[opendtv] Re: What the AT&T/Time-Warner deal means for you
- From: "Manfredi, Albert E" <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 12 Nov 2017 01:18:03 +0000
Monty Solomon posted:
What the AT&T/Time-Warner deal means for you
The antitrust arguments behind DOJ's looming lawsuit against AT&T.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/11/10/what-the-atttime-warner-deal-means-for-you/
The key idea:
"This deal would give a combined AT&T-Time Warner both the incentive and the
ability to favor its own content over that of rivals and restrict access to its
content for competing distributors, ..."
The first part of the above quote, "incentive and the ability to favor its own
content over that of rivals," is exactly why we need a net neutrality guarantee
for telecoms. Nothing much can be done about that in legacy MVPDs, so it would
only serve to make people cut the cord that much more quickly. This is what
would happen to Internet access without such a guarantee.
The second part, "restrict access to its content for competing distributors,"
is something that net neutrality wouldn't address. Content owners can certainly
choose who they do business with. Only the middlemen are targeted by a net
neutrality mandate. On the other hand, it seems unlikely that content owners
would want to restrict their audience to just those locations where their
distribution infrastructure exists. So this should be less of a concern. And in
fact,
But you'd have to be very gullible to believe this one:
"At the same time, as a distributor of video services, AT&T must offer the
programming its customers want, regardless of whether or not AT&T owns that
programming."
Yeah right. MVPD culture has always been to control whether and what their
customers get to see, how it's priced, how it's bundled. Not saying that the
content owners aren't often complicit, exploiting the side benefits of having
local monopolies distribute their content. Just saying, this is the sort of
nonsense that must not be allowed to pollute Internet broadband access.
The FCC needs to WAKE UP. Let the legacy MVPDs retain that culture if they
like, as they fade away into the sunset.
Bert
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