IP Democracy: The Hill's Getting Hip to Web Video

A key House panel held a hearing yesterday on “The Future of Video” and as CNET’s Anne Broache notes, it was an unusual event. It departed from earlier hearings because Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA), Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Telecommunications and Internet Subcommittee held up a video camera to record the beginning of the proceedings for posting on YouTube.

It was also unusual because it was the first Congressional hearing devoted (almost) solely to the hot new topic of web-based video. The witness list was a who’s who of the new video world — YouTube’s Chad Hurley, Tivo’s Tom Rogers, Sling Media’s Blake Krikorian and the ever-present Mark Cuban, among other leaders of the new web video world. (Archived video webcast of the hearing is here and prepared testimony by the witnesses is here.)

Cuban, who heads HDTV programming company HDNet, said that many of the revolutions in video are taking place, not surprisingly, in high-definition and 3-D programming, content that won’t find its way to the Internet unless fiber-to-the-home becomes more ubiquitous. “These new and exciting applications could potentially be delivered over the net, but not as it’s built out today,” Cuban said.

In his first appearance before Congress Hurley promoted YouTube’s ability to advance politics and public diplomacy and stressed the need to keep the Internet “open” and free of interference. Rogers primarily pleaded with the lawmakers for help in making sure that the deployment of switched digital technology in the cable industry doesn’t render the portable de-encryption technology embedded in CableCARDs useless for Tivo.

One of the biggest threats that we see to innovation and consumer choice that the Committee must focus on is the prospect of CableCARDs being rendered useless by the implementation of technologies by video distributors that limit the number of television channels that can be received by consumers with retail CableCARD devices.

Krikorian asked the panel to make sure that network providers don’t block users’ ability to enjoy innovative devices, such as the SlingBox.

To foster competition and new technologies, legislators and regulators must ensure that service providers cannot exercise absolute control over the innovative devices at the edge of the network. Nor should we have a permission- based “mother, may I” approach to using or attaching new products.

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on May 11, 2007 1:19 PM to IP Democracy