Case Studies

Example - Spotify

Mark Scheme

The Digital Economy Act

The Digital Economy Act 2010 is an act of Parliament of the United Kingdom regulating Digital Media. Introduced by Peter Mandelson, Lord Mandelson, it received Royal Assent on 8 April 2010, and came into force on 8 June 2010.

The Act's provisions against the act of copyright infringement proved controversial.^[2] It establishes a system of law which aims to first increase the ease of tracking down and suing persistent infringers, and after a minimum of one year permit the introduction of "technical measures" to reduce the quality of, or potentially terminate, those infringers' Internet connections. It also creates a new ex-judicial process to handle appeals.^[3]

The new process, which will come into force when Ofcom's regulatory code is approved by Parliament, begins with rightsholders gathering lists of Internet Protocol addresses which they believe have infringed their copyrights. (This data could be gathered most easily by a rightsholder connecting to a Peer-to-Peer download of a work they own, and noting the other IP addresses to which their computer connects.) They would then send each IP number to the appropriate Internet Service Provider (newly-defined in the Act as a provider of IP addresses^[4]) along with a "copyright infringement report".

You will be a sent letter informing you that what you are doing is wrong. If you fail to stop downloading illegally, your internet may be slowed down by your providers or stopped entirely.

Charlie Leadbeater and We Think

If you thought we were done with the 'big ideas' after the long tail and wikinomics, think again. Charles Lead-better's intervention - We Think - takes a similar view on the revolutionary nature of the internet, but develops this further - beyond business and consumption - to argue that the way we think and make sense of 'knowledge' is fundamentally shifting in the online age.

For Lead-better, open - access knowledge - building communities on the web allow ideas to be shared and tested much more quickly and effectively. Ultimately, this leads to us becoming more creative and innovative, as we are liberates from the usual institutional constraints on how things are invented and changed by scientists and academics. Leadbetter uses World of Warcraft to make his point and extend it to challenge the world of education, which might be of a particular interest to us.

Web 2.0 and Web 3.0

Web 2.0 encourages us to be more active users to the media meaning we can contribute to the content being broadcasted within the media.

Web 3.0 is now being developed in order to improve your web experience and help you find exactly what you want as quickly as possible. Cookies can be placed within our computers to look at the information we have been looking at or searching for, therefore they can direct advertisements towards us and begin to create an image of who we are and what we like. This is a good feature of the web as we can access and find what we want very quickly instead of searching for hours, however a negative about this could that our freedom is being reduced. We don't seem to have as much choice anymore as we are being narrow channelled into selecting certain things directed to us by companies.

The Social Network

The Social Network is a 2010 semi-biographical drama film about the founding of the social networking website Facebook and the resulting lawsuits.

The film shows the consequences and effects of the creation of the online social network site, face book. The film takes into account the copy right matter of the website when a law is taken place as the task of finding out who the initial idea for the website first originated from.

The Long Tail Theory

The Long Tail Theory was created by Chris Anderson in October 2004. The theory is based on the statement 'more of less, and less of more'. The theory expresses how businesses can make just as much money selling a large amount of niche products as they can selling the most wanted products at the time.

The Virtual Revolution

To web was invented by Tim Bernes Lee in 1990. At the present time, 20 - 25% of the world is using the Web. Within Britain 35 million people log onto the Web every day.

'The Great Levelling' is what gives power to the people resulting in 'equal access, equal voice, equal potential'. The original ideologies for the web were based in San Francisco within the 60's.

The first website created was called 'The Well' (1985 San Francisco). Email was born within 1965. The first website went online within 1991.

The aim of the web when it was originally designed was to connect information between different computers. The creator of the web creates 'social and cultural innovation by connecting people, resisting authority and giving it away for free.

Bill Gates played a part in the virtual revolution by putting his software on home computers. Within the 90's Microsoft owned 90% of the market. Shawn Fanning created Napster in 1999. In 2001 it was shut down. According to the record industry 95% of music is downloaded illegally. The estimated loss in revenue from the illegal sharing of film, TV and music is 531 million.

Wikinomics - The Five Big Ideas

Peering is the free sharing of material on the internet. This is good news for businesses when it cuts distribution costs to almost zero, but bad news for people who want to protect their creative materials and ideas as intellectual property.

A positive example of Peering would be Jessie J. She came to fame first by uploading videos of her singing her songs onto YouTube in order for people to hear her name, her music, and recomend her to others. People listened to her music because they didn't have to pay. If they did have to pay and hadn't heard of her before many people no doubt would not have paid much attention. After this Jessie J managed to make it big because of people talking about her and listening to her songs via the internet.

However when artists are famous, they are making a living through producing music. Like any of us, we have a job in order to make a living and none of us like working for nothing. Therefore when their music is being shared on the internet for free, the artists must feel they are working hard for nothing. This is an example of how Peering can be negative.


Free Creativity - An example of Free Creativity would be 'Life in a day: Ridley Scott Global Youtube Creativity'. This was where the film maker asked people to record themselves or things that happened during a certain day and uploaded all of the footage and created a film. This didn't cost the director anything as he relied on people to upload the footage which they had captured. All he had to do was piece the film together. This may have been free to produce and not made money but it will have shared his name around the world and his creation via the internet.

The media is democratised by peering, free creativity and the we media journalism produced by ordinary people.

An example of this can be The News. As a nation we can now send in our stories and pictures to The Newspapers and News channels on the television. This enables us to have the chance to be producing the news stories instead of the Editors and journalists feeding the news to us. Many years ago we could not comment on stories that were being produced within the media however now we can, expressing our own opinions. However this can take a negative toll as somebody will know doubt be controlling what comments can be accepted and which can't when people are broadcasting their feelings towards the article that has been produced. Therefore this could mean that comments could be deleted and filtered so that only certain comments can be seen in order to form a structure to the debate.

Web 2.0 makes thinking globally inevitable. The internet is the 'worlds biggest coffeehouse', a virtual space in which a new blog is created every second. In this instantly global communication sphere, national and cultural boundaries are inevitably reduced.

The perfect storm creates such a force that resistance is impossible, so any media company trying to operate without web 2.0 will be like a small fishing boat on the sea during this freak meteorological occurance.

Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams published WIKINOMICS in 2006. Along with the 'long tail theory', this is the other 'big idea' about business and commerce in the online age. I agree with Tabscott and Anthony Williams when they state that the media is democratised. This is because the media is now produced by ordinary people. Also I believe with the term 'the perfect storm' because I believe that any business needs to be involved with the internet and be advertised over the internet. I believe that the internet is a powerful tool that can now expand businesses and help them reach out to a wider range of consumers.