Nearly every other trend of the year could be squeezed into the Open vs. Closed debate: Should material be freely available to anyone who pays on any platform? Should media that’s available without charge always be free everywhere? Will companies finally be able to charge for digital content at a scale that really starts to pay the bills? Will non-Apple tablet computers with more open systems start to take hold? Will Republicans in Congress win a challenge to the FCC’s regulations for Net neutrality? What Hulu-like solutions will arise in which one level of service is free and ad-supported, but others will pay for full access to richer levels of content? These all revolve around the issue of how openly and freely available our media can and should be.
—MediaShift . 2011 Flash Points: Open vs. Closed, Google vs. Apple | PBS (by Dorian Benkoil)
