[LINK] Alson and streaming video and audio

[Dr. Bob Jansen]

frankoconnor@ozemail.com.au (Frank O'Connor) wrote
>To me the ABA is becoming increasingly irrelevant in the face of
>technological change. If one looks at little bunnies like IPv6 and
>multi-casting, the increasing tendency for consumers to acquire more
>bandwidth, data satellite developments due over the next couple of
>years (TeleDesic etc), increasing numbers of non-Australian IP
>suppliers (BT, WorldCom etc), multimedia encoding and compression
>techniques (MP2, 3 & 4), simple IP enabled 'set top'; box technology,
>and the like ... in a few years I should have no problems watching my
>Tanzanian originated agricultural soap operas every day whatever the
>Australian Broadcasting Authority says.
>
>To my mind, we should let them have their fun and propose whatever
>damn regulations they want. The fact is that they'll ultimately be
>unworkable, unenforceable and will end up making the 'few, the happy
>few' who have traditionally held broadcasting licenses privileges in
>this country more and more irrelevant and peripheral to what the
>mainstream consumer is doing.
>
>They've been advised on a number of occasions how the IP changes
>things, but nobody there seems to want to drag their heads out of the
>bureaucratic sand ... and I for one have no intention of wasting any
>more time on them.
>
				Regards,

I agree with the sentiments Frank makes in this email. However, if we 
take this position than organisations providing a valuable service to 
Australia, like the ABC and SBS may be marginalised and eventually 
disappear altogether. Who will then prvide the equivalent service?

I don't believe we can wait for the regulation to become 
meaningless., Australia will have missed the boat by then and it'll 
be a long, hard and costly swim to catch up. Sure, we can go offshore 
with our streaming services, but again, altruistically, this does not 
benefit Australia.

bobj

(I should confess here that I'm not an Australian but a European who 
clings tenaciously to a European passport because it gets me in 
everywhere except Australia without a visa. However, my heart's in 
the right place ------- somewhere along the Boulevard St Michael in 
Paris [oh, if only])