To concisely re-cap: from early 2010, anyone copying and supplying UK newspaper web content to others for a fee (monitoring or press clippings agencies to PR agencies, for instance, and from those PR agencies to their clients) must acquire a license from the Newspaper Licensing Agency (NLA), a body that’s owned by the mainstream media.

Software and services company Meltwater (which provides media monitoring services to PR agencies and others) filed a legal challenge at the end of 2009; the Court of Appeal in London ruled on that challenge earlier this month, the detail of which they’ll publish soon.

Now, Meltwater and the Public Relations Consultants Association (PRCA) have prepared a template letter (which I’ve  uploaded to Scribd and embedded below) that anyone with an opinion on this issue can use as a means of raising its profile with their MPs.

 MP Letter

One key element in the letter focuses on the broader issue which is to do with copyright law (and, in my view, to do with propping up an unfair revenue model in the mainstream media when fairer and sustainable solutions exist):

[...] The NLA Ltd.’s exploitation of outdated copyright laws to develop revenue streams will lead to the criminalisation of thousands, if not millions of regular search engine users, because under the new licence snippets (small extracts) will be considered sufficiently substantial to be copyright protected. Furthermore, headlines are to be considered copyright protected as well, meaning even reproducing film listings will be against the law. This sets an untenable and absurd precedent.

The government said last November that it will look into copyright laws to “make them fit for the internet age” as Prime Minister  David Cameron put it.

Maybe this lobbying campaign can help that fitness programme.

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Russian President Dmitry Medvedevtweeted his first thoughts yesterday in the type of greeting message often seen by people starting out on Twitter:

Hello everyone! I’m on Twitter, and this is my first tweet.

Subsequent English-language tweets have been somewhat bland and pretty safe (eg, “Russia will continue to do its best to remain a predictable business partner for everyone”), hopefully reflecting the tweeter’s getting a sense of using the tool.

“The tweeter” means the editorial team behind the two accounts, certainly not the Russian president himself. That’s not unlike the Twitter account of US president Barack Obama: he’s not the tweeter either.

It’s interesting to note who the Russian president’s accounts are following -  the English-language account follows just three others at the moment: Barack Obama, The White House and the Kremlin Russian-language account. And nice to see the Americans reciprocating the follow as well as re-tweeting Medvedev’s first tweet. The new super-power diplomacy!

Medvedev is the most high-profile world leader using Twitter recently, joining over a dozen other heads of state on the micro-blogging social network including erstwhile political peers like Hugo Chavez of Venezuela.

One world leader on Twitter who has just become not a world leader is Kevin Rudd, the now-ex prime minister of Australia from today, who joined Twitter in 2008. I wonder what he’ll do with the name of his Twitter handle: ‘kevinruddpm.’

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Get ready, everyone, for four weeks’ of intense message-pushing, stunts, posters (Photoshopped or not), door-knocking, leaflets, TV debates, party election broadcasts (TV ads by any other name), and more.

What about digital forms of communication? Where will these tools fit within the political communication toolset?

It’s easy to see where the traditional web and other well-established methods of communication will fit. Websites have been a fixture of elections for the past decade and this one will be different only in how the web today offers politicians, their parties, the mainstream media and anyone else with a message opportunities to make use of the more interactive formats that developments in technology enable.

Opportunities to really engage with people.

And social media – where does that fit into the grand scheme of things?

Not very far at all in connecting with the voters, according to a study by Ovum as reported in PaidContentUK.

Despite much chatter that the UK’s upcoming May poll could be “the first social media election”, such a thing is looking unlikely.

Analyst group Ovum says parties have only gone as far as using social web tools “aimed primarily at communication and collaboration within the established caste of politicians, journalists, and interest groups”. That’s not very inclusive.

“The parties acknowledge that social media can be used to mobilise activists, engage new audiences, or harvest a long tail of donators,” says Ovum senior analyst Vuk Trifkovic. “However, unless the parties have a surprise up their sleeve, we do not believe that social media will play an integral part of the campaign efforts in the forthcoming elections.”

The flip side to this view is in a survey by PR firm Fishburn Hedges which, PR Week reports, shows that the next Parliament could see a huge number of social media-savvy MPs, many Generation Y types, sitting in the chamber tweeting and Facebooking during PM’s Question Time.

Fishburn Hedges questioned more than 100 candidates likely to win or retain their seats at the next general election.

The agency found that Facebook already plays a central role in much of this generation’s campaigning. The vast majority (83 per cent) of candidates are using Facebook in their campaigns, while 50 per cent use Twitter in the same way. Significantly, a massive 84 per cent also intend to use social networking tools such as Facebook, Twitter and blogs to communicate with their constituents if they are elected to the House of Commons.

Some 82 per cent of candidates also said that once an MP they would treat communications from constituents received through social media such as Twitter and Facebook with the same priority as those received by letter or email.

Oh the disruption! Maybe this is exactly what British politics needs: new thinking, new behaviours, new ways of engaging with people. This is the precise act of bringing new behaviours and expectations into the workplace that I hear about and discuss with communicators in organizations.

Whatever politicians and others welded toThe Establishment do with social media, or not as the case may be, believe one thing – this general election will be marked out by how ordinary people use social media to propel discussion, critique election campaigns, challenge politicians, put forward alternative points of view, and generally voice their opinions using informal tools and channels to connect and engage directly with others and influence opinion.

If any politician thinks he or she has control over any political message, he or she will think again when you read the stream of real-time comment on Twitter and see that cameraphone video of your “spontaneous” soapbox speech outside the Town Hall up on YouTube within ten minutes.

Maybe that’s the milestone we’ll see from this election in 2010 – the year that social media did have an impact on the outcome of the election campaign.

And that the impact will have come directly from the people. Powerful stuff.

[Later] I was reflecting on what I’ve written in this post and thinking about the last general election in 2005 when “social media” wasn’t a term used much and, when it was, it really meant blogging.

So what role did I think social media would play in the general election of 2005?

[…] One of the very interesting things to see is the role bloggers may play in the election campaign.

Will we see blogger commentary and opinion reflecting every political point of view imaginable? Will we see the rise of political blog commentary reach the relative influencing levels such as we saw in the US presidential election last year? Will we see those politicians who blog use their blogs as innovative campaign communication channels?

In short, will we see blogging become a ‘mainstream’ communication channel within the overall media space?

Yes, I believe we will see all these things.

Hmm, an early adopter’s wishful thinking in 2005.

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The latest country to join a long list of states with women leaders is Costa Rica: in the presidential election conducted yesterday, the winner by a comfortable margin is Laura Chinchilla Miranda, the first woman to become head of state in this Central American republic.

Chinchilla’s victory also vividly demonstrates democracy in action in a country that’s in a part of the world where such freedom of expression has a pretty poor track record over the years – with Costa Rica being a notable exception.

I lived in Costa Rica during most of the 80s, and so it’s a place that still has close interest for me (family and friends there, too). What I found especially interesting about this presidential election is the role of social networks like Twitter and Facebook and how people used them during the election period including voting day yesterday.

According to a concise report in La Nación, Costa Rica’s most influential newspaper, such social networks played a big role in how people shared comment and opinion. Here’s my loose translation from La Nación’s Spanish-language report, “Redes sociales también vivieron esta elección”:

Minute by minute, many people followed everything connected with the elections held yesterday via Twitter and Facebook.

For most of the day, “ votocr” (the hashtag used on Twitter to address this issue) was the most-used word on Twitter in the Spanish language. [What I’d describe as a ‘trending topic.’]

Costa Ricans used Twitter mainly to discuss the news, but also to report on the atmosphere at polling stations. Some posted photographs.

While there were no definitive numbers at press time, at certain times of the day nearly 1,000 messages were posted on Twitter every hour with information on the elections in Costa Rica.

[…] La Nación’s Facebook profile recorded about 250 comments at press time. The presidential candidates (in particular, Laura Chinchilla, Otton Solis and Otto Guevara) also generated participation within their own profiles through various news and comments made during the day.

Not only individuals used Twitter but also institutions such as the Tribunal Supremo de Elecciones, Costa Rica’s electoral authority, which tweeted updates of voting count estimates after the polls closed.

A good example of a country where freedom of expression is the norm and people can make use of whatever communication channels they want to and are able to access. According to Internet World Stats, Costa Rica has the highest internet penetration in Central America at over one-third of the population.

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The Guardian says that the move is being pushed through by Lord Mandelson, the business secretary, in a bid to deter the estimated seven million people who illegally share films, music and games online in the UK.

[…] It has been reported that the new measures, which include severing the internet connection of anyone suspected of illegal filesharing, came after Mandelson dined with record and film executive David Geffen earlier this month. A spokesperson for the Department of Business denied that Geffen, a vocal critic of internet piracy, had influenced the proposals […]

Call me cynical but Geffen represents an entire global industry whose interests would be served very nicely indeed by actions such as the government is proposing; undoubtedly no harm was done to those interests in the purely-casual-of-course conversation(s) he and Mandelson would have had.

You can read the governments intent in a PDF file you can download from the Consultation on Legislation to Address Illicit P2P File-Sharing page on the Department’s website. This was published in June.

Among the many reports, commentaries and opinions I’ve seen out there about today’s announcement , the most thought-provoking comes from  Tom Watson, the MP and former Cabinet Office Minister, who proposes a course of action that seems to be to be quite novel.

Let’s openly ask citizens for their opinions!

[…] Instead of consulting on the best way to criminalise 6 million UK citizens, wouldn’t it be better if civil servants in the Department for Business spent its time asking these questions? Then we might have more chance of coming up with interventions that will nurture 21st century creative talent in the UK, and not just restore 20th century incumbents to their position of power.

Leaving a comment on Watson’s post is one way to say what you think: there are some great opinions there already.

Another way is to tell the government by sending in your views after you’ve read that PDF I mentioned earlier.

It’s not the clearest of texts to help you quickly grasp the issues, though. Luckily, there’s a wiki that can help you.

[…] These official documents are often complicated, which means only large companies and organisations tend to respond – the public’s views can easily be ignored.

To make it easier for all of us to respond, this webpage lists all the questions the government is consulting on and, where relevant, gives some suggested responses setting out some concerns about the proposals.

If you agree with the suggested responses, please feel free to copy them and send your responses to the officials who are dealing with them.

A final word from MP Watson:

[…] We’re at a stage where attempts to bring all-you-can-eat digital services to music fans might just be about to pay off. Civil servants might better serve the nation if they were to establish what conditions drive these Internet success stories.

If you do want to add your voice to this issue, act soon – the closing date for responses to the government’s consultation doc is September 15.

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[…] you will be establishing a two-way communication channel which can be used to send direct (private) messages to  SF311. Customer Service Representatives are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year to assist you. View “Sample Tweets” of our most requested services to help ensure you provide the information needed to service your request. 311 can help with:

• Street Cleaning
• Graffiti Removal
• Pothole and Sidewalk Defects
• Abandoned Vehicles
• City Garbage Can Maintenance
• Department Information (office hours, location, phone numbers)
• … and much more!

Have a question or concern? Check out the FAQ before continuing.

This seems to be a well thought out idea judging by the breadth and depth of information the Mayor’s office has published about Twitter and 311, eg, the FAQ. If you’re inclined to use Twitter as a preferred means of connecting with people and services, this will appeal to you.

If not, well, it’s simple – don’t use it: instead, make use of the others ways of connecting to 311.

Public services are embracing informal and social means of communication like Twitter as a way to provide citizens with more means of making use of (self) services and easy on-demand access to information.

For instance, my local council in the UK,  Wokingham Borough, is also on Twitter.

If you take a look at both Twitter accounts, the contrast in styles between San Francisco and Wokingham is noticeable. And SF311 looks to be run by a number of different people (the different initials after tweets suggest that).

Still, Wokingham Borough also offers a range of useful information via its Twitter account.

We will use Twitter as an additional way of keeping our residents and visitors informed on the latest news and events. It will also feature information on any emergency situation – for example extreme weather like flooding or snow, and any impact this may have, like school closures, road closures or the closure of the Loddon Bridge Park and Ride.

Not much in the way of two-way engagement but useful nevertheless.

One day, every public service will include a social medium like Twitter as a routine channel of communication, there for the use by citizens or not, as they see fit.

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I watched for over an hour as a succession of senior government ministers fielded wide-ranging questions from the floor, starting with Prime Minister  Gordon Brown. Cabinet members who I saw speaking were  Hazel Blears (Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government),  Ed Milliband (Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change),  Geoff Hoon (Secretary of State for Transport),  Peter Mandelson (Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform),  Harriet Harman (Leader of the House of Commons, Lord Privy Seal, Minister for Women and Equalities) and  Alistair Darling (Chancellor of the Exchequer). The Q&A session was anchored by  John Denham (Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills).

Fascinating seeing this. To be honest, I paid little attention to the actual questions being asked and the answers given, and more on the event: how it was being done, behaviours I could observe of the various government members in how they spoke, things like that.

This isn’t the first regional cabinet meeting but it’s the first time I’ve seen live video over the web from such a meeting. Anyone with a web browser and an internet connection, anywhere in the world, could watch this event.

There was also a chat function where you could type a question, a comment, anything.

As this screenshot suggestions, don’t expect much in the way of intellectual challenge, shall we say, with discussion here if today’s content is any indicator.

Still, it all adds up to another means of connecting government with its publics, to borrow a highly-apt descriptor from the PR business.

Apart from anything else, it’s a very good example of precisely one of the ways in which central government will engage with citizens via digital means.

In fact, it’s smack in the middle of the remit of the Director of Digital Engagement, a new senior role in the Cabinet office that’s being advertised right now (and which I wrote about yesterday).

Those chat texts are a small but valid indicator of part of the challenge the holder of that new job faces in using whatever effective channels there are to connect with people and help them see beyond the channels themselves to the connection opportunity.

As with criticism of the cost of holding these regional Cabinet meetings – over £200,000 a pop, according to some media reports last month.

Those meetings, cost criticisms, live video streaming over the web, text chats, Twitter, you name it, it’s all grist to the mill in any strategic (and disruptive) approach to communication.

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While he will become the 44th President of the United States when he takes his oath of office at 5pm GMT today, Mr Obama’s inauguration is a global event, one that will see a worldwide television audience estimated by some to be in the billions as people across the globe tune in to watch.

The peak TV audience will probably be his acceptance speech, right after he’s sworn is as the US President.

That’s what expectations are for the mainstream broadcast media.

For this inauguration, you have to add in the myriad new media channels that will play their part in enabling anyone, anywhere on this planet, to tune in to something as long as you can get a connection to the internet, whether that’s cabled, wireless or cellular, and whether you’re in a fixed place or on the move.

And it’s not only passive consumption, either (although you can do that if you want: just sit in front of your TV set), as you can add your voice and opinion to the millions of others who’ll be doing exactly the same via blogs, video, audio, Twitter, you name it – if it’s online and you can publish to it, you’ll be part of the conversation.

You’ve got plenty of advice and suggestions on where to connect today if you want to join in with things online, wherever in the world you happen to be.

Me? I’ll probably watch the actual ceremony live, as it happens, on BBC1. You just can’t beat the Beeb for its coverage of events like this, even when it’s happening on the home turf of broadcasters like CBS, ABC, NBC, C-SPAN and CNN.

In a true test of multi-tasking, I plan also to take a look at Livestation which aggregates TV channels like Al-Jazeera, Deutsche Welle and Russia Today, so I can get a perspective on how broadcasters in different countries are focusing their coverage.

I’ll also keep an eye on Joost and maybe the live video stream on the Presidential Inauguration Committee site.

And I really want to try out the new Ustream.tv streaming video app for the iPhone.

For real participation, though, it may well be that Twitter is the place to be.

I’ll be keeping an eye on various Twitter content, especially @obamainaugural. Maybe a good place to be will be “Current Twitters the Inauguration,” a collaboration between Current and Twitter where you tweet, they’ll broadcast, live from 4:30pm GMT.

Whatever you do and however you take part, today will clearly be a very special day in more ways than just one.

You should have no problem when your children ask you, “Daddy, what did you do on Inauguration Day?”

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