If a Canadian firm successfully follows through with plans to retransmit network television content over the Internet, the multibillion-dollar entertainment industry could be thrown into the same sort of turmoil that the music industry faced because of th

Webcaster JumpTV wants to operate like a cable TV company over the Internet, paying the same kind of royalty fees cable companies pay for the right to retransmit off-the-air television signals to their customers. "It is not an exaggeration to say that Internet transmissions of TV stations could cripple, if not destroy, the U.S. and Canadian successful system of free, local over-the-air television," the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) wrote in a letter to Canadian regulators. Canadian copyright laws allow for retransmission of local TV signals as long as the appropriate fees are paid, but broadcasters on both sides of the border argue those rules don't apply to the Internet. Another Canadian company, iCraveTV, tried a similar experiment that failed. The company offered Web surfers content from 17 U.S. and Canadian TV stations, as well as National Football League (NFL) games, but the broadcasting industry was furious with the service. Motion Picture Association of America head Jack Valenti called the effort "one of the largest and most brazen thefts of intellectual property ever committed in the United States." Company officials looked for a way to limit online viewership to Canada, but failed. TV stations and movie studios from both the U.S. and Canada, as well as the NFL sued the company, which eventually shut down the service last year under an avalanche of legal threats.