Vice President, Institute of Internet Lifestyle
Policy initiatives towards the integration of broadcasting and communication have started emerging
It is one of the items in the “Strategy for Promoting Digital Content” proposal released on February 20, 2006 by the Task Force on Contents at the government’s Intellectual Property Policy Headquarters; its goal is to facilitate the creation of broadcast content by multicast companies.
Legally speaking, broadcasting and communications have been treated as two different entities up until now. To put it simply, broadcasting was considered to be the continuous transmission of programs to the public regardless of demand by viewers, while communication was considered to be the exchange of information on demand. So, even if the same video content was sent, video-on-demand was considered communication, whereas programs similar to TV programs, which are shown from the point that channel is turned to rather than from the beginning, were considered broadcasting. (The “live streaming” used by Windows Media Player, Real Player, etc. is considered communication because it is sent from the server based on user demand.)
Up until now, distribution of video content and audio (music) using IP multicasting fell under “Law Concerning Broadcast on Telecommunications Services”. It literally means “broadcasting that uses communication services”; the subtle distinction was that programs sent over a communications infrastructure using multicast technology were considered broadcasting. In the case of multicasting, program packets have already been sent to the set-top box (STB), and a program is “selected” on the STB and then displayed, so it was considered the same as broadcasting.
BBTV, 4th Media, OnDemandTV, KDDI Hikari Plus TV, etc. are currently among the broadcasters who distribute video programs via STB using multicasting, and they all use IPv6 multicasting. From the user’s perspective, setting aside the matter of what IPv6 multicasting is like, it looks like a “cable TV” service.
However, among all the differences between broadcasters, such as TV stations and radio stations, and broadcasters who use communication facilities, what you should pay attention to is how they handle copyrights. Up until now, broadcasting was following the basket system, in other words, a system where permission was not needed before use and predetermined fees could be paid afterwards to copyright management groups. On the other hand, communications and broadcasting that used communication facilities required permission beforehand and had different fees from broadcasting. In other words, even though the same technology was used for content delivery by broadcasters using communication facilities and broadcasters using radio signals, how they handled copyrights were clearly different. This difference is the key point as to why the drive to create content for delivery over the Internet was weakened, and why it was hard to establish business models.
At the Task Force on Contents in Intellectual Property Policy Headquarters, under the fundamental policy of “Making Japan a first-class global digital content super-power”, they state Proposal #1 as “In the course of integrating broadcasting and communication, expand the supply of digital content”. The details of this proposal are 1) active use of IP multicasting, 2) promoting diversification of content distribution channels, and 3) standardization of set-top boxes. Also in Proposal #5, “Help creators to achieve their full potential”, they list “content creation by IP multicast broadcasters” as one of the details.
This is how the following issues were brought up for evaluation: clarifying the definition of broadcasters using communication facilities, which was not quite clear before; making an environment where content can be created flexibly; and creating a business model that guarantees appropriate prices to copyright holders. Of course, to do so, technologies for protecting copyrights and such are also included.
From now on, various industry groups, including communication, broadcasting, music, etc., copyright holders, companies, and viewers will be carrying out more in-depth discussions. The ability for broadcasters using communication facilities to create content will probably become a big factor in proceeding with the integration of communication and broadcasting.
Also, multicasting, which is a technology that integrates broadcasting and communication, in reality, indicates IPv6 multicasting. From now on, IPv6 will become the primary driving technology for integration in this field. Once STBs are standardized, it means that IPv6 routers will be introduced to households, and various other ways for furthering the use of Internet connections in households outside of video content distribution will probably be considered as well.
In this way, it is necessary to pay attention to multicasting as another aspect of IPv6, in addition to “wide address space”, “end-to-end communication” and “network management cost reduction”, which have often been mentioned as characteristics of IPv6.
Task Force on Contents, Intellectual Property Policy Headquarters (The 7th meeting) (in Japanese)
http://www.kantei.go.jp/jp/singi/titeki2
/tyousakai/contents/dai7/7gijisidai.html
