Introduction.

The ability of technological change to subvert legal classifications is well known. But few technological changes are as radical and all-encompassing in this regard as digital convergence. Convergence is producing structural shifts in media industries that go well beyond simple notions of telecommunication and audio-visual services ‘coming together’. This chapter describes the technological and economic forces that support digital convergence, and then considers some of the consequences for trade in communication industries.

My purpose is to emphasise the radicalism of the changes in store for us, but also to provide some perspective about the uneven pacing of the changes. Convergence is a solvent that dissolves broadcasting, postal and telephone networks, cinema, newspaper and book publishing, photography, musical recording, calendars, clocks, and money into One Big (distributed) Medium. Fromthis high-level perspective, the line between basic telecommunications and audio-visual services looks very thin and frail indeed. However, each of the traditional media will be affected by convergence at a different pace and in a different way. Whether and how classical trade barriers in audio-visual services can be reconciled with the WTO agreement in basic telecommunication services is a reasonably interesting question in the short term. In the long term it is a distraction. In a converged world the distribution of audio-visual services will take many new forms, producing new services and massive changes in market structures that will ultimately consume more regulatory attention than anything else. Most of these new forms of audio-visual distribution will not be subject to traditional trade protection or regulation.