This is commonly known. This is the law. These are regulations put in place by the government to keep BT on a leash: com-
mitted to nation-wide connection, but distant from private cable TV providers. If it had not been for streaming media, the
government never had manoeuvred itself into this catch 22. What's next? (contd.) To those publicly minded readers who
have a tendency for paranoia (as | do, see below) and some extra time at hand: why not team up with your favourite ambi-
tious local media and take on the biggies? Chew more than you can bite off.

| KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER: STREAM! - OR: WHAT HAPPENED?

“One of my students" wrote to me: “the internet will be like radio". Hm... And continues: “over in the corner on a shelf".
Certainly scoring some points. Yes, radios sit on shelves. Yes, TV licensing fees pay for BBC websites. And yes, the inter-
net will be something different. However, it seems unlikely the internet will sit quietly on the shelf in the corner.

Radio keeps pushing out content, blurbing away in the corner. As you listen to radio, it disappears in real-time. It's gone,
with no place to retrieve the passing packages of information from. The best you can do is keep listening, or even better:
go out and buy a paper. Or go online and search for text or hope to find a sound archive which will replay on demand.
With the development of streaming media formats (the most commonly used format - real media - allowing audio and video
transmission), a number of independent media initiatives went online, working on experimental audio networks which
might best be described as mixed media formats of live and archive in text, image and sound. As often with web develop-
ments, the new tool with comparably poor quality initially attracted a number of small media practitioners and activists,
feaving the big media corporations behind.

To those small initiatives, the archive became crucial. Web-broadcasting tured out to be most successful when having
somebody to talk to, whereas the archives became more frequently visited by content enthusiasts and those who missed
the event. Additionally, the limited number of simultaneous listeners technically able to connect to real-servers also pro-
vides a glass ceiling above the audience.

More and more big media corporations moved into the web, lacking the innovative spirit, they simply blasted their mater-
ial through the phone lines and with the necessary money behind them, provided a potent number of simultaneous con-
nection points. Online media archive became a work intensive luxury of the media peripheries.

To some there seems little difference between broadcasts and archives on the receiving end of the user. But this is cer-
tainly wrong. Firstly, if it wasn't for scheduled web broadcasts, the BT and the UK government would not be in the legisla-
tive telecommunications Bermuda triangle. Secondly, pushing out content requires massive access for the content
provider with many simultaneous connections to reach a big audience. in contrast, an archive where users pull their media
‘on demand can work on a less bombastic scale and still reach many people.

| STREAM, YOU STREAM, WE ALL STREAM FOR ICE CREAM - OR: WHAT DO WE GET IN RETURN?

Using streaming media for projects was the thing to do. And so we did, Projects and links of various degrees of experimen-
tation were established. For nothing. Then through arts funding and eventually the skills required to do that “streaming
thing* were valuable skills to the media industries.

Having the necessary financial backing to invest in many (not to) many connection points, big media corps overcame the
technical restrictions by throwing money at the problem of simultaneous connectivity. The same restrictive problem (on
the other end of the spectrum) initialised some of the most interesting, decentralised network strategies in the so-called
underground (for example linking up a number of small real servers and by doing so multiplying the number of access
channels, or creating streaming loops between various servers which would allow a series of entry points into a decen-
tralised audio space).

With an increase in streaming activities of the central mainstream channels, mass media might soon be a streaming centre
in the web. Synchronised broadcasting phenomena - as typified by international TV events like the world cup - have already
entered the internet. The judge's announcement in the Louise Woodward trial was firstly published online and gave the ser-
vice providers a real shock through the creation of a precedent - millions of users simultaneously knocking on their door
and instantly requiring their package of HTTP information. This is not dissimilar to the effect when the boiling of kettles at

boll (i (I J A A AAA