good review

Here comes a reaction to the NHK on Demand. Good. And indeed, offering that kind of serial drama pieces online makes sense, considering that some people would otherwise give up after missing a few episodes.

Here are some real examples of barriers to convergence. Some say that contract can solve most of the stuff (except for the stuff created in the past without rights clearance in mind). But a comprehensive compulsory licensing scheme or something akin to that would help solve these people to move video contents more swiftly between television and the video sharing site.

And then, there is an example of creating /maintaining the technology non-neutral indecency regulation is giving them a little extra burden of moving the video from the Internet to television, due to profanity and indecency that are potentially contained in the user-posted comments. If this type of TV - Internet collaboration remains an exception, and people would still want a somewhat sanitized television as a mass medium, I suppose the burden could be considered a not-so-high price to pay. But if, as indicated by the interviewees, the TV and the Internet need to collaborate in order to survive, well, the government might need to rethink where best to draw a line between the public interest on decency and the innovative use of the Internet for interesting TV contents.

Did not speak that much about the business model. Leo do speak about controversial issues, though not to engage the audience. A big difference from some cable show hosts. He does also avoid saying certain things, or say things that he may not be sincerely thinking, including things related to the show's sponsors. But then, he is not that consistent and inappropriate remarks slips from his mouth, making him authentic in a way that is different from the authenticity of the completely independent mind. We know Leo cares about sponsors, we know Leo wants to avoid harming reputation of the sponsor, but since we know Leo's tendencies and they are not that difficult to pick up, he ends up being rather understandable and authentic.

One thing that I come back often regarding B-CAS debate is the lack of participation of diverse stakeholders in the process - B-CAS was created by and implemented among a limited range of stakeholders. If it were an open standard, or at least more widely shared closed standard, the discussion would be much different. And now I see possible competition among DRM standards, or, quite possibly, dual use of overlapping DRMs. That might cause even an inconvenience for end-users and device manufacturers. I am not sure what could be a good option, though, at this point. I wonder what would have happened if Japanese Fair Trade Commission had intervened. What would they have recommended/ordered?