Adam Thierer made an interesting point last week over at TLF about the future of online video, especially in light of the explosive growth we're seeing in readily-available, legal online video content. As Thierer points out, video content is available over the Internet in so many ways now - Netflix, Hulu, TV network's sites, YouTube, Vudu, and through gaming consoles like the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, just to name a few resources - it's clear that the old ways of thinking about the video marketplace simply won't do. He writes:
As Brian Anderson and I point out in our new book, A Manifesto for Media Freedom, policymakers are still trying [to apply] a host of unique regulations to "old media" providers, including: various censorship rules, educational programming mandates, special campaign finance advertising laws, must carry regs, media ownership caps, broadcast "localism" requirements and various other "public interest" obligations, and much more.
Thierer hopes, and rightly so, that these "old media" regulations don't get carried over to "new media" platforms. That's an incredibly important point, because part of what has helped the growth in online video offerings is the relative freedom content owners have to use the Internet to experiment with different models of distribution. Will the Netflix model survive over the Hulu model? Will consumers purchase enough video content through gaming consoles to make that distribution model sustainable over the long term? Will YouTube's new offering of streaming entire television shows be a viable competitor to IMDB's new offering of both television and feature-length films? Who knows?
But as Thierer aptly puts it, "Internet and digital video delivery is offering society an unprecedented abundance of media riches. They last thing we need to do is screw it up by laying on reams of regulation."
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