UK video game firms call for help

Tax schemes that helped Slumdog Millionaire could aid game makers

The success of the UK's game developers is under threat, warns a report.

Without urgent help the UK risks slipping from being the third-biggest game making nation in the world to the fifth, it said.

Written by industry body Tiga, the report said UK market conditions put the sector at a "severe competitive disadvantage" to foreign rivals.

To prosper game makers need access to finance, well-trained staff and government-backed tax breaks, it said.

Cutting fees

Compiled by the independent game making body, the research questioned developers about what has held back their success in the past 12 months.

Of those questioned 41% said foreign governments subsidising their native game makers was the biggest brake on growth. 31% said taxes in the UK were the problem.

"The UK games development industry is competing with one hand tied behind its back," said Dr. Richard Wilson, head of Tiga, in a statement.

Canada, the US, France and South Korea were all getting tax breaks from government to help them prosper, he said.

Significantly, said the report, Canada recently overtook the UK in world rankings of top game-making nations and in 2009 South Korea looks poised to knock the UK into fifth place.

In response to a question about what the government could do to help game developers, 85% backed tax breaks, 77% wanted more liberal R&D tax concessions and 51% called for lower tax rates for businesses.

UK made games have proved popular around the world

Dr Wilson said the announcement of a 20% tax break in the 2009 budget for games production would be a "welcome start".

The report called for the creation of a scheme for developers similar to the Film Tax Relief programme that is known to have helped the UK movie industry prosper by making it easier to raise capital to back creative projects.

Without that fund, said the report, movies such as Slumdog Millionaire would not have been made and the UK film industry would be a fraction of the size it is now.

The report estimated that creating a scheme similar to Film Tax Relief programme for the games industry would cost only

YouTube selects online orchestra

Jim Moffat will join more than 90 others in the "YouTube Symphony Orchestra"

Video sharing website YouTube has announced the players in the symphony orchestra it recruited online.

Two UK-based winners will join musicians from 30 countries to participate in a three-day classical music summit in New York City.

The YouTube Symphony Orchestra will then perform at Carnegie Hall on 15 April under San Francisco Symphony Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas.

All of the winners' videos have been posted on YouTube.

The effort began in December 2008, when YouTube solicited entries from musicians to submit their interpretations of a composition by Oscar-winning composer Tan Dun called Internet Symphony No 1, "Eroica".

The YouTube Symphony Orchestra channel on the site received some 13 million views since then.

A panel of members hailing from a number of world orchestras narrowed down the field of more than 3,000 entries from more than 200 countries.

The shortlist of 200 entrants was published on 14 February, and the YouTube community then voted for its favourites to play in the world's first online orchestra.

Comprising the orchestra are two musicians based in the UK: Owain Williams and Jim Moffat.

"I'm quite chuffed and very excited," said Mr Williams, who is a postgraduate student at the Royal College of Music in London.

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Beijing Olympics theme composer Tan Dun hopes revolutionary methods of playing music will emerge when YouTube members perform his work.

Prison threat for Pirate Bay four

The Pirate Bay founders have denied the charges

Prosecutors in the trial against the four men who run the file-sharing site The Pirate Bay have called for a one-year prison sentence to be imposed.

Frederik Neij, Carl Lundstom, Peter Sunde and Gottfrid Warg are accused of promoting copyright infringement.

The Pirate Bay hosts thousands of links to so-called torrent files, which allow for movies, TV programmes and applications to be shared online.

No copyright material is stored directly on The Pirate Bay servers.

"I believe that the correct punishment should be one year in prison and that is what I am requesting that the district court hand down in this case," prosecutor Haakan Roswall told the court.

The four men, who deny the charge, have been charged with earning at least 1.2m kroner (104,000 euros) by facilitating copyright infringement.

The film, music and video games industries are seeking about 117m kronor (10.1m euros) in damages and interest for losses incurred from tens of millions of illegal downloads facilitated by the site.

Prosecutors will sum up in the case later on Monday, while the defence is scheduled to give its closing arguments on Tuesday. A decision in the case is expected to take a few more weeks.

Putting movies on mobiles

Kevin Spacey feels that mobile films are the future

Mainstream movies get their recognition at awards ceremonies such as the Baftas and Oscars and movies for phones are getting their turn at MoFilm - the first mobile film festival.

The awards highlight the increasing impact that mobile phones are making in the entertainment industry.

The first ever mobile film awards got a touch of Hollywood glamour as it was hosted by multiple Oscar winner Kevin Spacey.

Describing his involvement, he said: "When I started to hear about MoFilm, I started to hear about what they were trying to do with respect to short films and content being able to go on to people's phones.

"And in some cases realising that, in some countries, this might be the first time they ever see a movie," he said. "They won't see it on that big screen, they'll see it on a small one."

New platforms

Many aspiring filmmakers are frustrated by the lack of opportunities to screen their work but mobile phones are increasingly being seen as a new platform for these short works.

"Just the notion that yet there is another place - a further journey for artists, film-makers, documentarians - anyone who wants to express themselves and find a way to have that expression be seen by a wide audience," said Mr Spacey.

"When you think about how many people have mobile phones in the world, it's pretty ridiculous," he added.

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The MoFilm competition received 250 entries from more than 100 countries. Entries were restricted to films that were five minutes or less in length - ideal for viewing and sharing on mobile phones.

An independent jury then selected a shortlist of five film-makers from which a winner was chosen by an audience voting using their phones at the Mobile World Congress.

"English as a Second Language" produced by Frank Chnindamo and directed by Jocelyn Stemat, won the MoFilm grand prize.

"This is about giving people in other countries a platform, and an ability to show their work, I'm here to support an idea that's about other people," said Mr Spacey.

"Purists may hate this but guess what guys, this is what our kids are looking at, they are engaged in this, they want this device.

"This is about people who are inspired and kids want this, they are more informed, they get it," he added.

The majority of films made for mobiles are short in length, taking into account the screen size, however this could be overcome as technology advances.

It is an incredible opportunity, particularly for young emerging film makers Kevin Spacey

"I'm not sure that something could be longer than ten minutes and be able to sustain itself on that kind of screen," said Mr Spacey.

"Although, I know that one of the things we are learning here is that there are mobile companies that are creating phones that have the ability to watch stuff at higher quality."

MoFilm is pioneering content for mobile and online services that Mr Spacey feels is a world away from Hollywood.

"I am the only person from the film industry here, I see its potential, I get it," he said.

"It doesn't seem to me that other people are aware of it yet but I can see where it's going to be in five or ten years time.

"It is an incredible opportunity, particularly for young emerging film makers."

Start here

As screen sizes get larger, films for mobiles may get longer

Mr Spacey's involvement with grass roots movie makers does not begin and end with hosting the MoFilm ceremony. Mr Spacey co-founded the Triggerstreet website that allows budding film-makers to showcase their work.

"I started the website about six years ago, and we now have close to 400,000 members around the world," he said.

"We started out with short films and we've done a whole series of short film festivals on the site.

"There are screen plays, plays, there's novels and now comic books which we just started - it's become a platform for independent film makers.

"One of the things we've learned at Triggerstreet, cause when we started, we didn't quite frankly know whether we were going to get wedding videos and porno.

"The quality of work and the simple ability at story telling, the thing that ignites someone and inspires them to tell a story, can really come from anywhere," he added.

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Net TV plans get Trust scrutiny

Since its launch the BBC iPlayer has proved hugely popular

Plans to take iPlayer-type services to TV sets are being scrutinised by the BBC Trust.

The BBC-backed proposals want to produce set-top boxes that can go online to access on-demand TV services such as the iPlayer and ITVplayer.

The device is aimed at the majority of UK homes that have not signed up for on-demand subscription TV services and do not have a Personal Video Recorder.

Setting up such services rests on getting approval from the BBC Trust.

Public views

In its submission to the Trust laying out its plans for the Project Canvas scheme, the BBC wrote: "the 53% of UK households that do not subscribe to pay television services risk falling behind".

"Freeview is already failing to offer the full range of BBC licence fee funded television and radio services," it added.

This situation would only worsen as the internet became the main way that TV programmes are distributed to viewers.

Project Canvas aims to bring together many broadcasters as well as ISPs and web firms such as YouTube to back a common technology that will make all the content accessible via the TV set-top box.

The initial devices are expected to be set-top boxes, with a net connection, that could cost up to

Making money on a social network

By Dave Lee Technology reporter, BBC News

Facebook now has more than 175 million registered users

It remains the elephant in the room. Or, more to the point, the "fail whale" in the room.

Just how are social networks, with their millions upon millions of users, going to make money?

The profits should be rolling in: Twitter, which has been catapulted into the public-eye thanks to Stephen Fry and Barack Obama, is currently surviving on multi-million dollar handouts. And Facebook, the global force in social networking, has yet to harness its huge user base to bring in any significant revenue.

Many believe answer may lie in advertising.

Unlike traditional mediums, which were built on the mantra of getting as many eyes on a product as possible, social networking instead allows for targeted ads aimed at ages, interests, hobbies and so on.

Techlightenment, a company specialising in social media advertising, ran the online campaign for the film Tropic Thunder. The firm's head of media, Richard Ireland, says social media allowed them to not only publicise the film, but also advertise directly at certain types of people.

"We could easily display our ad for people who say they are fans of Ben Stiller," he says. "Or Dodgeball, Jack Black etc. It's really about making it relevant."

He says when adverts are targeted to particular people, the number of users that click the advert goes through the roof.

Other industries, says Mr Ireland, can use more subtle approaches to find the right audience.

"Nobody puts on their profile that they love credit cards, but what they do put on their profile is 'I love shopping'. That demonstrates the power of the information networks have at their disposal."

Stephen Fry on the joys - and dangers - of Twitter

He says advertising agencies, and perhaps even the social networks themselves, have yet to adapt to this new form of reaching a specific audience.

But where do you draw the line on what personal information advertisers have access to? The safety and privacy of user data is a controversial issue. Just ask Facebook: Last week it tweaked its terms of service, causing a huge backlash from members. Days later, it bowed to pressure and changed them back again and have now handed over the way it handles personal data over to its users.

It is difficult to imagine how Facebook could implement a change that drives revenues while retaining users. MySpace and Bebo, on the other hand, have adopted a much more aggressive advertising strategy.

Alex Burmaster, communications director at Nielsen Online, says MySpace resembles a more traditional form of advertising, with the homepage often transformed for various promotions much like a classic billboard ad. He also argues that MySpace users are more accustomed, and more accepting, of adverts.

"Their site is a lot about music and entertainment. So if they see music and entertainment advertised on there it's part of the experience. For Facebook, it's a Catch 22: The more targeted the ad technology, the more attractive it is to advertisers, but it's more freaky for the users.

"When Facebook get the technology right, it will make a massive difference. The potential is absolutely enormous."

Relative newcomer Twitter potentially faces a trickier battle. Like Facebook, it attracts an older user base, but it doesn't have as much personal and, crucially, sellable data.

Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook to help students connect

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone recently blogged that it is looking into building "revenue-generating products". Whether that is ad-funded or subscription based - like the very successful photo-sharing site Flickr - remains to be seen.

Popularity is no guarantee of success, of course. Friends Reunited, pioneers of social networking in the UK, is rumoured to be going up for sale for

A false sense of security

Few members of Facebook have read its terms of service, says Bill

The real danger of social networks is complacency, not cancer, says Bill Thompson

The fuss over Facebook's attempt to modify the contract with its millions of users has died down for the moment, and I haven't noticed any of my friends closing their account or even significantly changing their behaviour in protest despite the widespread coverage.

The problem started in early February when Facebook updated the section on its site which establishes the legal agreement with its users. Like most people who use it I didn't notice the change, and even though Facebook clearly knows who I am and how to contact me I didn't get a message or see a notification in my news feed about it.

This is pretty common practice on the web, where long legal contracts are agreed with a click of a mouse and sites update them at will because they contain a clause saying that you accept the changes if you carry on using the site.

Term paper

Unlike laws passed by Parliament, which have to be properly promulgated to those affected, contracts can evidently be changed without any proper notice.

We are storing up trouble as we surf the web, signing up for services, offering our personal details, clicking through on contracts without reading them and generally acting as if nothing can go wrong Bill Thompson Social sites: Bad for young brains?

The changes clarified what happens to things you upload to the site, such as photographs, videos, messages to other people, shared links, comments and so on, and what made people angry was a paragraph of dense legalese that ended up by noting that "The following sections will survive any termination of your use of the Facebook Service" and went in to list things like "prohibited conduct", "gift credits" and "user disputes".

This made little sense, but could be read as saying that Facebook would keep all your material even after you'd deleted your account, and that it could do whatever it liked with it, and this interpretation rapidly spread across the web.

However, it seems more like an attempt by Facebook's legal team to ensure that the sort of things they need to do with material that belongs to other people is fully clear, completely legal and safe from being challenged in court. It certainly does not claim ownership of any of the material, even if it remains on Facebook's servers.

Facebook seems to have been caught out by the complexities of copyright law rather than to have had any malicious intent, and I'm tempted to believe founder Mark Zuckerberg's plaintive expression of innocence in the blog post where it announced that its new ToS were being withdrawn so that it could be reframed.

He pointed out that "when a person shares something like a message with a friend, two copies of that information are created-one in the person's sent messages box and the other in their friend's inbox. Even if the person deactivates their account, their friend still has a copy of that message", and then claimed "we wouldn't share your information in a way you wouldn't want. The trust you place in us as a safe place

to share information is the most important part of what makes Facebook work".

He has a point. It's true that the damage to Facebook if it violated user expectations would be great, but any argument that privately owned services will be careful because of market pressures has been severely undermined by the current financial crisis, much of which was brought about precisely because banks completely disregarded these constraints.

Research suggests few links between net use, loneliness and health

History lesson

Facebook also has form in this area, so people are willing to judge it more harshly than other social network sites. Many of us still remember its attempt to introduce an element of viral marketing to the site by letting collaborating online retailers post details of what people were buying from them in users' news feeds.

Called Beacon, the system was comprehensively criticised as an ill-considered and privacy-breaching attempt to exploit the user base, and quickly withdrawn.

But there is still residual suspicion of Facebook's motives, and like many others I think that Mark Zuckerberg is more interested in the latest cool technology and ways to enhance Facebook's value than assumptions about privacy made by its users.

We don't yet know what alternative terms Facebook will come up with, although it is likely that they will be carefully written to appear reasonable while still protecting the company's interests, because that is what they are there for.

We should never forget that Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and all of the other social tools and platforms are commercial ventures, developed and run by businesses that want to make money, even if they currently have no viable commercial model.

They are not public services, they are not provided by the state for all to use on equal terms, and they are under no obligation to work in any particular way.

Facebook still needs to publish its revised terms of service, and they will be carefully scrutinised by some of us. However, it's clear that relatively few users will know or care what is in the contract, and they will probably happily continue using the site whatever was written because it has become so useful for them.

Last week the Daily Mail published a report about the potential negative impact of social network sites with the unforgettable headline "How using Facebook could raise your risk of cancer".

The story was clearly ridiculous, an exaggerated claim based on unfounded speculation in an article that science writer Ben Goldacre comprehensively demolished on his Bad Science blog, but it was a useful demonstration of how social sites have entered the mainstream consciousness. Even people who don't use Facebook or Twitter know what they are.

But the lack of any real concern over whether or not Facebook owns user content, or what happens when you try to delete an account, shows that the real danger of social network sites is not cancer, whatever the Daily Mail may say, but complacency.

We are storing up trouble as we surf the web, signing up for services, offering our personal details, clicking through on contracts without reading them and generally acting as if nothing can go wrong, and we may find that the long term impact is far more significant than social isolation.

Bill Thompson is an independent journalist and regular commentator on the BBC World Service programme Digital Planet.