E-books don't need to be lengthy to successful, he added, suggesting that 15,000 words or so with about an hour's worth of video clips inserted is enough. Writers of the content can be hired from within NBC or as freelancers, he added.

Fabiano said NBC is being conservative about where it stores its archived video content. "There's nothing in the cloud right now, which has a lot to do with IP protection.," he said. "He said he double checks to make sure NBC has rights to the video it puts it in its ebooks and distributes.

Generally, NBC has no problem with a student downloading clickable content with an NBC watermark for use in a school project, but anytime a Web site takes NBC video for use for profit on the Internet, NBC protects its rights, he said.

One thing that would help NBC and other similar organizations is an IT solution to help find unauthorized content and notify abusers, he said. "Right now, we have a ...; phone to YouTube and Google and we call to tell them 'Hey, take down that content.' We're hoping to move past that."

Matt Hamblen covers mobile and wireless, smartphones and other handhelds, and wireless networking for Computerworld. Follow Matt on Twitter at or subscribe to . His email address is .