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Regulation That Could Stifle Video Over the Net?
bb writes to tell us that recent comments made by the FCC could be cause for concern for proponents of internet video. Being considered under the guise of a push against child pornography on the internet, VoN founder Jeff Pulver stated that this is just a warning shot. From the article: "He drew a parallel between this potential regulation and an attempt to ban or restrict Internet voice in 1996, and predicted a long battle and offered to help advocates of rights of IP video innovators. 'The VoN coalition will take people through the stages of what's going to happen,' he said."
It does make me wonder how long it will be before some rich person or company buys a few islands, establishes a country and bans children from them (think an almost-permananent vacation spot). I would assume that there are a lot of laws designed to push agendas based on 'protecting the children'and so I bet it would be quite an interesting country that only allows childless people to come and live there, and would certainly have interesting TV!
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I've often thought we could do something a little 'closer to home' than that.
We have smoking and non-smoking sections in restaurants. I've always wanted to expand that into children and non-children sections. Sure would make a nice meal much nicer if you didn't have to worry about some inconsiderate parents bringing out a child that is too young to maintain themselves in a public manner.
I'm not talking about a Chuck E. Cheese's mind you...that is a child oriented place, but, most any other place out there should be free from listening to little Johnny screamin his fool head off, and the parents won't take them out...or letting them walk all over the place "visiting" all the nice other patrons in the restaurant that really have no interested to see the interesting things he has done with a cracker and spit....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
IMHO, the whole deal falls back to people in "power" not fully understanding how things work, thusly fearing them. First VOIP. They feared is, as they did not understand it, and did not know how they would "control" it. They initially thought every kid who could run a linux box at their house would end up being their own telecom. (Not too far from the truth, but hey). Now VOIP has matured, and they're regulated (for the most part).
Enter (so to speak, it's been around a while) Video "over IP" (man, we can't call it VOIP, and MOIP just sounds weird)... they freak out. They fear people will be broadcasting their own TV shows (lonelygirl?) to the world. Fear of loss of control enters. So, they pull out the big guns. Namely the "child porn" gun.
Yes. Child porn is illegal. It's wrong. It's bad. It's horrible.
But Child porn isn't the issue.
The issue is they don't understand how Streaming media works. They don't understand how they can regulate it. They don't understand how they can make money off of it.
So, *FUD*, they pull out the kiddie porn gun.
Education before legislation. That's the key. That's what they're missing.
As a person who is making a decent living off of Video on the web, I can tell you, I don't feel that much will come of this. I don't think I'll open my mail one day to a C&D Order from the government, nor some big bill from the IRS. I think this one will just blow on over.
--- http://www.keything.com