Overview

The content business is complex. Although companies like Disney, Time Warner, and Virgin have built empires on content, it is not an easy business. The value of content is difficult to assess. Television and early Web content used to be free, which has given many people the perception that content should not be paid for. Piracy has also put a serious dent in the content business, at least if one believes the complaints from its victims, the content providers.

Yet there is a lot of content out there that people are willing to pay for. Some examples are:

• Music, video, ring tones, logos;

• News;

• Stock trading tips;

• Product comparisons

This is just a tiny sample, and there are doubtless many other types of content that people will pay for. Content is a healthy business for those who find their place in the market. It is not within the scope of this book to identify what is value-added content, but we do explore the technologies used to bring content to the consumer and charge for it.

In the next section we first introduce the types of content delivery. Then, in Sections 4.2 through 4.7 we consider some content delivery technologies in detail.