Finally, if this is a business about content — the acquiring of it, the viewing of it, the managing of it — then Digital Rights Management (DRM) will continue to be a big issue: who owns what, where and when? Again, television and traditional video dictate.

Piracy has been a huge issue for content owners from small producers to large Hollywood conglomerates for years. Television shows that appear in North America may not be seen in Europe, Latin America or Southern Asia until a later date for any number of reasons. Release patterns, distribution schedules or considerations of ‘questionable’ content are all issues that may have to be addressed. I myself have encountered this several times with the censor boards of Singapore, Malaysia, China and India. What do you do…?

If the content is live via satellite you control it by scrambling the signals. If it’s on a VHS tape you attempt to control distribution through reputable brokers. If it’s on DVD you encode each disk with the regional release code for that area so that a DVD pressed for the North American market can’t be played on a DVD player in Japan for instance (and vice versa).

But what about ‘broadcasting’ on the Net?

San Francisco-based Digital Island has developed the first geographically aware global streaming media network, which detects with 96 percent accuracy what country a viewer is in. Therefore, among other things, it can accept or reject a viewer’s request for content based on where they are.

The following information is taken from the online press release of Digital Island:

“TraceWare’s highly accurate and real-time mapping of geographical intelligence reduces barriers to global e-Business by delivering relevant content in multiple geographic markets, attracting and supporting new customers with an excellent end-user experience.

“TraceWare is also instrumental in fraud detection. Country-of-origin information is applied to e-Commerce transactions, alerting businesses of potential credit card fraud. This application of TraceWare can reduce chargebacks, preserve merchant account rating, and reduce bad debt expenses.

“TraceWare is also an essential foundation for Digital Rights Management (DRM) on a global scale. Implemented either as a standalone service or as a component of an industry-specialized DRM solution, TraceWare provides unparalleled accuracy for use in real-time e-Sales transactions.

“For most types of digital content, distribution rights vary based on geographical boundaries. Detecting and enforcing country-specific distribution policies has previously been difficult on the Internet.

“The economies of scale for streaming media are driving down prices for the service to the point now that its on the verge of mass-market availability on a global scale. One of the recent successes was the historic webcast of ABC’s The Drew Carey Show, which was handled by Digital Island.”

Companies hoping to leverage their content infrastructure are looking to ‘wireless’ applications more and more.

Although there are competing standards (aren’t there always) and some countries haven’t fully bought into one or the other, Europe outpaces the rest of the world in wireless application rollout.

WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) versus GSM (initially known as Groupe Spécial Mobile now generally as Global System for Mobile communications) are heating up. Today in Helsinki, Finland a young boy or girl can be riding the trolley car across town while simultaneously playing with their GameBoy and speaking to a friend in another part of town using the same device!

The ability to send images (still pictures and moving video) and sound to your cellphone, is near.

Whether you wish to believe it or not, there is a developing consensus within the ‘merged media’ conglomerates that goes something like this:

This is not a battle of attempting to create content specifically for the web instead of television, but finding a way to marry the two.

Among many others, George Winslow, writing in the NATPE edition of World Screen News, quotes the following influential people in support of this ‘science’:

“There is an idea, which fortunately is starting to wane, that the Web will hurt television as we know it today,” notes Jeff Mallett, the president of Yahoo! “Obviously, those who are in this business are realizing that it is not going to be either television or the Internet – the merging of these two is going to be complementary. The winners are going to be able to use both and make them complementary.”

Robert Montgomery, the president of the Americas at The Fantastic Corporation notes that,

“When you go to broadband… you have opportunities to tap into all of the existing revenue streams in the television media -advertising, subscription, pay per view, E-commerce, etc. It has the beneficial features of all the other media.”