Interesting post from Rachel Dixon’s Blog

According to a recently released discussion paper on media reform, the Minister for Communications is considering introducing licenses for IPTV in Australia, to bring Internet video into line with broadcast video.

… .. .

Intriguingly, the discussion paper was released a day after the final report of the Industry Leaders Group of the Digital Content Action Agenda, which I was a contributor to. And it directly contradicts the intent of our report, which was to take advantage of the potential for innovation that technologies such as IPTV enable. Even small, niche operations can afford to distribute IPTV programming using relatively cheap hosting infrastructure and open-source software – but not if they need to pay for licenses! Thus, if the licensing proposal is allowed to stand, Australia will be isolated in the world, with minimal IPTV content.