The intellectual property concept of ‘communication to the public’ in Article 3(1) of the InfoSoc Directive is a current issue within the EU, as the means of communication increase all the time due to the fast development of the information society. Accordingly, the CJEU has more than occasionally been instructed to rule upon this provision, as the Member States of the EU are unconfident as to how it should be interpreted. The poor guidance provided for in the preamble of the InfoSoc Directive in terms of how to construe the provision does probably contribute to this confusion. Article 3(1) of the InfoSoc Directive has been subject to disputes as concerns different means of communication, that is to say broadcasting, live performances, streaming and hyperlinking. Broadcasting and streaming are generally considered as communications within the meaning of the provision whereas live performances and hyperlinking have been deemed as falling outside the scope. More in detail, the most important criteria of a ‘communication to the public’ – laid down by the CJEU – suggest that the concept should be interpreted broadly, covering all transmissions and retransmissions where equipment facilitates for communications of signs, sounds or images, regardless of the means used and the nature of the place for the communication. A public refers to an indeterminate but fairly high number of people – considering the potential number rather than the exact number – not present at the place where the communication originates. The gap between the wording of Article 3(1) of the InfoSoc Directive and the developments carried out by the CJEU is considered troublesome since it decreases the legal certainty of the provision. A future recasting of these matters should thus contemplate the possibility to integrate the criteria laid down by the CJEU into the law.

In early 2003, in a major shift in policy, the University of Southern Queensland (USQ) announced that its learning materials would progressively move from a predominantly print-based mode of delivery to a new 'hybrid' mode of delivery across all discipline areas. Central to this delivery would be a resource-rich CDROM containing all study materials, supported with a range of multimedia based enhancements, online support and selective print materials. As this represented a fundamentally new approach to the delivery of materials at USQ, it was essential to ascertain a clear understanding of about the implications of this change for student learning. In implementing this policy it was necessary to establish a range of pedagogically sound, cost effective delivery guidelines, for the development of the course materials and the multimedia based enhancements. In response to this need, this study has developed a set of 10 multimodal design heuristics used to guide the development of these materials. In establishing these guidelines, this thesis contextualises important issues associated with hybrid delivery and considers how catering for a multiliterate clientele by using a combination of multimedia based enhancements in an electronic environment may improve the learning opportunities for students. Two Faculty of Business courses delivered in 2004, ECO2000 'Macroeconomics for Business and Government' and MGT2004 'People Development', were chosen to pilot the new hybrid mode of delivery. The combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches was used to investigate how students have utilised this new environment. This approach rendered a clear indication of student views about the CD based delivery and, more particularly, an appreciation of how they utilised the multimedia based enhancements to augment their studies. Analysis of the research data indicated a strong acceptance of the CD based learning environment. This was particularly true for off-campus and international students. On the whole, students reported a preference for a CD based resource, though this acceptance was moderated by a desire to still receive some print-based materials. Importantly, from this analysis it was possible to add a further four multimodal design heuristics to the original set of ten which informed the design of the multimedia based enhancements for each course. This study demonstrates that higher levels of student engagement are possible when integrating a range of multimedia based enhancements to cater for a range of student learning modalities, whilst also maintaining a balanced environment for more traditional learners1.

Au cours des dernières années, de nouveaux challenges ont émergé avec la transformation très significative du paysage audiovisuel due à l'émergence de la télévision sur Internet. La décision de ce qui est regardé et dans quel ordre n'appartient en effet plus à la chaîne TV concernée mais à l'utilisateur. De nouveaux moyens facilitant l'accès précis et rapide à l'information souhaitée au sein des quantités toujours croissantes de contenus audiovisuels doivent donc être proposés aux utilisateurs : par exemple, pour repérer un événement spécifique, un fragment d'émission contenant une certaine personnalité ou abordant un sujet particulier, voire pour naviguer successivement entre tous les segments de vidéos abordant ce sujet. Ces fonctionnalités nouvelles et variées impliquent le développement de méthodes novatrices de structuration et d'exploitation des contenus audiovisuels, sujet abordé dans cette thèse. Nous proposons d'une part des techniques automatiques de structuration thématique des données audiovisuelles permettant de révéler l'organisation interne de chaque programme. Nous étudions également les implications de la structure produite sur diverses tâches telles que la création d'hyperliens entre vidéos (afin de permettre une navigation entre fragments d'émissions thématiquement proches) ou la création de résumés automatiques. L'ensemble des travaux menés est effectué sur les transcriptions automatiques de la parole prononcée dans les émissions, afin d'obtenir des solutions génériques, non dédiées à un type de programme particulier. / New challenges emerged in the past years as the audiovisual landscape significantly transformed with the emergence of Internet-based TV. The decision of what to watch and in what order no longer belongs to the TV station but the user. New solutions must be offered to users in order to facilitate precise and quick access to the desired information contained in the ever increasing amounts of audiovisual content: for example, to identify a specific event, a TV show fragment containing a certain public person or addressing a particular topic, or to browse sequentially across all segments of videos addressing this topic. These new and varied features imply the development of innovative methods for structuring and exploiting the audiovisual content, which represent the focus of this thesis. We offer automatic topic structuring techniques of audiovisual data to reveal the internal organization of each program. We also study the implications of the structure produced on various tasks such as creating hyperlinks between videos (to allow navigation between TV show fragments that are thematically related) or creating automatic summaries. All the work is carried out on automatic transcripts of the speech pronounced in TV shows, to achieve generic solutions, not dedicated to a particular kind of show.

The thesis probes issues associated with interactive audio and video retrieval of relevant segments. Text-based methods for search in audio-visual archives using automatic transcripts, subtitles and metadata are first described. Search quality is analyzed with respect to video segmentation methods. Navigation using multimodal hyperlinks between video segments is then examined as well as methods for automatic detection of the most informative anchoring segments suitable for subsequent hyperlinking application. The described text-based search, hyperlinking and anchoring methods are finally presented in working form through their incorporation in an online graphical user interface.