[opendtv] Re: TVTechnology: Viaccess-Orca: 20 Million Watched World Cup on Illegal Streams
- From: "Manfredi, Albert E" <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 1 Aug 2014 01:24:02 +0000
Craig Birkmaier wrote:
> Are you implying that people are turning to pirate sites because
> the authenticated sites that they are paying for don't work?
I'm saying that people around the world are going to pirate sites because they
don't want to be limited to the legal sites available out there. For instance,
cord cutters and the young cord nevers don't want to be limited to the MVPD
membership model, to stream some of this content.
It's like I wrote to Aljazeera, when they walled themselves up in MVPD nets. Do
you really think I'll subscribe to an MVPD to keep watching your channel, or do
you think I'll simply go to some other news channel? It's fairly obvious, right?
The industry is trying desperately to corral everyone into the old MVPD model,
even for IP streams, as that article about C-SPAN so blatantly put it, but the
people aren't buying into that. Even Macchiavelli knew that you can't force the
masses to do something they don't want. That's the wake-up call for the content
owners.
> The content owners are trying to protect the walled gardens - that
> is why they are using authentication.
Strange way of putting it. The content owners primarily want *authentication*,
so they get paid more. They don't care about protecting MVPDs, as much as they
care about their revenues. They may still be using the MVPD model, in large
part, as the authentication mechanism. However the content owners are already
showing signs of having understood what Macchiavelli was saying. The content
owners, as we've already discussed many times, have started making their
content available independent of the MVPD nets, over the Internet. Baby steps,
perhaps. A few hours delayed, perhaps. So, this piracy problem should be yet
another wake-up call to them.
I get the impression your thinking is still very MVPD-oriented. The Internet
makes for a natural a la carte medium, right? Or certainly, it is a natural
medium for allowing multiple different choices of bundles, from any number of
sites.
So, the MVPDs would probably be wise to allow more a la carte, unbundled
choices, as one way to keep their content troves relevant. But the content
owners can also read the tea leaves, maybe even bypass the old walled garden
model altogether, and deal with other Internet-specific portals instead. What
makes you think the content owners haven't figured this out?
Bert
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