[opendtv] Re: CBS Corporation Blacks Out DISH Subscribers; DISH Offers Over-the-Air Antennas at No Cost to Affected Customers
- From: Craig Birkmaier <brewmastercraig@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2017 09:49:39 -0500
On Nov 21, 2017, at 11:25 PM, Manfredi, Albert E
<albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Offering free OTA antenna installation is a decent move, but this Dish press
release, like most articles that whine about retrans consent and such, always
miss the most fundamental point:
It is specifically that non-neutral walled garden, local monopoly or at least
very sticky choice of service provider, which MVPDs love to be, that makes it
possible for the content owners to behave this way.
No Bert. It is the FCC and the 1992 Cable Act that allows the media
conglomerates to act this way.
Neutrality has NOTHING to do with it. These are closed systems that rely upon
licensing to gain the rights to deliver content to subscribers. The tables were
tilted in favor of the media congloms in 1992, under the guise of
retransmission consent
There are no good guys here Bert. When you get regulators at the local, State
and Federal level in the middle of a multi-billion dollar industry the big
loser is the consumer...
This is always ignored. In effect, every channel carried becomes an
underhanded deal, that the customer has nothing to say about. Back room
deals, only among the special interests involved. Customers take it or leave
it.
Exactly. When you give a conglom the ability to use one popular channel to
blackmail distributors into carrying an entire mini bundle of their networks
you have created a legal form of blackmail.
It is worth nothing that consumers have no say about what they pay for all of
the other utilities that are regulated as natural monopolies.
This is what this FCC thinks broadband service should become. Under the table
deals, priority lanes, blocking if they want to, but hey, it's all okay,
because they have to "promise" to disclose what they're doing.
As long as they disclose what they are doing, competition will prove far more
effective than regulation, as has been the case with the move from heavily
regulated POTS to lightly regulated cellular.
What a farce.
The farce is what we have endured for more than a century of politicians
interfering with markets to feather their nests.
Courts, do the right thing.
Better yet, Congress do the right thing and keep the courts out of legislating
from the bench.
Regards
Craig
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