[opendtv] Re: Broadcasters, Cable Spar over Retrans

  • From: Craig Birkmaier <craig@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Wed, 22 Jun 2011 07:16:03 -0400

At 5:37 PM -0500 6/21/11, Manfredi, Albert E wrote:
They already are. They already have blocked their content from certain third party services. And remember too, your use of music content as your only debating point doesn't work. Making good movies, or even TV shows, with the special effects and the on-location that people have come to expect these days, requires a lot more capital expenditure than burning your own CDs or providing downloadable files on the Internet.

Yes, high budget movies are an industry unto themselves. A risky business, as many never make back what they cost. But there are many low budget films that break through and make big profits. And there is much more to entertainment than movies...


And we have already discussed, once your musician gains any popularity, assuming he does, he too latches onto a conglom.

Not true. A tiny fraction make it big with help from the congloms and stay with them to reap the rewards. These are mostly older acts that came up with the system. Today a recording contract is not a big status symbol. Artists know that they can't make much money trying to sell music via the congloms. The REAL source of revenue for the artists comes from live performance.

The trend is most definetly AWAY from hooking up with a conglom.

Nonsense, Craig. You are making categorical statements with no basis. ISPs can easily control what content goes through their pipes. And they already do, or the content owners make them do so. Certain streaming programs are only available in certain parts of the world, for instance. Or some programs are blocked during certain events, like Word Cup soccer, in different parts of the world.

Not a convincing argument. What you are saying is that content owners CONTROL access to that content. The ISP is just a pipe, perhaps running some e-mail spam filters. They do not block the content you described; when their customer requests content from a remote server, the content owner blocks the connection. And in some cases, a government - like in China - may force ISPs to block certain content.


In a country like this one, where the ISP broadband providers in many cases are also the MVPDs, it takes some real leap of faith to think that ISPs won't do something they are very familiar with, once TV programming moves en masse to a different protocol.

They may well try, but it is not likely they will get away with it. In fact, they are doing just the opposite, extending access to content they now deliver via their video tiers to devices that access this content using IP from servers, usually centralized to serve all of the systems operated by an MSO. Now here, the access to the servers is only permitted for homes that are ALSO subscribers to a cable tier. But this is little different than the Wall Street Journal or New York Times charging a fee to access their servers.

On the other hand, some content owners are allowing their content to flow freely to certain devices while blocking other devices. THAT is not being neutra, and has NOTHING to do with the ISP.

Regards
Craig


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