The beauty of not asking permission

Only after many months did other giant TV networks put the finishing touches on Hulu, a site that does basically the same thing that YouTube had been doing - showing proprietary content for free on demand. The only major difference from the user perspective is that Hulu wedges in short, relatively unobtrusive ads that you can't skip over.

Content owners know that they're going to have to change in order to survive in the face of digitization and widespread broadband access. They're just having a hard time figuring out exactly which way to go, and when you're steering a ship as big as CBS, for instance, you'd better be sure of yourself before plotting a new course. U-turns are expensive.

Meanwhile, upstarts often come up with compelling ideas on media delivery. Yet they risk being clobbered by lawsuits from the content owners and their various industry groups should they so much as dip a toe into the cloudy waters of copyright infringement.

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