What will the broadcast schedule include?
IPTV possesses a television and internet technology capable of bringing four thousand channels to a household at once. Thus 4.000 seconds of content has to reach your household every second. Let’s say that 4.000 seconds of content wasn’t able to be formed in a short time. Service providers unable to form 1.000-2.000 seconds of information will be in serious threat. Because of this, the greatest leverage of the IPTV service provider is the content it has. This is a structure in which content providers can be substantially active on the subject of IPTV. Television companies with distribution channels will no longer be effective with their current distribution structures. More distribution structures will be on the lookout for content, so the importance of content providers will significantly rise. Let’s go over the content in question.
Global content: Content consisting of movies currently or have been in theatres. Some of these contents have public domain rights. So some movies belong to the public since their copyrights are up (which I believe is a period of 50 years if I remember correctly). The usage of these movies will not be a problem. But considering other movies of which copyrights are still in place, there exists a serious location problem.
There haven’t been serious problems at this point, since the television structure has been working location-based up until now. Television structures which were analog or sending transmission through an antenna could broadcast a movie without copyright problems since they worked in small areas. With the satellite broadcast, certain issues emerged. A television broadcast over the satellite is different in Turkey, in Germany and in the United States. This is because of the copyrights and the copyright laws. Original content created by the channel isn’t a problem, but global content bought from external sources, especially videos and movies, are met with serious prohibitions which the channel has to enforce.
“IPTV will be location based, but a new structure beyond location based will emerge in no time, which we call OTT!”
We are entering a brand new world with IPTV. IPTV will be location based, but a new structure beyond location based will emerge in no time. Because even now we are talking about a structure in which location is pierced by sling media. What we mean by sling media is basically; you place a set-top box on your television, and this set-top box affects the digital platform or another set-top box. This way, you are able to watch all the channels and content that you receive at home on your mobile phone, computer or another set-top box anywhere in the world over the internet.
Since the distribution method explained above is one-to-one, a serious copyright law complication has been overlooked. Let me give an example of what I’m talking about. A channel decides to air Jurassic Park, pays the copyright fee and says “I’m going to air Jurassic Park in Turkey, this is the copyright fee for that and I’m paying it.” Then I set a sling box up in my house and watched the broadcast in the United States over the sling box. You might say at this point that in an environment consisting of millions, a single person flouting the rules is not a big problem, but as the IPTV infrastructure is formed, IPTV distributors start generating content via VPN’s originating in anywhere over the world. As a service provider located in a country where copyright fees are abysmal, you can start the IPTV application and distribute it to subscribers all over the world. This doesn’t seem likely in the short run. One of the most important reasons for this is that serious changes are required in the infrastructure with the new formation of IPTV.
As of now, all countries over the world are working on the infrastructure suitable for IPTV. However, after a certain period of time when an infrastructure suitable for IPTV is formed this will come to be recognized as a serious problem. Thus the distribution method control system DRM will undergo a serious change. What I mean by this is prohibitions up until now have been location based; you can air Jurassic Park in Turkey, but it won’t be in your schedule in Germany, which was easily managed. Since this won’t be the case in the future, my guess is that they will go in the direction of subscriber based copyrights. This system works like this: You buy copyright licenses according to the number of your subscribers. If the number is large, the copyright fee is decreased in proportion. This will be a huge advantage for content producers, but a serious problem for large but local channels. These local yet large channels will gravitate towards user content and effect movies filmed in their own countries, or easily accessible copyrights in their countries.
From this point, the television series mania in Turkey will pose as a serious advantage in the near future. Even though I opted for clauses for the content to be made available over IPTV in copyright agreements nearly 3 years ago in media organizations where I worked as advisor, it was not possible for it to happen since IPTV was not recognized by the law at that point. Thus content producers are able to make new copyright agreements for their content to be created and used over IPTV. It is clear to see that there will be serious changes in the production area because of IPTV. But with this, there will also be very distinctive productions in broadcasts in which content is produced instantaneously.
