Jeff Pulver wrote: > The reason I mention this here on this list is that sometime in the > next year or so, with all of the new found attention this space is > getting and will continue to get, I fully expect some lobbyists to > whisper to someone of political influence in the US or elsewhere to > come forward once again and try to declare that there is very little > difference between the experience a consumer has with "TV on the Net" > as compared to TV delivered by Broadcast, Cable or Satellite and that > people who deliver TV over the Net should be subjected to some of the > legacy rules that everyone else who is in the broadcasting industry > needs to deal with. Chances are that such persons who start this fire > will be paid lobbyists who are trying to take a preemptive strike > against the future evolution of this emerging industry sector.
This may be true... it is in lobbyists' interest to think this way. But "Fairness Doctrine" and the rest came out of an age of communicational scarcity, and the rules don't seem like they'd flex far enough to cover the problems of our current age of overabundance. Still, logic may not have much to do with it... we've already seen the BBC construct a story on conduct rules for bloggers: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/6191988.stm (Ironically, that story itself was a forgery, as shown by, gasp, bloggers: http://www.buzzmachine.com/index.php/2006/12/18/guardian-column-making-mistakes/ ) I do think we need new rules, but less about what people are allowed to say, more about how we'll each give them our attention and belief or not. Production prohibitions may not be as important as consumption codes-of-conduct...? jd -- John Dowdell . Adobe Developer Support . San Francisco CA USA Weblog: http://weblogs.macromedia.com/jd Aggregator: http://weblogs.macromedia.com/mxna Technotes: http://www.macromedia.com/support/ Spam killed my private email -- public record is best, thanks.
