‘CREE REREREREREREEE

half time of a televised world cup match forces atomic power plants to buffer the dramatic surge in electricity demand.

5. KILL JINGLE FM WITH LOGO TV OR: HOW MUCH IS THE SCREEN?

In comparison to the ordinary pull media website, streaming media products are expensive (especially when broadcasted).
The costs of servers and bandwidth are still considerable financial restrictions. But more importantly, with an increase in
the quality provided by the available formats, the aesthetics of streaming media will change - which in turn will up the
costs of production.

So far streaming media have mainly been utilised by audio based initiatives. Few web TV projects established themselves.
This is undergoing an expected change. More and more video initiatives enter the agenda, and subsequently more and more
TV-like programmes become part of the aesthetic form of the web. This was the case for inline graphics first provided by
browsers such as Mosaic and Mozilla. The same will soon be the case with video on demand services and live streams.
Making TV is more expensive than making radio is more expensive than making ordinary websites is more expensive than
making text (FTP, Gopher, ...). The increase in production costs for state-of-the-consumer-art websites modelled on broad-
casting TV will possibly not directly effect the tactical media fringe (and on the way even allow a lot of clever media
hacks). But as it will change the surface of the web, the distance between expensively produced websites and the “rest*
will come closer to the distance between glossy magazines and photocopied fanzines.

‘The aesthetic standard of streaming video combined with the primed behaviour of well-trained TV users and the existing
structures of big media corps seem to point towards a new structure of the web. With ontine TV (or whatever it will be
called eventually) we will see a new centre on the web, a mighty tech-park with big bandwidth and glossy content. This
centre will be inhabited by very few corporations, precisely those who already own most of the media space. More merg-
ing on a screen near you.

OVERCOMING NOTIONS OF DEALING WITH ISSUES - OR: POST-GOVERNMENTAL-CONTENT-CONTROL: CONTROL

BEYOND THE LAW

Given the transnational reality of the web, content regulation on a national basis presents a legislative deadlock for gov-
ernments. Content can be moved anywhere and still remain accessible from locations where it is “illegal*. Alternatively to
legislation and law enforcement, the UK government might have different strategies, and therefore a good reason to accept
the spreading of the internet instead of crashing down on BT and other network providers which are in breach of the
Telecommunications Act 1984 and the Broadcasting Act 1990 (see above).

In the worst case scenario, three to five media mergers will provide almost all of the content available online. In this case,
the government would not need to bother about legislative content regulations, instead it could spend more energy on tob-
bying with the biggies in order to avoid controversial material from entering the digital realms of the web. Content regula-
tion will be decided upon over dinner, this way the public will overcome notions of dealing with issues.

The feeble attitude of UK government against its own laws might indicate the first case of the worst case scenario. This
has nothing to do with the emerging structures and bottom-up decision making of online users. This is the inevitable pos-
sibility of a real history.