Re: TV Anywhere Gets A Boost: Paging Christine Varney! (and Jon Lebowitz and, eventually, Julius Genachowski)

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Bob Frankston" <Bob19-0501 () bobf frankston com>
Date: June 24, 2009 9:53:08 PM EDT
To: <dave () farber net>, "'ip'" <ip () v2 listbox com>
Cc: "'Dewayne Hendricks'" <dewayne () warpspeed com>, "Harold Feld" <hfeld () mediaaccess org 
>
Subject: RE: [IP] TV Anywhere Gets A Boost: Paging Christine Varney!  
(and Jon Lebowitz and, eventually, Julius Genachowski)

Just as my ability to route Verizon VoD through my standard router  
demonstrates that video in fact works over generic IP, the Web viewing  
implementations (such as Comcast’s own Fancast) show that we don’t  
need to tie content to the transport. The very thin thread tying this  
to the old model is an arbitrary and spurious tie to their old billing  
engine.

Aren’t they admitting that the linkage between their ownership of the  
transport and their control of content is a blatant restraint on  
trade? If a guilty plea isn’t enough what will it take to put a lie to  
their defining premises?

Perhaps the reason is that people don’t fully appreciate the  
tremendous damage done by this collusion. First there are the hundreds  
of billions of billable events generated by forcing us to pay for  
services like telephony which we can better to ourselves. I argue that  
these costs are dwarfed by loss of the ability to create new value and  
innovate in health and safety.

I do understand they are desperately avoiding their dumb pipe fate.  
The question is the FCC continues to protect them against the market?

-----Original Message-----
From: David Farber [mailto:dave () farber net]
Sent: Wednesday, June 24, 2009 19:26
To: ip
Subject: [IP] TV Anywhere Gets A Boost: Paging Christine Varney! (and  
Jon Lebowitz and, eventually, Julius Genachowski)



Begin forwarded message:

From: dewayne () warpspeed com (Dewayne Hendricks)
Date: June 24, 2009 2:47:32 PM EDT
To: Dewayne-Net Technology List <xyzzy () warpspeed com>
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] TV Anywhere Gets A Boost: Paging Christine
Varney! (and Jon Lebowitz and, eventually, Julius Genachowski)

TV Anywhere Gets A Boost: Paging Christine Varney! (and Jon Lebowitz
and, eventually, Julius Genachowski)

By Harold Feld on June 24, 2009 - 2:10pm
<http://www.publicknowledge.org/node/2494>
Time Warner and Comcast have announced a new pilot program for their
TV Anywhere initiative. The 5,000 customers in the pilot will get
access to cable programming content not otherwise available online —
as long as they prove they subscribe to a subscription video service —
or “MVPD” — like cable or FIOS. (MVPD stands for “multichannel video
programming distributor” and means anything that sells you a whole
bunch of cable channels. Forgive my jargon but it’s just an easier
term to fling around for this.)

The supporters of this initiative (which the New York Times notes is
also known in the industry by the more accurate but less friendly
names as the “Authentication Program” and the “Entitlement Program”)
point out that its just a bunch of broadband ISPs, who also happen to
be MVPDs, coming together with the handful of other vertically
integrated content companies like Viacom and DIRECTV/Liberty Media to
create a common standard so that everyone who has already paid for
this content can now also get it online. Ultimately, as long as you
subscribe to any MVPD, you will get access to the programming through
any internet provider. How could this possibly be anti-competitive?

Some of us old codgers with media regulatory backgrounds have long
memories. For example, did you know that the FCC first authorized the
direct broadcast satellite (DBS) service in 1982, and that we used to
have something called “wireless cable?” Why didn’t DBS manage to get
going until the mid-1990s and wireless cable died on the vine? Answer:
Because cable operators used control over programming (either direct
control by owning the programming outright or indirectly by
threatening to kick off programmers who sold programming to potential
competitors) to keep these services from emerging. In 1992, Congress
created the program access rules and made it illegal for cable
operators to demand exclusive deals from independent programmers. That
allowed satellite companies (and overbuilders like RCN and telcos like
AT&T) to get “must have” video programming to offer competing video
subscription packages.

So while everyone and his brother is fixated about cable operators
trying to keep customers from “cutting the chord,” and noting how this
ties in with theefforts to impose metered pricing and capacity caps,
the anticompetitive impact goes way, waaaayyy beyond locking
subscribers into obscenely profitable video bundles. As I noted when I
blogged on this a few months ago, it works to (a) prevent the
emergence of “virtual cable” competitors such asNetflix, and (b)
protect the current cable programming network business model (as
explained by Mark Cuban). It also jeopardizes innovation and further
fragments internet content, as demonstrated by the Hulu/Boxee.tv dust-
up back in February.

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