BOSTON--While telecom service providers scramble to launch IPTV, the TV over the Internet movement is taking off on its own, promising to bring diverse programming to PCs and television sets everywhere.

So hot is TV over IP that it took over the opening keynote session of the VON conference, as event founder Jeff Pulver and AOL Vice Chairman Ted Leonsis devoted their speeches to what they called an explosion in Internet-based video content, including user-created videos, the untapped vault of old TV shows and other Hollywood-produced content, and video specifically produced for the Web.

Leonsis outlined AOL’s multiple video initiatives including AOL video; video search capabilities; IN2TV, which shows old TV shows for free; TMX.com, the Hollywood video blog best known for showing Mel Gibson’s infamous arrest tirade; the Sessions music site, and Gold Rush, an interactive national treasure hunt being launched today with Mark Burnett and CBS TV. AOL will launch UnCut video, a site for consumer-generated video that promises easy uploading from any device and sharing of content with blogs and other Web sites, Leonsis said. Next week, the company is announcing a partnership with Intel to take AOL Video to the TV set, he added.

“Video is allowing the birth of a new mega industry,” Leonsis said. “Convergence is finally really happening. The bandwidth is there, the audience is there--we are getting 113 million customers a month, and 14 million simultaneously on our servers. The ad market is exploding.”

In fact, Pulver warned, video on the Internet is growing so fast, it is likely to encounter some of the same problems that voice on the Net experienced in its early days--including resistance from Hollywood and threats of regulatory controls.

“If you are about to disrupt a sector, be prepared for that sector to fight back,” he told the VON audience. “To the extent [video on the Internet pioneers] are able to gain market share, they have no idea what is about to hit them. And this isn’t the phone companies, folks, it’s Hollywood. These are guys that will go after you. I don’t think Hollywood is going to sit idle on this.”

FCC Commissioner Deborah Tate was a surprise attendee at Monday’s VON policy summit and spoke of concerns about some Internet video content, and its potential harm to children, he said.

“I believe the FCC will attempt to regulate Internet content, and impose censorship,” Pulver said. “That is sort of troubling. So we are welcoming the video on the net industry--the VON Coalition can help take people through the steps of what is going to happen. And we can help you fight it.”

Pulver would prefer to see the video on the Net community thrive on its own without rules, including digital rights management, by developing and owning its own content. Today, he said, ordinary citizens have access to the technology which once was so expensive it was exclusive to Hollywood, Pulver said. They can produce high-quality content and the broadband Internet can deliver it, he said--a point he proved by showing a Ghost Rider movie trailer on a projection screen as it was streamed over a laptop on stage.

There is the potential for a new ad model to emerge that uses the demographics of who is watching TV over IP to allow one-to-one marketing, in a more effective use of ad dollars than today’s broadcast advertising, Pulver added.

While most Internet traffic today is still utility-based--email, search, community--there is a shift to delivering what people love, not just what they need, over the Net, Leonsis said.

“We have to embrace that we are part of this digital network,” he said. “We are moving from expert driven content to the wisdom of crowds.”

For example, he said, his 17-year-old son and a few friends assembled the number-one site on the National Hockey League draft by contacting the top 25 bloggers on each franchise and creating an RSS feed for a few thousand dollars. A new industry is coming, Leonsis said, that will tap that kind of creativity and make it easier for people to access that content.

“These industries start as subscription-based business,” he said. “They try to extract money from consumers, then they get big and flip and become an ad-supported model. We think the big shift is going to be ad-supported, search-supported IPTV. AOL is sold out of video inventory, and we get cable-like [ad rates] when we go to the ad market.”