Aussie Government: No License Needed For Streamers

David Waters writes: "The Australian Government has quickly decided on the future of digital streaming coming into Australia. Streamers will escape licencing laws." Here is the story, from Australian IT, which mentions in passing a fairly bald truth: "Had the Government decided to limit audio and video streaming, the development of Australia's high-speed internet industry [...] would have been severely curtailed." Errr ... yes. Yes, it would.

Comments

Conflicts of interest in UK broadcasting

[Morgaine]

It would be nice to think that in the modern UK there will be a similar forward-looking announcement. Unfortunately, the likelihood of that is questionable, because of the multiple conflicts of interest that operate in government here. (We've seen it before: eg. Labour being vociferously against encryption controls before the election, and then mysteriously doing a complete about-face once in government.) Similar problems appear in many other countries of course, but here we have some special long-term legacy baggage which affects broadcasting even more than usual.

In the first place, the good ol' BBC wants to have its cake and eat it too: it strives for editorial independence (allegedly), but it also continues to work through the old boys' network to achieve its goals, especially a continuation of the TV license fee. Well, the demon of payback time always arrives eventually, and so the Beeb finds itself doing what the old boys want, not surprisingly. After decades (generations?) of this, the establishment has acquired an insatiable taste for control of broadcasting. On its own that wouldn't matter too much, but unfortunately there are two other demons lurking in the background.

The second demon takes the form of some extremely powerful global media organizations that operate strongly in the UK, also through the old boys' network but with the extra power of massive financial leverage. Here we're talking about people that make even heads of state shudder, and possibly roll. Well, think about it, if free Internet streaming is perceived as possibly undermining an existing multi-billion dollar media empire founded on controlled broadcasting, are politicians going to legislate freely for the benefit of the people at large? Politicians are not entirely puppets, but once in government they're certainly not free to do the right thing.

And the final demon is the non-independence of Church and State in the UK. As a result, the value judgements of the state religion are never far from the legislators' minds, and censorship is part of the main business for government rather than just a way of appeasing external pressure groups. Well, licensing is the primary means of controlling broadcasters, so the likelihood of Internet broadcasting being given a free pass here seems remote. Fortunately, at the moment streaming broadcasts don't appear to have reached their collective consciousness yet, or maybe they're still frozen in shock like a deer in the headlights, wondering what to do about this horrible flood of freedom.

Be that as it may, the situation is complicated here. One thing that would probably help us in the UK would be for other modern countries to follow the lead of Australia, since politicians don't like to advocate policies that are clearly out of step with the rest of the world. We can but hope.

Just a matter of time

[Metrol]

When (and if) streaming data starts getting into competing with the old style media television in the US, you can darn near guarantee congressional involvement.

Case in point, do you recall a few years back a scuffle between the cable industry and local broadcasters? Them local folks were griping that they were having to compete with other local broadcasters from outside their range. Nevermind the fact that they may have been sending a crappier signal, or had poorly chosen times for their program schedule. The whining and moaning kicked in about not being "fair".

This whole silliness got into the FCC's realm to correct. What in the hell the FCC has to do with a closed network system like cable programming is still a bit of a mystery to me. Anyhow, from this we now have shows blacked out from channels outside the local area if that same program is being shown on a local broadcaster. The consumer can go pound sand for all that the government cares.

What does this have to do with streaming data on the Internet? It's a closed system that doesn't involve broadcasting controlled frequencies. Thing is, as with the cable snafu you can just bet that we'll be seeing legislation down the road "protecting" the local broadcaster's from a situation that's not "fair" for them to compete in. It'll also be a fine place to have the government step in to starting to get a handle on all this free flow of info via the FCC.

I'm not talking about 2 weeks from now here. Nobody is seriously looking at impeding a still emerging market. That, and broadband hasn't yet penetrated deep enough to be a concern for the NAB. You can mark your calendars now though. At the present growth of broadband, you can damn sure bet we'll be seeing this coming at us within 2 to 3 years. It'll be a contest of a bunch of start up dot-coms who need to have Washington DC pointed out to them on the map versus the major broadcasters who have millions flowing into both major political parties on a very regular basis.

Aside from the money there will also be the issue of exposure on the minds of the politicians. They absolutely rely on traditional media to bring in their votes. How many folks in congress do you think are looking to bite the hand that feeds them?

In all honesty, I'm probably way off base here. What concerns me at this point is the stage is set for such a thing to occur. Here's hoping that I'm very wrong.

Re:Just a matter of time

[Skapare]

Initially the FCC was not involved. My grandfather started a cable TV system in 1952 and the only government involved was the city telling him how to wire things when it involved their streets or poles. He didn't have a franchise or anything. Installation fees were $250 (which is a helluva lot more than that in today's dollars). There were 2 channels both from over 140 miles away. He had one employee. Since it was deep in the mountains of West Virginia, there was no TV without it.

You are correct about the basic reasons the FCC got involved. At first it was simple stuff like non-duplication. Why would I turn to the slightly snowier out of town DX station to get an NBC program when my local NBC affiliate carried it crystal clear?. The rule didn't apply then even if the very same show was time shifted. Apparently the broadcasters feared that people would watch local shows from the distant station and just not change the channel when the network program came on. It only got worse.

Some regulations on issues such as leakage from cable lines were necessary. Some special cable channels had the same frequencies as the aircraft radio services. Those should remain, but will obviously become more and more irrelevant as cable systems gradually migrate to immense bandwidth digital fiber.

Don't discount the funding potentials of the coming landline digital broadcasting services. While big corporations did get caught napping when the Internet came along, be aware that they have now woken up. They may not understand it all, yet, but they realize the huge potential of the technology that this has created. While I'm sure many big broadcasters will whine, others will invest. It's probably the small broadcasters that will loose out. Because the Internet itself already has a head start on this technology, I think the momentum is there to the point where it cannot be stopped even by the FCC, even if they wanted to, which I doubt because of the big name financing that is getting into this which will make the pre-Internet cable conglomerates look like Ma and Pa Cable TV partnership.

I just hope the FCC puts the vacated radio spectrum to proper use (handheld wireless access).

Re:Three Questions:

[Metrol]

Why is it that all the videos I ever see on the internet are porn? I mean, is that all that anyone ever thinks about? What's the internet for anyway?

Downloading porn videos. Duh!

Thing is, porn videos have one thing going for them that a lot of the other video content on the net doesn't have. A very patient audience. Broadband is a LONG ways off from being the dominant player. Very few folks are going to set their modems aside for a 30 minute sitcom with a 15meg file size (horribly underestimating I realize). On the other hand, there's plenty of folks out there that'll leave the modem downloading all day to get a dirty video.

Despite the questionable product that porn sites provide, so far they've been a good indicator of what directions the Internet is or will be taking. We're just now seeing the same kind of power marketing the porn sites have been doing for a while getting into the main stream sites. They were also working out a lot of the eCommerce problems before a lot of other folks even considered it a viable option. Okay, so now they're causing the bulk of the problems here, but you can bet that you'll start seeing those same problems arise out of non-porn sites in the not too distant future.

Keep an eye on what them porn sites are doing, and not just the perty pictures either. They're battling out a highly competitive, multi-billion dollar market. The kinds of things that go on there eventually filter up to the rest of the web.

Broadcasting

[Datafage]

At first, I thought, "obviously this isn't broadcasting." However, as I think about it more, how is setting a file up for streaming by the general public any diffferent from an open broadcast? Both are open to anyone, provided the necessary hardware, knowledge of URL/frequency, and free to the end user, except for that required hardware. Given that, it seems streaming should be considered broadcasting.

Which is not to say I'd support this kind of crippling licensing. It seems to me that if the licensing is severe enough to shut down the streaming industry in AU, then those licensing laws need to be revised. OK, they were created when the Internet was text-only, but how did broadcasting companies survive then, and why can't Internet streaming companies do the same?

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Re:Broadcasting

[ZikZak]

One of the primary reasons for liscensing was to stop abuse of a limited resource (frequencies). This really isn't analagous to the web, as there is a theoretically limitless supply of bandwidth for internet traffic.

So, since you can call streaming broadcasting, it should never be liscensed like radio and UHF. The reasons for doing so simply don't apply.

I know it's coming, but:

[Lonesmurf]

Am I the only one here that really doesn't want all that traffic on the internet?

Terabytes of Warez, Mp3s and Pr0n are one thing, having hundreds (or much, much more) of Terabytes of cable access-like information streaming (screaming) through the internets fat pipes is going to bring the current and next generation network infrastructures to their knees.

I know that we have a 100Mb intranet setup here at work and on a good (bad) day the network slows to a crawl. We don't do anything half as intensive as watching streaming movies and shows at high resolution with 2-5 channels of sound.

Nothing out there can support this yet, or am I really missing something?

(I have the distinct feeling that I am.)

Rami James
Guy, confused.
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