In this elegant posting, the Open Knowledge Foundation takes aim at Ofcom’s idea for a public service publisher, or PSP. Some of the criticism is fair — and some over-stated. The Foundation writes:

“[I]t became clear that the decision had already been made to turn the PSP into a funding agency that gives money to people to make British ‘new media projects’ - presumably with the overarching aims of ‘educating’ and ‘entertaining’ the ‘public’.

What I was really hoping for was a bit of strategic thinking: thinking that might actually recognise that the Net and the emerging universe of electronic devices that people use to communicate, create and use networks, and on which people build their own platforms is an infrastructure, not a fairground.”

Then adds:
“It is hardly surprising that the PSP report would be so skewed to the interests of the media industry lobby groups. After all, with the UK advertising and media industry in a recession - that structural change and viewer-group fragmentation onto the US-dominated Internet may make permanent - the public purse must look increasingly tempting.”

And concludes:

“Sadly, it seems the PSP outlined in Andrew Chitty’s document will be producing a remake of the 1927 Cinematograph Films Act, funding the struggling UK film and TV industry to produce a quota of parochial ‘new media projects’, the IPR to which they may then exploit world-wide.

The challenge for the PSP, totally missed by this consultation, lies in addressing the strategic concerns of the Net as a global and national infrastructure; exploring and protecting the educational, commercial and societal possibilities of what ‘public service publishing’ might mean in this new context.”