ACCESS:FAST FORWARD WITH DEREK KUHN

Derek Kuhn, chairman of the Broadband Content Delivery Forum, is trying to bring together the disparate worlds of telcos and Hollywood.

On bridging both environments: The real focus of our group is on entertainment. We recently had a forum where we brought together service providers and content providers just to talk about the issue. We had senior executives of studios describe their pain and some of the things they're worried about.

On piracy: We'll never eliminate piracy, but if you make content accessible at a reasonable price, you go a long way toward cutting down the problem.

On network-based personal video recorders (NPVRs): The studios like NPVR because they can license more content. The whole idea of PVR/DVR changes the way you watch TV, and the content providers don't like the idea of indefinite rights. It can't impact their linear programming. In the long term, though, on-demand viewing is going to become more common. Getting the VOD rights is very tedious. A lot of people have in their contract that you have to go back to them to get waivers just for VOD rights.