News

Published date01 June 1989
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1108/eb044933
Date01 June 1989
Pages427-438
News
General
Worldwide
multimedia market:
explosive growth
forecast.
The worldwide market for multimedia
products and services will grow forty-
fold from $0.4 billion in 1989 to $16.6
billion in 1994, forecasts John Gale's
Information Workstation Group.
Cinema and animation will 'be rou-
tine information experiences' within the.
next five years. Growth will result from
the convergence of end user needs, and
advances made in the fields of con-
sumer electronics, computers, com-
munications, and mobile systems. All
sectors of the multimedia market
consumer, information retrieval, edu-
cation/training and business presen-
tation are predicted to be affected.
Hardware advances which will
prove influential include NEC's CD-
equipped PC Engine, other 16 bit sys-
tems with communications and en-
hanced audio capabilities, and Fujitsu's
386-based FM
Towns,
which includes a
microphone and a CD-ROM drive.
By 1994 the Home Entertainment
Centre will be multimedia computer
system, supporting a local area network
and multi-functional storage devices
such as Digital Audio Tape and optical
disc.
These centres will be able to provide
entertainment, manage
the
environment
and ensure security.
IWG is based in Alexandria, Virgin-
ia,
USA.
Tel:+1(703) 548 4320
Public Data
Networks let users
down
Users and producers of online informa-
tion are being badly let down by the
Public Data Networks, concludes the
latest Eusidic annual survey. Almost
one in four
calls
fails, and three-quarters
of these failures are mainly or entirely
due to reasons connected with the PDN.
'Were it not for telecoms, the online
business would need to advise its cus-
tomers of a probable failure rate of just
over 6%; this is still too high, but is
vastly more attractive than over 24% if
one adds in the telecoms element,'
suggests the report.
Eusidic and EUROLUG members
monitored 8699 calls via the public data
networks, compared with
5669
calls last
year and 3436 when the survey was first
made, in 1986. Calls were monitored
during the week 13-17 March. Data
input forms had been redesigned, in
conjunction with some PTTs, to allow
more accurate identification of reasons
for call failures. Hence the discovery
that 17.95% of all calls failed for rea-
sons connected with the Public Data
Networks.
Overall call failures this year were
24.22%,
compared to 25.38% in 1988,
29%
in 1987 and
30.73%
in 1986.
The most usual reason was problems
mainly due to the host being accessed
(16.4%
of failures). This was not as-
sumed to be a telecoms fault. However,
lack of response from the local PDN
node accounted for 14.9% of failures,
14.2%
of failed calls were because of
sudden unrequested disconnection, and
12.9%
of failures were due to conges-
tion problems on the PDN.
A busy local PDN node accounted
for 11.5% of failures and another 8.5%
were because local line noise between
the customer and the PDN made work
impossible.
Success rates for calls to the USA
and calls within Europe were virtually
identical. Eusidic claims that its figures
are no more than a general guide to the
European situation, but that some
country-by-country performances in-
vite comparison. Forty per cent of 959
calls from Spain failed, three-quarters
of these failures being for telecoms rea-
sons.
Other telecoms-related failure
rates included: Britain (1427 calls)
24.7%,
but Sweden (1218 calls) 10%
and The Netherlands (929 calls) 9%.
EUSIDIC +44 (0) 249 816407.
Global information
industry alliance
defines agenda
At a meeting in New York City on 9
September, a group of 11 information
industry associations, representing ap-
proximately 1,800 information com-
panies from around the world, agreed
that the growth of the global infor-
mation marketplace would benefit from
sharing information and co-ordinating
efforts in areas of copyright, public and
private sector partnerships and promot-
ing the role of the industry in develop-
ment. The senior representatives from
information industry associations in
Canada, China, Europe, France, West
Germany, India, Jamaica, Japan, Spain,
the UK and the USA were meeting for
the second time in less than a year.
In the area of copyright, the partici-
pants considered and agreed that 'data-
bases
are
works
of authorship entitled to
copyright protection regardless of the
media in which they are embodied and
regardless of whether and how the items
of data therein are individually entitled
to protection,' and 'accordingly, data-
bases should be afforded the same copy-
right protection provided for other lite-
rary works under
the
Berne Convention,
and such protection should
be
effective-
ly enforced.' Participants noted that
these issues are currently under con-
sideration by the World Intellectual
Property Organization, the General
European Community.
The group initiated the formulation
of a set of principles regarding public
and private sector relationships in infor-
mation production and
distribution.
The
principles encourage 'public access to
government information.' The group
expressed
its
belief that
a
'diverse, com-
petitive and independent commercial
sector should be the principle medium
for the dissemination of information
products based on government informa-
tion' while warning that 'government
assertion of copyright over information
should be restricted or prohibited.'
Acknowledging that information has
a vital role in the development process,
The Electronic Library, Vol. 7, No. 6, December 1989 427

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