Howard Rosen is CEO/executive producer of Roadhouse Productions in Toronto, where he oversees the development, production, financing and servicing of feature/cable films, television series, multi-camera live events, commercials and broadband interactive projects.

Maybe it’s the influence of recent events, but I’ve been seeing things from a more militaristic perspective these days. Just as military generals wage campaigns against the ‘enemy,’ it seems that some vested interests have been waging campaigns against elements of entrepreneurship. Take JumpTV for example.

The JumpTV issue had an extended run as a successful roadshow starring the vested parties pontificating at every media conference. In the end, I was still not quite sure how the claims of the monster in the dark would directly affect me.

My main objective is to generate revenue for my projects, and as a result, I am always interested in new distribution channels through which I can make some money. Provided that JumpTV was able to provide the technology to isolate the markets, as purported, and it was to pay retransmission-type royalties as offered, it seemed like an interesting and innovative opportunity to explore.

Maybe it was a flawed business model, but wasn’t it great that someone else was willing to take that risk and find out for the rest of us? I thought so! What monster was there to be afraid of? Evil ones with a view to overcome traditional media, leaving television broadcasters without any viewers? Or would there only be an audience of 12 who have 1.5-gig processors, 2-gig ram, high-resolution computer screens and high-speed connection?

It’s not too disimilar to the Napster issue. The RIAA and related companies reacted with military-like strategy to wipe out the file-sharing network by massive lawsuits (carpet bombing) and press campaigns (strategic strikes), forcing it out of business (special forces assignments using ‘extreme prejudice’).

Napster introduced a technolgy and software that was innovative, inexpensive and extremely easy to use. So, the immediate reaction had to be to destroy it.

The irony is that the major record companies are now adopting many elements of Napster’s file-swapping technology as an Internet standard. Napster wouldn’t have happened without a college student wanting to share files with his friends. A consumer able to satisfy a demand (initially his own in this case) that the traditional companies didn’t. What a concept!

The result of JumpTV entrepreneurship, and its predecessor iCraveTV, was to be worn down or litigated out of existence before seeing what the market had to say. I’m not intending to cast a negative light on those who were against it, I’m just curious why any vested party would not be interested in seeing how the experiment would have worked.

JumpTV could have provided us rights holders and content creators with an opportunity to reduce our R&D costs in this regard and/or better incorporate some of the benefits of JumpTV into our own business plans.

The speed at which something like JumpTV, or at least its applications, can be brought to the marketplace is a function of how open that marketplace truly is.

So, it is with a touch of sadness that I see these entrepreneurial ventures stopped in their tracks. Maybe it would have been something to be feared by producers, broadcasters and consumers alike, or maybe not. If groups with varying degrees of self-interest can muscle out innovative, cutting-edge ideas, whether these ideas are ultimately successful or not, we will find ourselves figuratively if not literaly back in the Stone Age. It is not a big leap in the dark from control of the medium of delivery to control of the message.