Internationality (Part II) June 25, 2007
Posted by ianmartinez in : General , trackbackMissed in all the excitement around last week’s show were several small but important news items in the tech world. Among these I’m most interested in YouTube’s announcement that it would take its site “international,” for rollout in nine new countries.
The Post IT blog also says YouTube already has agreements in place with European television and broadcast companies and sports teams like the BBC, France 24 and Real Madrid. It’s a great example of a small American company being nimble enough to ink the kind of content deals so frequently discussed at NXTcomm.
The international movement more generally comes just as the Bush Administration prepares to sign Free Trade Agreements with South Korea and Panama, both extremely important to the Tech/Telecom industry. Here at TIA, our international team has been actively involved in dialog with both countries to ensure that protectionism doesn’t creep into the ICT language in the final drafts.
The issues at stake in the two FTAs are very different, but the unifying principle is the same as that driving American content providers to make deals with foreign companies — an open, unrestricted market benefits consumer choice and business bottom lines. Everyone wins.
One of the main considerations of the South Korea FTA, especially, is its potential to level out the current trade deficit between our two countries by making American goods more readily available in the Korean market. Though that thinking is aimed mostly at manufacturers, there’s no reason it can’t, and shouldn’t, apply to content as well.
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