[opendtv] Re: Painful explanation of TVE
- From: "Manfredi, Albert E" <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 9 Mar 2016 02:32:44 +0000
Craig Birkmaier wrote:
I think O'reilly was crystal clear about this concern in this
paragraph from his statement:
"Just as with a 3D movie you need to look through both the red and blue sides
of the glasses to see the whole picture, to make any sense of this item it must
be viewed together with its other half, the Commission's proposal to reclassify
OTTs as MVPDs. If both of these NPRMs are followed to their logical
conclusions, an entire class of innovators who bear no similarities to MVPDs,
except that they also offer video, will be redefined as MVPDs and subsumed into
Title VI. Meanwhile, all MVPDs, whether existing or newly minted, will be
forced to provide all of their content to each other under an FCC mandated
scheme. And providing the 'three flows' to all comers will be only the
beginning of the new regulatory burdens on OTTs captured by Title VI. Who wins?
Why, the FCC, of course."
Perhaps, but my view is that this is the result of legacy thinking, not a
deliberate attempt to regulate what doesn't need regulating. Legacy thinking
meaning, they cannot wrap their heads around the functionality changes
introduced when using the Internet. They're still thinking in terms of locally
monopolistic walled gardens.
Thing is, regulation *is* needed, when there is no, or inadequate, competition.
So all these FCC rules made sense, in the days of walled-in, local monopolies.
The difference now is that the network is a two-way network, no single head-end
gatekeepers exist any longer (over broadband anyway), so retaining that
regulation, to ensure everyone can get content, is pointless. The two-way net
is neutral, and ubiquitous, the sources of content are as numerous as the
content owners decide, and available to whoever wants to see. Competition has a
funny way of making regulations unnecessary.
So, to me, that statement was not crystal clear. I saw, instead, a somewhat
inaccurate portrayal of what the VMVPD NPRM was proposing, and opposition to
regulation in general, but without an explanation of why it's not needed now.
E.g., the VMVPD NPRM did not state that all OTT sites would become VMVPDs, for
instance. More importantly, the whole VMVPD-that-looks-like-a-legacy-MVPD is
just silliness. The *inevitable* competition, afforded by the neutral 2-way
Internet, obsoletes that idea tout de suite.
Bert
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