Content, Platform Strain Best Handled By Business; Panel Toils With Issues; Tech execs, policy folks agree on one thing: keep the government out of it

How news, movies and other content ends up being distributed through today's many electronic platforms is a critical issue for U.S. innovation, but it's a challenge that should be handled with as little government involvement as possible.

That was the consensus of seven panelists at a forum for executives and policy experts held Monday at eBay's Silicon Valley headquarters.

"When dealing with dynamic technologies, it's difficult for government regulation to keep up," said Andrew Jay Schwartzman, president of the Media Access Project, which sponsored the forum. "It's always a cat-and-mouse game."

MAP is a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit advocacy organization focused on telecom and tech policy. Monday's "The Future of Content and Control" was the first in a series of three forums it will hold.

Panelists tackled the great divide between content creators -- whether in film, music or the written word -- and the technologies that make it possible to put those creations to many uses.

"There's tension between the creators of content and the device manufacturers that the creators didn't anticipate," said Patrick Ross, executive director of Washington, D.C.-based Copyright Alliance, a nonprofit network representing creative industries.

How To Price DVDs

Ross points to the example of DVDs, which come with copy protection allowing them only to be used in DVD players. That doesn't stop consumers from copying the content to computers, video iPods and even smart phones. Studios never intended for DVDs to go on multiple platforms, and they would have priced them differently if they had, he says.

The Copyright Alliance's position is that creators have rights, they license those rights through business models, and new uses should be further licensed.

But technology's rapid pace means that it's always ahead of the creative industries, Ross says.

"Creators have to quickly react before the consumers are completely alienated," Ross said. "From our perspective, it's important that the creators are given time and that their rights aren't taken away to enable new uses."

It's a dynamic and fluid time for the Internet -- and a critical one, says Jule Sigall, Microsoft's senior policy counsel for copyright and trademark.

But the traditional Internet business model of paying for content directly has to exist, he says.

"We can experiment with lots of different models, but we have to make sure that proprietary models are one of the things available for creators to use," Sigall said.

Panelists sounded the alarm over excessive government tinkering with the Internet. But private companies setting standards also are a risk, according to Mark Lemley, who heads Stanford University Law School's law, science and technology program.

There's danger in either government or private enterprise with significant market power determining rules for how the Internet should operate, Lemley says.

"That's a hard question of regulatory design," he said.

Total regulation of cyberspace -- a "Mother, may I?" model -- isn't a good idea, but neither is a Wild West approach with no regulation, he says.

"We can have a happy medium," Lemley said.

Under the current Internet, everyone has an incentive to innovate and there's no monopoly on new ideas, Lemley says.

But too much power in the hands of government or a couple of big companies would decrease innovation, he says.

Telecom Should Be Open

Lemley also took direct aim at telecom companies. "If everything is under the control of the people who own the wires, then those companies have an incentive to innovate, but no one else does," he said.

Preserving an environment that allows for an industrywide level of creativity -- not favoring networks as opposed to application and service providers -- has to be the most important regulatory goal, he says.

"The innovation that has made the Internet great has come from application and service providers," Lemley said.

The MAP's three forums are designed to come up with policy recommendations for the federal government.

"As we face difficulties in the American economy, our leaders in Washington will be looking for ways to stimulate job creation," said MAP board member Mozelle Thompson, a consultant and former FTC commissioner.

Silicon Valley was the natural locale for Monday's meeting of the minds.

"These are areas that Silicon Valley knows well because they understand the importance of innovation as a key element to economic growth," Thompson said.

A second forum, "What Does Net Neutrality Mean Now?", is slated for June 12, also at an eBay facility in San Jose, Calif.

The final forum, "The Future of Innovation -- Media and Technology Options for the Next President," is slated to be held at an AT&Tfacility in Washington, D.C., on June 26.