The great challenge of video on the web is how to make it fair for everyone.  Viewers want content that is cheap or free yet retains high production values.  Producers, networks, and movie studios want to be rewarded by ALL viewings of their works, not just the first one.  The ways we have attempted to resolve these dissonant desires haven't been very successful.  Viewers sometime illegally copy or share video content.  Producers, networks, and movies studios do all they can to make such sharing and copying technically difficult and legally perilous.  The sad part for the U.S. is that we have twisted our laws in ways they were never supposed to be twisted, generally to serve the interests of content creators, which is often not in service of the public interest as copyright law was intended to be.

Can't there be a simpler way?

Maybe there is.  Hiro Media, an Israeli startup, thinks we simply ought to add commercials to TV shows and movies, thereby changing both the associated business model AND the balance of power.  If shows come with ads attached in such a way that they can't be easily removed, then why be opposed to copying and sharing?  In fact copying and sharing should be ENCOURAGED.

The drag, of course, is the ads, which in Hiro's case are not only difficult to remove, they are difficult even to skip or fast-forward through, unlike TiVO.  You can fast-forward the show in the Hiro system, but NOT the commercial.  And those commercials change every time the show is played.  If an Internet connection is available at the time of playing, the ads will even be coordinated with a  database and targeted at the interests of the viewer.

Those who have seen the technology say it is both unique and impressive.  It has been in trials for a year in both Israel and Australia and will shortly begin trials in the U.S. with NBC on one of their lower profile shows with the idea of expanding it to their other content. A second test will shortly begin with Turner Broadcasting, with most of the other major players looking on.

Now if Hiro can only survive the Joost PR blitz.