What will the regulation of television look like in the future? That question is on the minds of policymakers and media companies around the world. In the past, television was tightly controlled through restrictive licenses and other rules that do not exist for print media. Yet when these print media originally emerged centuries ago, they, too, were censored and licensed. This history raises expectations that television would follow a similar path. It would be set free when television would migrate from the limited over-the-air broadcasting to a delivery over the wide-open open internet.

Yet it is worth taking a look at what is actually happening on the internet. Things have certainly changed. Just over a decade ago in 1994, the internet's pioneers declared in their Charter for Internet Liberties: "Government, leave us alone, we did not call you, we don't need you. " But today, the internet community is seeking, under the heading of "net neutrality ", regulations that protect them from telephone companies' control over access, price discrimination, gate keeping, and self-dealing. They have encountered the market power of the infrastructure networks, and they do not like it.