Digital Economy Act continues to remain unpopular

By Jack Phillipps
A few weeks ago, the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) was asking for individuals within the library sector to respond to the Ofcom consultation on the implementation of the Digital Economy Act by 31 July 2010 to ensure that decision-makers understood implications of the Act.
Considerable uncertainty was lurking around the Act like a bad smell due to confusion over which legal category the sector would fit into, leaving the sector vulnerable to risks. To avoid these pitfalls the MLA, the British Library and the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) have written up a bunch of crib sheets and helpful templates to help the sector keep ahead of the Act as well as Ofcom's code of practice and ways to respond to the consultation.
I've read over the briefing on sections 3-16 of the Digital Economy Act for museums, libraries and archives myself and to me it would seem to cover all sections of the Act and resolve all uncertainties. The document, amongst other things, explains why you should read it at all, why museums, libraries and archives should be aware of the Act and the implications it has for their institutions.
While it is hardly a page turner to read, the document shows that the MLA, the British Library and the JISC have done their duty admirably in providing institutions the information required to prepare for the introduction of the Act and for this they should be commended.
The government however, as seems to be their tendency, have not been as proficient as Roy Clare, MLA chief executive, has commented: "The Digital Economy Act is complex, hastily enacted, and perhaps not drafted with the library user high in mind. There is thus a risk of an unintended consequence, namely interference with the vital role libraries have in enabling people freely to access information online."
So, while the government are, as ever, content to ignore all advice but their own, it is good to know the industry of museums, libraries and archives has someone to fight its corner in the form of the MLA.

Google Wave drowned by apathy

The Official Google Blog announced the close of Google Wave- the web app for real time communication and collaboration, developed by the search engine giant in 2009.
Urs Hölzle, senior vice president, operations & Google fellow wrote on the blog: "Wave has not seen the user adoption we would have liked. We don't plan to continue developing Wave as a standalone product, but we will maintain the site at least through the end of the year and extend the technology for use in other Google projects."
Those who liked it really liked it- the twitter posts from its handful of fans are saying that loud and clear. "Google Wave was email evolved. It heralded a fundamental change, in my mind, of how we could interact with each other and our various locations on the net." And "a gem of a communicative tool goes down the drain" and so on.
Google Wave was truly collaborative. It enabled users to manage their total communication on the web- instant messaging, emailing, and communication on social networks.
It enthralled business users too with its document collaboration applications, easy and intuitive tools to share ideas, wikis, graphs, opinions, files and presentations. It allowed users to mash up a wide range of web based technologies like such as sharing a map or document and even allowed private communication within a group collaboration.
It allowed the sharing of images and other media in real time, enabled third-party developers to build new tools like consumer gadgets for travel, allowed drag-and-drop of files from desktop and even playback the history within the web browser.
And it was free.
So, if it was indeed this good then why it failed. The search engine is partly to be blamed for Google Wave's failure. Apart from a few (and far between) tedious You Tube demos and introductory clips, Wave's true objective and potential was not communicated to the users. Left to people's own perception, its uptake was limited because many thought it was complicated and unnecessary.
Wave was rejected as yet another communicative tool that just brought together everything on the web that we managed separately.
In fact, Wave allowed group collaboration, but unlike social media, it allowed you to choose what you share and how much you share with whom.
A large part of its failure is down to us and our obsession with old-fashioned communication. While we appreciate and embrace new tools of communication, we are not truly embracing of collaboration. We still choose to do all things - email, IM, sharing - separately, when Wave allowed us to do them within a single browser.
We only appreciate digital resources that perk up our existing form of communication but if it is one that just brings together all that we do individually, we fail to see the point.
Of course Wave had problems- the predictive texts and the ability for multiple users to edit the same text brought in confusion, but nothing that couldn't be easily fixed.
Google Wave had a great future but our apathy drowned it.