Just because Internet companies are itching to bring broadcast television to cyberspace doesn't necessarily mean lawmakers are anxious to let them. According to at least one report, federal lawmakers are unwilling to grant online firms such licensing quickly, for fear of hurting local TV stations.
Republican Congressman Billy Tauzin of Louisiana is urging lawmakers to go "cautiously and deliberately," according to CNET. Tauzin says that the Net's unbounded nature and the easy potential for program piracy means Net companies who want their E-TV have "a very high threshold to clear".
Congress has usually given cable and satellite television services permission to rebroadcast TV channels under compulsory licenses, CNET says, but those limit re-transmission to specified areas to stop broadcasts in one city from eating into the audiences of others.
And in 1999, while Congress debated broadcast rights of satellite TV, programming creators tried to get a provision denying Net companies outright permission to carry television signals. CNET says that turned up the lobbying heat, which was cooled temporarily when both sides backed down and the issue was delayed until this year.
Rep. Anna Eshoo, a California Democrat, tells CNET Congress would have made a "big mistake" if it sided with the Net and gave them TV licenses.
Earlier this month, the Canadian Web site iCraveTV was ordered shut down by a federal court in Pittsburgh. iCraveTV retransmitted American television programming under what it said was an appropriate provision in Canadian law and tried blocking non-Canadians by just asking for phone area codes. The federal judge ruled that security was "trivial to evade," CNET says.
But the Net's TV eyes have at least one Congressional ally - California Republican Christopher Cox, who argues broadcasters and other television programmers would profit in the end from Netcasts.
"The lesson of the 20th century," he tells CNET, "is that new technologies create new markets," Cox said.
