Digital TV broadcasts for mobile phones equipped with special receivers began in Japan’s major urban areas Saturday, following several months of test broadcasts.

At least one blogger and a group of English football fans seem to think that the answer is China. A Chinese company called PPLive (English site) appears to have beat AOL and BBC, both of whom are still trial-testing their Kontiki-powered
P2P TV Streaming software, to the commercial release of a service that
provides Web users with live streaming TV through P2P technology.

P2P streaming is a breakthrough because it allows content providers to
broadcast video to a potentially limitless audience without the need to
pay for server space or bandwidth. As I understand it, PPLive’s
technology is similar to Bittorrent
in that it allows a single source to quickly spread data to a large
number of recipients by turning downloaders into sources for other
downloaders.

The developers of Sopcast, another
P2P streaming software, claim that their product allows any individual
to broadcast his own video. Though I have not tried this myself, the
implication is that a generous soul could broadcast his paid cable
connection, his DVD collection, or his collection of digital video
files to the world at no charge to himself or his audience.

I would appreciate comments on the following questions:

How will media companies respond? Is this new threat to copyright
holders easily defeated by technological measures or international IP
treaties?

How do PPLive and Sopcast technology compare to Kontiki’s commercial product in terms of video quality and network efficiency?

If copyright holders successfully attack PPLive, will PPLive still have
a viable business model? Are PPLive and Kontiki competitors, or are
their software packages capable of completely different applications?