Will electronic sheep pay per view?

There are certain things to which I find the British absolutely devoted, sometimes beyond all understanding from my perspective as a stranger in a strange land. This holds especially true for the nation`s almost fanatical following of football, and the unquestioning credence given to the tabloid press by the common man.

After all, when it comes to the Web, if you can see it, you can copy it.

Basheera Khan, London correspondent, ITWeb

What`s interesting to observe is how these predilections have been exploited online by a number of what those more subjective than I would call confidence artists.

Manchester United players were recently alerted to an operation in which people posing as autograph hunters sold their autographed replica football shirts online - asking as much as lb1 000 for shirts carrying the David Beckham scrawl.

The football club is reportedly taking steps to make sure its players don`t unwittingly give autographs to `professional dealers`, but this means that bona fide fans can often be ignored in the pursuit for non-pirated football memorabilia.

A slightly larger scale deployment of a publicity stunt staged solely on the Internet stage will be seen later this year. As `News of the World` reported yesterday, the massively silicon-augmented model Jordan has decided to share the joys of childbirth with her fans, in a pay-per-view Webcast.

In addition, the 23-year-old expectant mom is hoping to broker multimedia coverage of the birth, scheduled for 16 May, with a television production house that has had some experience in successfully marrying Web and TV in the past.

Although nothing is as yet carved in stone, it`s expected that viewers will be charged in the region of 60p per hit, or about lb2 per download of a highlights package. Between television fees, possible revenue generated through SMS updates, primary sponsorship and supporting advertising, the event has a potential value of lb180 000, and that`s excluding money generated from downloads or pay-per-view users.

And of course, while this is not the first birth ever to take place online, it`s the first time a Brit has proposed it. That the Brit is a celebrity, and that the lowest common denominator in British society takes an almost unhealthy interest in the doings of the glitterati mean it will probably make significant amounts of money, though not as much, I believe, as Jordan and her team are hoping.

After all, when it comes to the Web, if you can see it, you can copy it. And with the right amount of technical and business know-how and the wrong amount of scruples, piracy can do nothing but flourish.

It seems a compelling argument against deploying the pay-per-view model on the Web - for the simple reason that the model is designed to work in a broadcast medium in which almost none of the receiving units are networked, and there is practically no possibility of real-time sharing of pirated material.

Though it must frustrate them no end, it appears it is futile to deny the winds of change catching at the sails of ad agencies, television networks and talent managers worldwide - not to mention the copyright and intellectual property lawyers. It`s a situation that demands ingenious thinking, and no small amount of pioneering.

Baby steps have been taken in this direction in the form of product placement, used by almost every big brand in almost every worthy television series and big-budget movie production. Where this road could take the world of Webcasting, I can`t rightly say. But I do believe that for the moment, any investor in pay-per-view projects online is playing a hazardous game in which there is quite a lot more to lose than to gain.