathorized modification of Computer Material.

The first section (Unauthorized access to Computer Material) makes it illegal for somebody to use somebody elses identification to access a system, use a service or to obtain data. This doesn't apply if you have access to use the identification.


The second section (Unauthorized access to Computer Systems with intent to commit another offense) is getting access to a system to commit or facilitate an offense. This covers things like sending a virus through an email application or other harmful material.


The third section (Unathorized modification of Computer Material) means you can't delete, modify or corrupt data files without permission from the authors and administrators of the files.


Data Protection Act 1998
The data protection act is a law that protects peoples personal privacy and holds their rights. It specifically relates to how data is stored, secured and released.


The act helps to make sure information on computers and paper systems is managed properly. The data must be protected using eight principles:

• Personal data shall be obtained and processed fairly and lawfully.
• Personal data shall be obtained only for one or more specified and lawful purposes, and shall not be further processed in any manner incompatible with that purpose or those purposes.
• Personal data shall be adequate, relevant and not excessive in relation to the purpose or purposes for which they are processed.
• Personal data shall be accurate and, where necessary, kept up to date.
• Personal data processed for any purpose or purposes shall not be kept for longer than is necessary for that purpose or those purposes.
• Personal data shall be processed in accordance with the rights of data subjects under this Act.
• Appropriate technical and organisational measures shall be taken against unauthorised or unlawful processing of personal data and against accidental loss or destruction of, or damage to, personal data.
• Personal data shall not be transferred to a country or territory outside the European Economic Area unless that country or territory ensures an adequate level of protection for the rights and freedoms of data subjects in relation to the processing of personal data.

The data protection act was an act created to protect peoples personal information thus allowing certain people to view such information in accordance with the eight principles listed above. The data protection act was passed through Parliament in 1998 and came in to law by 2000.


Privacy Law
This is more of a right than a law as there's not so much law guidelines on this. The earliest definition of privacy law was made by Judge Cooley who described it as "the right to be left alone". In interactive media there's not so much that this has influence on as its mostly a part of common law. It verges on to ethics and the best way to interpret this would be in the use of peoples personal data and making sure this is looked after as made clear by the data protection act. We could also imagine this in the way software uses GPS and to make sure that the user is aware if their GPS is writing their location data and make sure this doesn't get in to the wrong hands and is looked after with as much security as personal data would be treated.


Copyright and intellectual property law
Intellectual property is managed in different ways in the UK. In some laws already made its description is used to form a basis and clarify what is protected across other laws, this reflects in copyright laws. IP law gives an owner exclusive rights to cover their work. In the UK we have a govermental office called the IPO which is the Intellectual Property Office who manage the IP law and regulate IP ownership and issues.


Copyright law in the UK is available on items consisting of:

• Literary work
• Drama work
• Art work
• Musical work
• Typographical work
• Published work
• Sound recordings
• Film
• Broadcasts

The copyright length of somebodys work lasts the life of the author plus seventy years. There are different levels of copyright which have different levels of protection including Crown Copyright which is given out by royals or their serving officers to protect works through the British commonwealth and Parliamentary Copyright is control of work published by the houses of commons.

Case Study: Richard O'Dwyer - TVShack Creator

Richard O'Dwyer is the creator of TV Shack. He is 23 years old and is from Sheffield. TV Shack hosted links to downloads so visitors to his website could download this copyright protected content.

Richard O'Dwyer broken several US Laws and was prosecuted by US authorities after the US Government won an extradition case allowing Richard to be extradited and prosecuted in the USA. His website earned more than £147,000 in advertising revenues until the domain name was seized by US authorities in June of 2010.

Whilst he didn't break any UK laws, he broken USA laws and affected the citizens of the USA. The UK have a treaty with the USA allowing one anothers citizens to be extradited for further prosecution. This is becoming a lot more popular across cases involving the Internet and because there is no global moderation of the service it is left to a countries government to decide the best way of moving forward when laws have been broken.


Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
This act is made to protect creative work across a variety of platforms. The platforms that it protects content on includes:

• Literary, Dramatic & Musicals
• Artistic works
• Sound recordings and films
• Broadcast materials
• Cable programmes
• Published works

The act also includes something called the design right. This has two parts. If a design is not registered then it may be protected on regular copyright grounds. If the design is made, on a recorded paper copy at one point, and is registered for design protection, design right prevents people from immitating the design, where as copyright protects people from copying it. The difference is if I were to draw something on paper and later make this 3D, on copyright somebody could re-create the 3D object from an image to get the paper recorded copy, the design act is more in-depth.

Case Study: Yahoo sueing Facebook over ten patent infringements.

This week Yahoo announced that it was taking Facebook to court because Facebook infringed on ten patents that Yahoo own including systems for advertising online. Some of the patents include fraud prevention technologies and social networking technologies too.

In recent years patent purchases have been more of a business move than a practical move. Companies often buy patents that they may not use so they can charge licensing or litigate these matters in courts if people are not willing to pay the intellectual property owners license agreements.Obscene publications act
This act makes it illegal for anything to be shown which is depraved and corrupt, things like torture, necrophillia. If these acts are commited then the offender can face jail terms lasting six months for downloading this material, two years if you were involved producing the content or three years for downloading the material, containing and sharing it, this would include hostin the content or publishing it somewhere.


An example of this can be seen with a banne video game; Manhunt 2. The BBFC refused to classify the game (which they need by law to sell, meaning it's banned) but the developers changed much of the story and re-submitted to the BBFC where after an appeal was classified 18.


http://news.sky.com/home/technology/article/1298000


Social Issues and sensitivities
Sensitivities in Interactive media is of significant importance.


Interactive Media is the use of a computer based system which responds to the users actions.
If the user isn't able to interact with the system then something is clearly wrong. It is because of this that interactive media systems get put through extensive testing. I found WebAIM (Web Accesibility in Mind) which is a website that validates that usability of web pages.


I written a web page to test the systems validation. Screenshots follow.






Above you can see I have written six lines of HTML to test the bare minimum and how the system will respond to this. I believe that the system will pick the code up as having no problems, lets find out.




You can see above the output of the code 'Hello, my name is Gary' and you can see that WAVE has detected no accesibility errors in the code.

 A main test which WAVE helps with is Photosensitive epilepsy and how those users will be affected by the sites layout and content.


Social issues in interactive media covers the influence interactive media holds with its audiences and how that audience engages with the content provided.


BBC iPlayer must cover a majority of audiences from a young person wanting to watch the latest CBBC childrens show to an elderly gentleman who wants to watch his favourite BBC 2 documentary, the navigation and interactive content on iPlayer is the same.

The BBC implement a global masthead as a part of their global experience across BBC websites. This is documented by the BBC User Experience and Design division which created the GEL (Global Experience Language) document which outlines all design instructions to those designing interactive content for the BBC's family of websites. Below you can see I have taken an extract of the documentation surrounding the global masthead which supports the User Interface on BBC iPlayer and its consitency.

 Linguistic uses and accesibility


The language on 4oD is different depending on the content. As we would see on an EPG (Electronic Programme Guide) we have the description of what is being shown, summarised. I shall compare the use of linguistics in the marketing on 4oD of 'Britain's Trillion Pound Horror Story' with that of 'Hollyoaks'. The content will clearly have different descriptions as they are not the same, are different target audiences but further than this, the audiences will interact in different ways.

The first thing I notice comparing the description is that there's three paragraphs, a lot more description than is used in Hollyoaks. I would say the target group for this programme is middle class and upper working class, ages of between 25 to 50's, quite vast but I imagine the documentary is targetted more towards the social class. In the first paragraph we get the background to the show, and what it is all about. This is perhaps the most important paragraph as if an audience doesn't like whats in here they will not continue reading the description. In the second paragraph we are told what the programme is actually doing. In the third paragraph we get a summary of what the programme is about and what we can expect. I imagine this paragraph being written for educated users because of the use of keywords like "polemical'. To end the description we have a sentence on how viewers can engage and get their opinion across about the programme, there's a rhetorical question asking our opinion and this is then answered allowing the audience to engage on-site with the comments section or on Twitter with a hashtag supplied to us.

You can see in this description that we have two paragraphs and only one which is actually to do with the programme. The first paragraph gives us an overview of what the programme is about and specifically mentions the characters in the show. I think that the audience of Hollyoaks would not read too much in to a description because the show is a soap opera so this would spoil the story for them if they were to read a lot on this. The second paragraph is in regards to subjects covered in the programme. Because this is a soap opera, it aims to cover real life issues and demonstrate these issues in the programmes format, there is a URL provided for viewers to find out more on this information.


Accesibility
The Internet is hugely popular in todays society, more and more webmasters are making sure that their content is available and accesible for people of all different abilities. Guidelines are published concerning this on W3's website and as previously covered in social issues, through the use of WebAIM.


W3 is the organisation who manage the standards of the web and their name stands for The World Wide Web Consortium. W3 provide services to validate web pages with the language they were written in. W3 also publish information on making your website accesible.


I am going to validate my personal website to ensure it is valid Hypertext Markup Language. I wrote my website in HTML 5 which is still being developed and expanded upon by the W3 Consortium. See the screenshot below in W3C section.

  
W3C - World Wide Web Consortium


The consortium is a group made up of full-time staff, member organizations and the public all work together with the inventory of the web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee. The mission of the W3C is to lead the web to its full potential.


They create a set of standards to make the web accesible and to make it work as imagined by the consortium. You can see my use of the W3C validator above this in testing my own website which passed the validation test for HTML5.

See the validation.

Accesibility Standards


The W3 Consortium publish information including accessibility guidelines for web content and they also have a whole site for the Web Accessibility Initiative which gives case studies on how to improve your content with lots of helpful information for making your content more accessible.


Below are the Web Content Accessibility guidelines as reccommended by W3C, In italics is my explanation of the guidelines.

1. Provide equivalent alternatives to auditory and visual content.
   This means when you are giving out information, try to use different formats, like podcasts, videos or images.
2. Don't rely on colour alone.
   This guideline is more to do with design, if you use only colour then this will be difficult for people with vision impairments to use and see.
3. Use markup & style sheets and do so properly.By markup the guidline means HTML, make sure all of the code functions as intended. In the style sheets make sure all the code is working with the markup across all of your pages and provide alternate styles if you feel people with vision impairments would have difficulty seeing as default.
4. Clarify natural language usage.In your markup, make sure all punctuation and glyphs display correctly. An example of what this is, in your markup do not enter the ampersand ( & ) you should enter " & " as the code to display an ampersand.
5. Create tables that transform gracefully.
   In your markup label any tables you might have correctly so different user-agents are able to access the data held in them.
6. Ensure that pages featuring new technologies transform gracefully.
   This guideline means making sure that your tables work well in most browsers.
7. Ensure user control of time-sensitive content changes.This guideline will affect visitors with cognitive or visual disabilities. If a text is moving or moving quite quickly then those with cognitive or visual disabilities may become distracted and they may not be able to read this information.
8. Ensure direct accessibility of embedded user interfaces.Make all of your content accesible as intended at its raw production. If you are using embedded information and something happens to result in this embedded data not displaying, have an alternative solution for the content.
9. Design for device-independence.
   Ensure that your content works as intended. Think of users who shall be interacting with the content without a pointing device, perhaps using voice input or a keyboard.
10. Use interim solutions.
    This guideline refers to older browsers, when implementing new technologies, make sure you have a work around for those using older browsers.
11. Use W3C technologies and guidelines.This guideline refers to making sure all of your markup is validated by W3 and if you're not able to then make sure that alternative content is provided for these unvalidated areas of markup. Also, ensure that accessibility guidelines are followed as reccommended.
12. Provide context and orientation information.
    This guideline asks you to provide instructions for complex pages and features.
13. Provide clear navigation mechanisms.
    Make sure that navigation systems are simple and understandable to navigate. Also provide a site map if possible.
14. Ensure that documents are clear and simple.If a document is clear and simple, it will be understood by the user interacting with the content.

As a real world practice many organisations implement their own set of standards if they're a large corporation which branches off from the W3 standards in supporting the brand image.


The BBC is a great example of this. They are a modern day British broadcaster who represent every day life in the United Kingdom. The BBC as we have seen their GEL documents cover everything design related but focuses entirely on the design and not so much on accessibility directly. The BBC have another set of documentation for this and created the guideline of 'Future Media Standards and Guidelines'. The guidelines are written in regards to the publishing of content and how the content is accessed. The guidelines surround implementing alternative content to all core content unless it can be proven practically or technically impossible to creating alternative text for all images, where they even have another set of guidelines for this.


The BBC take their accesibility so far that they implement it in their websites markup using RDFa (Resource Description Framework - in attributes). It is a W3C reccommendation which adds a set of attribute level extensions to XHTML markup. RDFa is great for large websites to use and offers five benefits in implamentation:

1. It allows each website to use its own set of standards.
2. It allows the re-use of data, RDFa will not duplicate data it doesn't need to.
3. It allows the data to be self-contained. The markup is kept seperately from the RDF.
4. The structure is modular and attributes in the RDF are re-usable.
5. It evolves with the site. Attributes can be added to the RDF and the markup can extract this data.

The BBC website is Valid XHTML and RDFa, validated by W3 Validator.

Moral and Paternal rights

Paternal rights are for the author of the protected content, this can not be a transferred right when getting protection as an author except on death.

Paternal rights were bought in to law as a part of the Copyright, design and patents act of 1988. Paternal rights is for only an author of content, content created as a piece of work for a client or employer as the client or employer becomes the content owner and is not protected by this law, but other laws including copyright laws.

Moral rights is the right for creators of copyrighted works to have the right of attribution over their work. This includes the publishing of work anonymously or pseuonymously. The rights were first recognized by France and Germany and is now a part of EU law. The copyright holder does need to add an assertion to their work in most cases, this is usually seen on a beginning page in books.

Intellectual Property Ownership

Intellectual property ownership is a type of intellectual property that's obtained as a result of grant or registration through assigning the right to another body.

In the United Kingdom, the body that is responsible for governing Intellectual Property Ownership is the Intellectual Property Office (IPO). They are a government body responsible for Intellectual property (IP) and the IP rights they govern include:

• Patents
• Designs
• Trade marks
• Copyright

Each year the IPO publish a report with what they have done over the year so the public have a greater idea over the types of things that they do.

Appropriateness to audiences

The appropriateness of a product to an audience is something used consistently through the development of an interactive product. If an interactive product is not engagable with its audience then it is not an interactive product, because its audience can not interact with it.

We can see design playing a huge role in this and often simplicity is key. I am going to compare the navigation of two websites with the same purpose.

I am going to compare two very different websites, both sell fabric online.

Cheap fabrics has a smart navigatable page with a navigation at the side of the page that is consistent through out the website. They have an interactive applet in the page centre and a special navigation in a set of squares at the right which has features in the spaces. The page also has a search facility and a live help support option to chat with site speicialists live. The site is using white purple, green and grey as its main colour scheme. Purple to draw attention, green for highlights and the logo, white is the background colour and grey is used with the pages type.

Fabric Land has a very old design despite it being regularly updated. I found a lot of broken elements on the site including navigatable manu's and hyperlinks. The website makes use of a lot of animated GIF images which are distractive to cognitive users. The pages navigation is to the left which is natural as this is where users read from but it is hard to use as it isn't stratisfied like Cheap Fabrics and has a link for every product and does not have one style for this. Across the website the design changes a lot and there is no consistancy. I did not find any interactive elements on the page.

Comparing the two websites, I found Cheap Fabrics to be used as more of an eCommerce website and is more focused on the end user and generating sales. Whereas Fabric Land has just added a lot of information about the product over the company itself. The webmasters of each company are able to use their websites however they like but I find Fabric Land to not be fit for purpose as a website because it is very far behind the modern day standards of web practise.

Producing Task 1: Apple iBooks 16:21

As part of the brief we need to make a consumable product out of Task 1. Besides the blog post which was where I compiled all of the necessary information to complete this, I have created all of my work in to an electronic and interactive book.

I created the book using the iBooks Author software. This would allow me to create this in a format so iPod touch's, iPhones and iPads could consume the book. I created it to be best consumed on an iPad and this is what I shall showcase my product on.

Below is the video of me demonstrating the application in the 'iBooks Author' software.

Above is a screenshot of my final, completed product in its editing platform; iBooks Author.

The process of exporting the iBook was simple:

I was then able to export the iBook to my device for testing.

I selected my iPad from the option tray.

I waited a while until the iBook was exported to my device. About a minute.

The iBook was exported to my iBook App on my iPad. It is ready for reading.

Now to check my iPad.

The document is being synced to my iPad.

The display is updating on my iPad.



There's a tag saying 'Proof' because I have synced the book directly from my computer. This would appear as a regular book if I was to add this to the iTunes book store, because this is my coursework I thought it would be best not to offer this as a public download.





The table of contents is basically what the screenshots above this are. The glossary is explained later.



The iBook allows the user to add notes, the top left circled item is a search facility for the entire iBook, allowing the user to search for a word or phrase in the iBook. The second larger circle is where highlights and notes would appear the user has added.



The circled area is a search facility, allowing the user to search for a word in the glossary. The other arrows explain the order of how the glossary works.



In the pink you can see an interactive picture, focusing the user on the ITV Player app. In the blue you can see an interactive gallery, allowing the user to pinch and zoom to go full screen and swipe to the left and right to move images, or by tapping on the thumbnails.



Unit 7: Task 1 - Structure and Ownership of the Interactive Media Sector 10:04

Task 1

Because the interactive media industry is quite vast for Task 1 I shall concentrate on Interactive Media under the umbrella of the Television Industry.

BBC iPlayer

Release: 25 December 2007
Locale: United Kingdom, Radio Services available overseas
Type: BBC Television & Radio Catch-up service
Address: http://bbc.co.uk/iplayer

BBC iPlayer is a part of the BBC Trust making this service a public media service. The full service is limited to the United Kingdom as this is where the BBC operate under it's TV License, however, it does offer its radio services on iPlayer worldwide.

The service recognises a British IP Address and only allows people with an Internet Protocol address from the UK to access the full system. Overseas radio is available but only via a computer, other devices can't access BBC iPlayer Radio overseas. In some Western European countries the service is available with sponsorship and advertisements. In these western european countries who have BBC iPlayer, other content from different broadcasters is also available such as ITV's Primeval series and Channel 4's Misfits.

As this is part of the BBC it is imortant that its reach is as much as possible, and BBC iPlayer is available on most technology devices. BBC iPlayer is available on:

• Windows, Mac OS and Linux computer systems
• iOS, Android, Blackberry OS, and Symbian Phone Systems
• Nintendo Wii, PlayStation 3 games systems
• Virgin Media, FreeSat, SkyGo, TalkTalk, BT Vision and Fetch TV television services

As well as this iPlayer is availabe in English, Welsh and Scottish Gaelic.

Despite common belief a TV License is not needed to view programmes on BBC iPlayer after they have been broadcast. The only exception with this is you do need a TV License to view BBC's Channels live.

BBC Trust have an application for BBC iPlayer in the iPad app store so viewers can download and watch content on their portable devices. The app is the second most popular Television Catch-Up application in the store, beaten by VOD supplier Netflix and this is because Netflix only launched in the UK Monday this week (9 Jan 2012). See screenshot below.

The iPlayer service is ran by the BBC who in turn are funded by the BBC Trust which is the company behind the management of the license fee money and review the spending and value for money on behalf of those who pay license fee's. Other income from the service is from airing commercial advertisements from iPlayer's services outside of the UK.

ITV Player

Release: 13 December 2008
Locale: England
Type: Television Catch-up
Address: http://itv.com/itvplayer

ITV Player is a part of ITV PLC who are broadcasters with several channels available on anologue and digital services in England. The ITV Network was formed by the merger of Granada Television and Carlton Communications. ITV owns smaller franchises such as 'Central Independent Television: Midlands' who broadcast ITV Services in the Midlands including regional programming like 'Central Tonight'. Programmes made by these franchises do not appear on the ITV Player platform but are available outside of ITV Player on the ITV Local website which all of these franchises have access to.

ITV were the latest to bring out an on demand platform for their content and even nowthey don't promote the service a huge deal. I think for ITV that they are comfortable with their broadcasted content as they always have lots of their content in BARB's weekly charts, there only nearest competitor is BBC 1 and besides the BBC 1 they are well ahead of the rest. But with the way consumers are using media, this could possibly end badly for ITV but their current demand platform works well and is updated.

Fun Fact
In lots of ITV Programmes the black and white spinning shape can be seen in the top corners thirty seconds before cutting to a commercial break, this is so that ITV's local studio franchises can output regional commercial sets.

ITV Player like BBC and all television networks want maximum reach out of their catch up platform, ITV Player service is available on the following digital devices:

• BT Vision, FreeSat, Virgin Media television services
• PlayStation 3 Games Console
• Android, iOS mobile devices
• Windows, Mac OS and Linux computer systems

ITV Player is only available in English.

ITV do not syndicate any of their content to other Video on Demand providers like YouTube. They have been known to do this under Virgin Media's online TV Player but this requires an additional license for the consumer on top of theor Virgin Media Subscription. Another example of them negotiably syndicating is distributing a handful of their original programmes with BBC iPlayer in their western-european reach, although this is most likely to see the popularity among these countries as ITV have the potential to launch their services abroad if they so wish.

ITV PLC have an iPad app for ITV Player and at time of writing (12 Jan 2012) this app is currently the seventeenth most popular free iPad application in the iTunes App store. The app is the fifth most popular app in the store for Television catch-up, beaten by broadcasting competitors BBC, Channel 5 and Channel 4 and VOD supplier Netflix. See screenshot below.

ITV is owned by ITV plc, STV Group plc and UTV Media. ITV is the major commercial public service TV Network in the UK. Since the Broadcasting Act of 1990, the stations legal name has been 'Channel 3' which has no meaning other than distinguishing it from the other five analogue channels as the number 3 was assigned to ITV 1 when analogue TV's were furst tuned at frequency. ITV run the ITV Player service and it includes commercials on the service itself which goes to ITV. Advertisements can be found on the bottom right of pages on ITV Player. In a 46 minute programme which would fill an hour on air include 5 commercial breaks, each consisting of three 30-second advertisements which are ran by ITV who profits from the service.

ITV have been actively embracing their ITV Player service. On Monday 16 January 2012 ITV bought all of the advertising spots on TV Guide UK, the most popular online TV magazine website in the UK. All advertising spots were taken over as well as the sites design being taken over to fit in with their advertising campaign based on a painter stopping his work to take a break and watch ITV Player. I think this is an excellent opportunity because everybody who is going to the TV Guide website are looking for entertainment content and for something to watch on television. This lets TV Guide's readers know that ITV Player is here and how to view it with silhouettes of different devices that the service is available on. See screenshot above and below.

Sky Go

Release: 25 November 2006

Locale: UK & Ireland
Type: Television Catch-UP & Video On Demand
Address: http://go.sky.com/

Sky Go (Also knowsn as Sky Player, Sky Anytime PC and Sky By Broadband). It's catch up content includes BBC's selection of content which is available to everybody even without a Sky Subscripton. Further than providing catch-up services from Sky Channels and channels who broadcast using Sky, Sky Go provides hundreds of programmes and films in which the line up is not influenced by Sky Channels, making the service similar to Netflix or Lovefilm.

Sky Go want their subscribers to have the branded Sky experience everywhere by providing them with their entertainment further than the television, this will keep their subscribers more happy. Sky Go is available on the following digital devices:

• Xbox video game system
• Windows, Mac OS and Linux computer system
• iOS handheld systems (iPad, iPod touch, iPhone)
• Vodafone, Orange & T-Mobile 3G service providers
• An Android application is expected this year (2012)

Sky Go is only available in English.

Sky Go have an iPad application and at time of writing (12 Jan 2012) this application ranks at 24th most popular free iPad application in the iTune app store. The app allows for existing subscribers to watch catch up television from Sky Channels as well as a whole host of on demand content and films from Sky Box Office. The app is sixth popular television catch-up but is also one of the longest in the app store, BSkyB have a huge customer base in the United Kingdom and I feel a lot of their customer base would have an iPad so perhaps they are not marketing this application too well, but the app is in the charts and the app has a huge reach across other devices. Because subscribers may only register one device with their Sky account this could be that their customer base don't like to watch video in the iPad. See screenshot below.

More than the Sky Go application, BSkyB also have an application for their Sky Sports services. The app is called 'Sky Sports News' and is currently the most popular free iPad app in the UK iTunes app store. The app requires you to have a sky subscription with sky sports for free use or for £4.99 per month you can use all of the apps features without subscribing to Sky Television. The app makes the subscription to Sky Sports more appealing and provides greater satisfaction as it brings all of the latest sports news directly to your device as well as bringing notifications for your favourite sports teams. See screenshot below. 

The majority of subscribers will go through Sky's TV Services but with the SkyGo service open on more platforms there's more demand for this service, which is available at a monthly fee with no contract and all is streamed to a device of your choice. SkyGo does not run commercial breaks or any advertisements on any of its services. The monthly SkyGo pass starts at £15 per month and its highest SkyGo pass is £40 per month.

British Sky Broadcasting Group plc (who are mostly known as BSkyB and trade under 'Sky') own the SkyGo service and it comes packaged with all Sky TV packages or you can buy a monthly pass to access the service without a contract or satellite dish. News Corp currently owns 39.1% of BSkyB and completely own Sky Italia. Competition for ownership of BSkyB has been a common thing, News Corp were prepared for a full take-over of BSkyB but dropped this on fears of BSkyB's share price falling after News Corp's issues regarding News of the World. BSkyB also own a 17.9% stake in ITV, this attracted anger from competitor Richard Branson who owns the Virgin Group.



 Channel 4 on Demand - 4oD

Release: November 2006

Locale: England

Type: Television Catch-up

Address: http://www.channel4.com/programmes/4od

Channel 4 launched their on demand platform in November 2006, the same month as Sky launched their Sky Go service; known in November 2006 as Sky By Broadband. Content on the service is from all of Channel 4's franchises including More4, E4 and Channel 4 archives, although some content isn't available because of access rights. 4oD runs across lots of different services including services which require a set-top box like Virgin Media and IPTV where online only a browser is required on 4oD and SeeSaw. Channel 4 have also licensed some of their content to NetFlix which launched in the UK Monday this week (9 Jan 2012), BlinkBox (VOD Provider) and YouTube.

Along with all commercial broadcasters, Channel 4 and their shareholders want to get maximum reach and profit from their content, they are funded through advertisements, so getting a large reach is crucial for any modern day broadcaster, 4oD is available on the following digital devices:

• BT Vision. TalkTalk, Virgin Media, YouView television platforms.
• PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 video game systems.
• iOS Devices (iPad, iPod and iPhone)

4oD is only available in English, this is because the broadcaster operates under this language and is the largest spoken language across all of the UK, where Channel 4 operates.

Channel 4 have an iPad application and at time of writing (12 Jan 2012) this app is currently 13th most popular app and is fourth most popular app for TV Catch-up services, beaten by Netflix, BBC iPlayer and Channel 5. See screenshot below.

Channel 4 is a publicly owned broadcaster which was originally a subsidiary of Independent Broadcasting Authority, even though Channel 4 is largely commercially self-funded. Channel 4 are now owned by 'Channel Four Television Corporation' which is a public body who have been operating since 1993. Channel 4 own the 4oD service and the service runs advertisements which Channel 4 run.

4oD is funded by Channel 4 who profit from the service by running commercial breaks in their programming on the service. If the programme is sponsored by an advertiser then the advertiser gets a small banner embedded in the web page of the programme next to the player. At the beginning of a 48 minute programme which would fill one hour on air, one, minute long advertisement is shown followed by a four second long ident and if the programme is sponsored, a 10 second long sponsor message. There is only one other commercial break in the programme.

Channel 5 - Demand 5

Release: 26 June 2008

Locale: England

Type: Television Catch-Up

Address: http://www.channel5.com/demand5

Channel 5 launched their on demand service later than a lot of their competitors in June of 2008 but weren't the latest. In 2008 Channel 5 took a rebrand, besides launching a new line-up of shows, a new logo from the lower case 'five' to 'FIVE' they were in desperate need of change with global economies failing and businesses going in to administration, Channel 5 had to attract a new wave of viewers an they have been specifically appealing to teenagers and younger audiences since 2008; their Video on Demand service is a huge part of this as teenagers and young adults consume television in different ways, students who don't own TV licenses may use on demand services and ofcourse when they're out and about or not in control of the television.

Channel 5 got took over in 2010 where the station was rebranded to appeal more to teenagers and young adults. This seen Channel 5 launch their on demand platform across lots of different medias including the mobile applications including many which its competitors have not yet released any services on. Demand 5 is available on the following digital devices and services:

• Facebook
• YouTube, TV.com & SeeSaw VOD distributor websites
• BT Vision, Virgin Media, YouView, Bravia Internet Video & Samsung Smart TV television platforms
• Xbox 360 gaming system
• iOS Devices (iPhone, iPod and iPad)

The services above launched in 2010 include the Virgin Media services, TV.com and Facebook. 

The Facebook launch is very interesting because Channel 5 are the first broadcaster to have done this, in the world. This brings Demand 5 to Facebook's 26 million UK users. Further than bringing the on demand content to Facebook, they are actively embracing Facebook's huge user base. As Channel 5 recently got broadcast rights from Endemol to broadcast 'Big Brother UK' Channel 5 have created a Facebook application where users are able to purchase Facebook credits to vote for 'housemates' in the show.

Demand 5 is only available in English, like Channel 4 this is where it operates; England.

I mentioned earlier how Richard Desmond has made lots of changes with Channel 5 once he took over and the On_Demand platform being opened up was one of his key changes as this really expanded their share in the On-Demand area. At time of writing the Demand 5 iPad app is the twelfth most popular application in the free iPad apps on the UK iTunes store. The app is more popular than rivals Sky, ITV and Channel 4. The app is mostly negatively reviewed but I see reviews in the iTunes app store rather flawed as people only seem to review when an app is bad and not so many reviews for applications being well made, screenshots below.

Channel 5 is owned by Northern & Shell after Richard Desmond bought the broadcaster on 23rd July 2010 where the name changed from 'Five' to 'Channel 5' with new visuals and idents which went live from January 2011. Channel 5 run the 'Demand Five' service which has been running since June 2008 and did not have its name changed in the takeover. Commercials are ran on the service during video and on web pages which Channel 5 operate.

Channel 5 run the Demand 5 service and profit from it. Advertisements are ran by Channel 5 on the service. On the programme page of a 42 minute long programme which would fill an hour on television there are three embedded advertisements on the page, one being a 'sponsored by' advertisement which all programme pages do not have. The service runs x commercial breaks during the 42 minute long programme each of which lasts for 105 seconds which consists of three advertisements each lasting thirty seconds and a sponsor message of 15 seconds, which all programmes do not have. There's a total of four commercial breaks including the first.

Netflix

Release: (UK) January 9 2012

Locale: Caribbean, Mexico, Central & South America, UK & Ireland.

Type: VOD (Video on Demand) *Video Rental in Central America

Address: http://netflix.com/

Netflix launched here in the United Kingdom this week, Monday 9th January 2012. The service offers unlimited streaming across a wide range of digital devices. Whilst Netflix isn't a broadcaster I felt with its huge press launch in the UK this week and its impact on our broadcasters that it should be necessary to cover this VOD service. In 2011 Netflix reported $1.5 billion in revenue, 23.6 million subscribers and 2180 full time employees (2010).

Netflix started in the entertainment industry as a video rental service offering video tapes, they launched their website the following year but only to order video rentals, not to view online as the technology and internet speeds at this time would not be able to handle video streaming. Netflix still offer the ability to rent DVD's via US Mail in the USA. An idea of how big Netflix is in the USA, their instant streaming of videos accounted for 27.71% of aggregated bandwidth traffic in North America, making them the largest traffic source, bigger than Facebook and Google.

In the UK, companies mnake deals with film distrubutors for access and broadcast rights to new films and programmes when they are ready for being shown on different levels. Levels include restricted premium access like Sky Box Office, then On Demand for services like LoveFilm or Sky Go and then there's subscription based broadcast which includes services like Sky Movie Channels. The issue for Netflix is that Sky and LoveFilm have deals with all the major film distributors in the United Kingdom so Netflix won't be seeing any big name films for a while or until they can secure a deal with the vendors.

Netflix is available on lots of devices, as this is a monthly subscription and users aren't held in a contract it is important for Netflix keep their customer base happy, their streaming service is available on the following devices:

• Apple TV, Boxee Box, Logitech Revue, Popbox, Roku and TiVo set top boxes
• Insignia, LG, Panasonic, Phillips, Samsung and Sony home theatre systems, blu ray systems and interactive televisions.
• Western Digital, Seagate Live Media Players
• Microsoft Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii gaming systems
• Microsoft Windows and Mac OS Computer systems
• Android, iOS and Windows Mobile phone systems
• Windows Media Centre, Plex, PlayOn, MediaPortal, Boxee software systems

Netflix is available in Mexico, America, North & South and some European speaking countries. Language alternatives include Latin America.

With people consuming films in different ways, accessibility to entertainment has never been so popular, everybody wants to be entertained whether it be in their work breaks or their daily commute, if you are able to fulfil this then your customer base will have greater satisfaction, a new medium people are using to view films is through iPad portable tablets. Netflix launched in the UK iPad app store Monday this week (9 Jan 2012) and the app is currently number 6 most popular in the Top Free of the app store charts. The app has beaten all competition in the VOD category but the most likely reason the app is at number 6 is with its recent high press focused launch, it will be interesting seeing if the app can maintain position in the app store charts in the coming months with its competition from VOD supplies LoveFilm and SkyGo. See screenshot below.

Netflix is owned by itself and has shareholders. Netflix publish shareholder information of big shareholders on its Investor Relations site. Its largest shareholder at time of writing (16 January 2012) is Technology Crossover Management, followed by Reed Hasting who is CEO of Netflix; this information can be found on Netflix's Insider Ownership page.

The service is funded by its user-base who subscribe to the service for £5.99 per month without a contract. There are no advertisements that run through the service. Users are able to get a 30 day free trial to the service which requires a credit card to activate, this does however set up a direct debit which becomes active after the 30 day free trial.

LoveFilm

Release: October 2003 (as LoveFilm - formerly 'Screen Select')

Locale: Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom

Type: VOD (Video on Demand) and Video Rental

Address: http://lovefilm.com/

LoveFilm was formerly known as 'Screen Select', is a subsidiary of Amazon and is built up from mergers of other rental companies including 'Online Rentals Limited', 'ScreenSelect' and 'Video Island'. LoveFilm also operate white-label services on behalf of other companies including CD-WOW, Sofa Cinema, WHSmith Movie Direct, Tesco DVD Rental, EasyCinema, Odeon Direct and Nectar DVD Rental.

Amazon acquired full control of LoveFilm on January 20th 2011 from being the largest shareholder of LoveFilm in 2008. Lovefilm have become the leading VOD/video rental service in Europe and they will have to make efforts to keep this role with new competitors including Netflix, SkyGo, YouTube movie rentals and Tesco's BlinkBox service. Making efforts on this, the service is available on the following digital devices:

• iPad
• Sony PlayStation 3
• Sony Bravia TV's and Blu Ray systems
• Samsung TV's and network media systems
• Cello TV systems
• Digital Stream set top boxes.

LoveFilm is available in English, German, Swedish and Dutch.

LoveFilm like most of their competitors like to keep their customers subscribed and a key part to success in the VOD sector is providing movies on the go. LoveFilm is available on iPad and is currently the 37th most popular app in the free iPad apps. This is the lowest ranking popular video on demand application and was released on the 30th September 2011 but LoveFilm have had success before the iPad app, perhaps LoveFilm's audience are not interested in the iPad app. Screenshot below.

LoveFilm International Ltd is a subsidiary of Amazon. This began in February 2008 when LoveFilm acquired Amazon's DVD rental service in the UK and German markets, as a result of this, Amazon became LoveFilm's largest shareholder. In January 2011 Amazon announced that they have acquired LoveFilm and will take full control of the company.

LoveFilm offer six different prices which start from 2 DVD's per month and no streaming, up to 3 DVD's at a time with unlimited streaming and unlimited films TV & Games between £4.99 and £14.99. The service doesn't run any advertisements.

Comparing LoveFilm with VOD vendors SkyGo and Netflix.

When LoveFilm is compared to competition from other Video On Demand vendors like SkyGo and Netflix, the pricing structure is incredibly diverse and offers plans suitable for all consumers. To compare with Netflix: Netflix only offer online streaming but they do allow an unlimited amount of this, Netflix don't have any exclusive deals with any major distributors yet as LoveFilm and Sky have these in place. Comparing the service with SkyGo may in some ways be wrong because all TV subscribers of Sky get this service inclusive and in-line with what packages they have subscribed for. Of course Sky do also offer the subscription to the SkyGo service from £15 which includes unlimited streaming of movies as well as to lots of different channels and catch-up television exclusive to Sky. I imagine that all of the companies will have a profitable product range otherwise the long term success of these products wouldn't have happened. I think that the issues in this changing is between LoveFilm and Netflix as their territories have never collided before and now they are both competing in the same space, in the UK. If we are to concentrate the profits after overhead costs have been paid for then out of all the companies I would believe that Netflix UK has the most profit out of these because they have not had to pay for any major deals with film distributors in the UK as Sky and LoveFilm both have these set up already. This of course is just an observation and to compare data from the previous year in this category would be unfair because Netflix were not operating in the UK in 2011.

Comparing ITV Player's Advertising Structure with Demand 5

Both broadcasters both offer a rough guide to advertising on their networks. There is no specific advertising information regarding ITV Player's platform or for Demand 5's platform. Through some research I see that the advertisements on ITV have all been placed on television at some point, my guess for advertising on the player service is if a programe has performed badly the contract will work on ITV Player allowing the agreed exposure, or, ITV Player is added as an extra for ITV's advertisers who can afford to advertise on television. ITV provide a lot of example advertising spot costs. Advertising in the day time across the UK ITV Platform (All regions) would cost around £43,243 at around 21:30 during a movie or drama. ITV costs are higher during ITV signature broadcasts like Coronation Street. Advertising on Channel 5 across the UK in their 'peak' would cost around £17,000. On the Demand 5 platform there is not any example costs for advertising just on the Demand 5 platform, I see Channel 5 are using an advertising company to manage their banner advertising for them. This is the adverts you see two of on each programme on Demand 5. This company is Flashtalking who serve intelligent adverts amongst other interactive banner adverts. The sponsor message I feel would be included in the contract an advertiser would hold with Channel 5 from when sponsoring an advertisement. The adverts which play with the Channel 5 content have all been shown on television, I imagine the same tactic is used as ITV either as an extra or to serve the contract requirements. Channel 5 advertising information is here.

Comparing Customer Bases of SkyGo, LoveFilm and Netflix.

Lovefilm: 2 million subscribers across five countries

Netflix: More than 20 million subscribers across six countries

Sky: More than 10.3 million subscribers in the UK

The above figures are all released figures from the companies themselves, if you click the statistics you will see the public information from each companies corporate website. If all of these companies are being compared in the Video On Demand sector then we see Netflix has the largest customer base, the difference is that Netflix operate across six different countries including the USA. If we are to compare the statistics against the UK and Ireland populations then we see Sky have the highest amount of numbers because they only operate in the UK and Ireland. There's lots of similarities between these companies, perhaps most of all is that they like to be entertained but I think a key difference is the price and reach of each of these companies. When LoveFilm first launched in 2002 this was a new initiative and was never seen before. LoveFilm launched from first becoming several different companies and first began offering DVD like Netflix. LoveFilm managed to fill this new found gap in the market and has gained a large, loyal customer base in the UK among other countries. Netflix did this in 1997 in the USA and still offer their disc rental service, although streaming is becoming the chosen method and is the only option available to its subscribers outside of the USA. SkyGo is the newest in the VOD industry but have been operating their TV service since 1990 but has operated its Sky Box Office service since 1996 and this service can be used through the SkyGo service, so in some respects this is the oldest VOD service, it's just innovated in different ways. SkyGo does not release any information on its customers using just the SkyGo service, so even if a customer is to purchase a SkyGo Month pass then for that month they are a Sky Subscriber and count towards the whole statistic. I feel Sky's subscriber base is mostly pulled in from it's TV service and the offers it provides to bringing entertainment and communications to your home, which seems to be changing lately with Sky mentioning services other than their TV service in their advertisements. I feel Netflix's audience in the UK is still building but I don't see them being loyal to Netflix unless they are able to secure some exclusive deals with major film vendors here in the UK. LoveFilm has an ever growing subscriber base as they've been around since 2002 and they seem to offer a larger variety specifically around the latest films than SkyGo and Netflix. It is down to you, the consumer to choose which one fits best in your lifestyle.

Voluntary

None of the roles in these organisations are voluntary positions.

Vertical Integration

The BBC are vertically integrated with most of their content. They produce the content in the BBC Studios across the UK. They then distribute this across the BBC's network of television channels. This is then exhibited within the BBC.

Comparing this to Channel 4 who do not make most of their content, they use production companies for a lot of their content and maintain exclusivity deals with this content.

Cross Media Regulation

The BBC is regulated by Ofcom and they are funded by the BBC Trust. You need a TV License to watch the BBC television channels live, but you do not need this to watch the content on iPlayer an hour after it has been broadcast. The BBC's remit as set with Ofcom and the BBC Trust is to represent the UK, its nations, regions and communities. I feel that the BBC hold to this really well and with the use of iPlayer they are catering for all lifestyles with a whole host of content being made available to everybody in the UK. If you have a busy lifestyle and aren't able to watch content live then you can turn to iPlayer for this. Content on BBC iPlayer is not regulated by a company as the Internet in the United Kingdom is an open and unregulated platform. However, I feel shareholders in the BBC and BBC Trust will maintain the platform keeping it tasteful. Because all of the content has once been broadcast, it is all safe in broadcast laws making the iPlayer platform safe and tasteful.

Performance against Financial concerns

The current share price in BSkyB is at 682



We can see that with the launch os Sky Go that the share price has increased by 162.

http://corporate.sky.com/investors/share_price

Organisational Objectives

Channel 4's primary purpose is the fulfilment of its public service remit, which is defined in the 2003 Communications Act.

This states that "the public service remit for Channel 4 is the provision of a broad range of high quality and diverse programming which, in particular:

(a) demonstrates innovation, experiment and creativity in the form and content of programmes;

(b) appeals to the tastes and interests of a culturally diverse society;

(c) makes a significant contribution to meeting the need for the licensed public service channels to include programmes of an educational nature and other programmes of educative value; and

(d) exhibits a distinctive character."

Above is Channel 4's remit, it has four parts to it, A, B, C and D. I feel that with Channel 4 being one of the first broadcasters to launch a VOD service this shows their innovation in their first remit stage.

Channel 4 cater to all audiences and cultures and we see this with the wide range of shows from Countdown to 8 out of 10 cats; this supports the second stage of their remit.

Channel 4 often have educational shows and it's important that these are made available on their catch-up services for later reference, this is in support of their third stage of the remit.

I feel Channel 4 have a strong charactaer with the integration of all of their shows and signature celebrities like Jimmy Carr who is the face of Channel 4's comedy shows; this supports the fourth and last part of their remit.