1. Towards a political economy of the Internet
Control over space, time, speed, quality and access on
the Internet. An analysis of mechanisms and
instruments.
Leo Van Audenhove (IBBT-SMIT)
John Vanhoucke (Telindus)
Luciano Morganti (IBBT-SMIT)

2. Overview
 Introduction
 Cultural industry (audiovisual)
 Current position on digitalization
 Current business models - versioning
 Regulation: definition and reasoning
 Controlling what, why, with what mechanisms and instruments?
 Space - who can access content from where
 Time - who can access content when
 Speed - who can access at what speed
 Quality - who can access what quality
 Access - who can access what content
 Relations between regulation and self-regulation
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3. Introduction: Audiovisual industries
 Current position on digitalization
 Fear of piracy in a real broadband era
 Do not want to go same road as music industry
 Play active role in debate on protection
 New possibilities through digitalization
 HDTV, video-on-demand, long tail, etc.
 Existing business models
 Music industry
 Limited amount of channels same time
 For majors already global market
 Video market
 Based on ‘repurposing’ or versioning of content
 On different platforms and media
 Within different geographies
 Much of work based on experience music industry
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4. Introduction: Audiovisual industries
 Main question
 Are we evolving towards global market?
 Are we staying within national and regional markets?
 Hypothesis:
 Content industry will try to protect existing Business Models
 In what way with what effect?
 How will existing power relations change?
 What is the interplay with other actors
 Electronics industry
 Internet industry players: Google, Overture, etc.
 Telco and ISP industry
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5. Regulation
 Definition
 Start from a broad definition of regulation
 Formal regulation:
 codified rules endorsed by law
 Self regulation:
 norms, habits and practices influencing behavior and
structures but not codified
 Hypothesis
 Self regulation plays an important role in Internet governance
 Instruments to ‘govern’ content distribution and protect BM
 Being developed
 DRM, encryption, etc.
 Already in place
 DRM, GeoIP, CDN, Identity Management, etc.
 Not all of these supported by formal regulation
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6. Control over Space
 Two specific characteristics of business models
 Dependent on versioning of content in time
 Sequentially introduced:
 theatre, airplane, pay-per-view, etc.
 Sold in different geographic spaces at different times
 especially TV productions
 Instruments of control
 GeoIP, personal and financial information
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7. Control over Space: GeoIP
 GeoIP
 Information about users
 location (nation, region, city) 98% accuracy at national level
 ISP, network connection, speed, etc.
 Based on IP address
 Information about infrastructure, distribution of IP
 Information from sites who ask users addresses
 Information from partnering ISPs
 Often used to
 Control fraud
 Use in marketing
 Control access to content geographically
 New GeoIP can control for IP circumvention/anonimizers
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8. Control over Space: GeoIP Example
 BBC iPlayer
 Access to on demand content of TV broadcasts
 Restricted to the UK by GeoIP
 Reason License Fee
 Channel 4 4oD
 Restricted to GB and Ireland by GeoIP
 Movielink
 US based movie site Paramount, Sony Pictures,
Universal Studios, Warner Bros
 First legal store for movies
 Restricted to the US by GeoIP
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9. Control over Space: Financial and personal info
 Financial / Personal information
 iTunes restricts access on basis of personal and bank
card info
 More restrictive then GeoIP
 European accessing from local US computer no access
 No access to certain music and video
 TV series not yet scheduled outside US
 Movies not yet released on other media
 Reason ‘repurposing’ and ‘versioning’ strategies
 Dualspeak on copyright and DRM
 According to Jobs not applicable to music
 No word in text on visual content
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10. Control over Time
 Related to control over space
 GeoIP and personal/banking information allow windowing
 Audiovisual industries interested to limit access to content in time
 To prevent copying and distribution over the Internet
 To use price discrimination for its products
 To saveguard existing business models
 DRM main instrument
 Access control mechanisms (software and technical)
 BM Music industry and audiovisual again often different
 Music once purchased (mostly) unlimited use in time
 TV and Movies limited time to use
 E.g. Cinema and DVD - two time for same product
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11. Control over Time: BBC iPlayer - Movielink
 BBC iPlayer
 Access to content 7 days after broadcasting
 Remains on disk of user for 30 days
 Once started viewing 24 hours to view
 Uses Windows DRM
 Many complaints that service under TV license fee
 Should be open to all systems
 Only accessible in Britain (Channel 4 similar service)
 Movielink
 Difference between rental and purchase
 Rental: 30 days, once started 24 hours - Price in line with DVD rental
 Purchase: infinate use (on 1 to 3 devices) - Price close to DVD purchase
 Only accessible to US
 Both services go beyond fair use (no possibility to have own copy)
 Protection through copyright law and contract law
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12. Control over Speed/Quality
 Not the same
 Gaming versus streaming put different requirements on network
 Related and taken together here
 Internet made out of different independently managed networks
 Agreements exist between ISPs to connect networks
 People tend to forget that content providers and ISPs
 Are constrained by the underlying biases in infrastructure
 Can make choices which affect speed and quality
 Control over network
 Only partly influenced by content industry
 Mainly domain of ISPs and Telcos
 In process of better controling speed over networks
 Brings up whole discussion of ‘net neutrality’
 Fast lane and slow lane on the Internet
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13. Control over Speed/Quality: Instruments
 Content Delivery Networks
 Akamai, etc. have large servers all over the world
 Brings content closer to the edges of the network
 Large players host their content with international CDNs
 Gives them faster access to consumers
 Gives them some control over quality of their services
 Peering Agreements
 ISPs interconnects to other networks on the Internet
 80% of peering agreements with private partners
 SLAs between parties define quality of service
 Technological tendency
 To be able to control speed and quality of content
 To differentiate between content e.g. Prioritization of video
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14. Control over access
 ISP can filter information and sites from their networks
 Used by authoritarian states to filter content
 Used by Western states to filter harmful content
 Might in future be used to filter sites
 Whole debate on Net Neutrality
 Threath of ISPs in Brittain with BBC iPlayer
 ISPs fear that iPlayer traffic would clog their networks
 Threaten to block BBC iPlayer traffic unless BBC contributes
 Instruments
 Filters
 Walled Gardens
 Net neutrality
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15. Regulation and self-regulation
 Regulation
 Legal environment is changing and will be different for video
than for audio
 Slow globalization of copyright law - but stronger in centre
 Millenium Copyright Act in US
 EU Copyright Directive
 Take into account transition to digital environment
 Much more restrictive
 Bias to strong protection of copyrights holders
 Copy and access control technology supported by law
 Self-regulation
 Although certain globalisation of copyright law
 Remains to be seen whether audiovisual industry is going global
 Control over time and space used to sustain existing business models
 Better control over speed/quality and access might strengthen this
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16. Question
Citizen is becoming a global citizen?
Costumer is put back in the box of the nation state?
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