To most
readers it is no news that Television is migrating to the Web.

With the
evolution of the VCR into the TIVO, PVR, VCR, DVR and the ability to download
almost any TV show from over the last thirty years via P2P using tvunderground
(http://tvunderground.org.ru/index.php?show=show&bst=num)
as the indexing catalogue service – why does anyone need Television ?

The worlds
P2P (illegal) filesharing community is the biggest Video Store you could ever
visit.

On the
occasion of the BBC’s launch of the P2P protocol iPlayer in September, 2007,

Amidst
claims that iPlayer would cause net congestion and collapse, Vinton Cerf, one
of the internet grandfathers, VP of Google, stated that  the internet has always in the past scaled to
the requirements of the users, regardless of wowser claims that it would
collapse in a heap. “We’re far from exhausting our capacity” he said.

On the
occasion of Google purchasing Youtube for 1.65 Billion, he said that these
[acquisition] developments would continue said that the television industry
would change rapidly as it approached its “iPod moment”, and that we would
soon be watching the majority of our television through the internet – a
revolution that could herald the death of the traditional broadcast TV channel
in favour of new interactive services.

“In Japan you can already download an hour's
worth of video in 16 seconds,” he said. “And we're starting to see
ways of mixing information together … imagine if you could pause a TV
programme and use your mouse to click on different items on the screen and find
out more about them.”

Broadcast media is fighting
back – In Australia we already have Redspace on Foxtel,
and on SkyB they have Player stats for sports events. But somehow, the
broadcast appointment media lacks the finesse
of being able to automatically troll the net and recover every mention of
certain subject. For that they need Google.

Unfortunately, they are
fighting a loosing battle. When respected academic institutions release the
sourcecode for their research http://tv.seas.harvard.edu/research.php
into making a more secure bittorrent to prevent file leaching (free downloading
without paying something).

Harvard researchers said
“Our research on distributed trust systems focuses on preventing active
attacks, fraud, and abuse of the system. A distributed on-line economy needs to
have a tight security to ensure a functioning marketplace and prevent stealing
of resources or currency.”

By currency, one must
assume they meant – content.

So what is Google up to
these days – they paid over the top for Youtube, and appear to be in
discussions with EMI and Warner Brothers. 
Are we about to see the precursor for click through support of
Copyrighted content at $0.22 per click?

It wouldn’t be that hard to
do.

If a song is worth a dollar
on iTunes, then it only requires that you click through 5 pages to download the
song to achieve the same result. Although I cant personally see that model
working. Can you imagine clicking five times to listen to the next piece of
music ?

There’s the model of Post Production
Product Placement™ (PPPP™) (an example of – http://www.tomkoltai.info/)
– but I cant see that
working easily either. Possibly in the future, we will have a computers that
can insert  consumer identified
preferable advertising (CIPA) into a movie on the fly AS it is being downloaded across a P2P Bitorrent program in
real time – but not yet. Bitorrent and Kadmellia wouldn’t allow the Part files
to be altered.

So where are we going with
Television ?

Well it seems we need a new
currency to pay for the entertainment in this new world that consists of
Televisions and computers masquerading as phones.

An option might be –
communication minutes. In Rumania and other countries, mobile phone
minutes are being traded as currency. They are accepted by taxi drivers, shops,
and by other users.

Unfortunately this option
is taxed at each end by the carriers. Which makes them banks.

Confusing this new order,
isn’t it.

However there might be
something to the idea of using communication costs to pay for content. In other
words, if the content was advertising supported, the costs to view would be
lower.

This of course requires the
content owners and the carriers to sit down in one place and draft an
agreement.

The next ITU summit might
be an interesting place to sit back and watch.

My Thesis in 1982 was
Increasing the GDP by decreasing Telecommunication Costs.

If I was to write it today,
it would be entitled – The Carriers, the new Tzars of the Copyright Economy.

Tom Koltai – 3^rd
January, 2009

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