Kauffman Foundation Roundtable at YLS Explores Future of Online Video

In the Internet age, stories previously told only in print and still photographs increasingly go live with motion and sound, and are viewed around the world. As online video attracts an increasing share of attention in the entertainment and news industries—and in modern culture—it also faces key innovation, legal, and profitability challenges.

To address these issues and recommend solutions, a select group of leaders in Internet video innovations met March 7, 2009, at a groundbreaking Internet Video Innovation Roundtable. Sponsored by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and hosted by the Yale Information Society Project, the roundtable garnered insights from new media entrepreneurs, industry executives, and top academics. Participants discussed:

• Profitable business models for Internet video
• Technical architectures
• Legal design and intellectual property
• Telecommunications policies to promote Internet video innovation

“Internet video is quickly becoming a mass medium for political and cultural expression, new forms of journalism and traditional entertainment programming,” said Dr. Laura DeNardis, executive director of the Yale Information Society Project. “The freedom to innovate in the digital era will determine both freedom of expression and profitability.”

The roundtable event was the first in a series of Kauffman Foundation innovation roundtables convened by the Yale Information Society Project as part of a larger Kauffman-sponsored “Law, Innovation, and Economic Growth” program at Yale Law School. The roundtables’ purpose, according to Robert E. Litan '77, vice president of Research and Policy at the Kauffman Foundation and a Yale Law School graduate, is to bring together the best minds to generate new and interdisciplinary ideas about innovation in the most complex areas of the information society.

The next Kauffman innovation roundtable at Yale Law School, scheduled Nov. 21, 2009, will examine open access to science from an innovation perspective.

About the Kauffman Foundation

The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation is a private nonpartisan foundation that works to harness the power of entrepreneurship and innovation to grow economies and improve human welfare. Through its research and other initiatives, the Kauffman Foundation aims to open young people’s eyes to the possibility of entrepreneurship, promote entrepreneurship education, raise awareness of entrepreneurship-friendly policies, and find alternative pathways for the commercialization of new knowledge and technologies. It also works to prepare students to be innovators, entrepreneurs and skilled workers in the 21st century economy through initiatives designed to improve learning in math, engineering, science and technology. Founded by late entrepreneur and philanthropist Ewing Marion Kauffman, the Foundation is based in Kansas City, Mo. and has approximately $2 billion in assets. For more information, visit www.kauffman.org, and follow @kauffmanfdn on Twitter.

About the Yale Information Society Project

The Yale Information Society Project is an intellectual center at Yale Law School that studies the implications of new information technologies for law and society, guided by values of democracy, human rights and innovation. For more information on the Information Society Project, visit isp.yale.edu.