Posted on Tuesday, June 29th, 2010 at 10:29 am
The growth of digital media may provide lots of new content but also has led to many new policy debates. As we move toward a multi-screen world, there are four broad principles, which allow service providers to be partners with regulators, content owners and consumers. These are: * Service providers cannot be expected to monitor specific content flowing across their networks without prior consent and knowledge.
* Content creators should continue to have a right to be paid a reasonable sum for their work but should not expect that fee to continue forever.
* Content creators should have a reasonable expectation that their work will not be substantially reproduced without compensation.
* End consumers should expect to be able to move content from one device to another without paying exorbitant fees.
What makes the scenario so far from reality is that every movement of digital content is supposed to be governed by agreements between owners and distributors. But as evidenced by the rise of Napster in the late 1990s and a slew of peer-to-peer applications more recently, those agreements often are ignored.
