Content  Observatory  Study

The European Commission stimulates industrial and societal developments towards an Information Society along different lines. The promotion of European digital content on global networks is one of the priority areas within the eEurope action plan, established by the Commission and the Member States to encourage the development of the Information Society in Europe. This has led to the adoption of the market-oriented eContent programme to support the digital content industries, complementary to the research programmes under the Fifth Framework Programme for Research and Technology Development.

The digital content industries encompass all or some of the activities of, for example, print publishers, database producers, online service providers, audiovisual programme producers, services on optical support (e.g. CD-ROM, DVD), educational materials, software, and so on.

Within this programme, the European Commission addresses new opportunities for the content industries and market problems to be solved. One of the problems that was identified in an extensive consultation round with industry is the lack of consistent data on the digital content market. The regular and consistent observation of the converging content and languages market is presently fragmented. Earlier attempts to establish a more systematic observation of the multimedia market under the Impact programmes did not lead to the expected results. The gap between the different parts of the content sector have prevented an integrated approach until now. A Digital Content Observatory is a possible solution. Ideally this could be established and maintained with the support and participation of organisations in both the private and public sectors, without needing any new permanent structures to be set up.

Another problem is the absence of a consistent vision on future developments, which may lead to market uncertainty and may slow down the developments. This problem is not only related to a lack of viable data, but also seems to stem from a lack of convergence of the views in the different parts of the content spectrum. To resolve this, the different voices from the various parts of the content spectrum and the language industries could perhaps be brought together into a Digital Content Forum. Efforts could be concentrated on medium and long term perspectives for digital content in order to get a consistent picture of market developments and opportunities.