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Bell Canada Launches Its Own Online Video Store
rsax writes "Bell Canada recently announced that it is launching a downloadable video store just as it is caught up in a government inquiry into its traffic-shaping practices. Some consider this a conflict of interest since several content providers were in the process of distributing TV shows using P2P technology before the Bell throttling issue started getting media coverage. Bell's FAQ states that it is not available for Mac users right now (and not Linux either of course) because they are using Windows Media DRM. They do, however, invite feedback on their site."
Just switch to TekSavvy. They're an ISP that believes in network neutrality, they've even organized a rally on parliament hill for next week. Prices beat Bell too.
If you want to attend the rally, see http://www.netneutralityrally.ca/ .
The content providers ARE their customers where this service is concerned, we the consuming audience are the product BEll Canada they are selling to the provider.
"We're hoping that one day Microsoft, Apple, the content owners and video sites like ours will have a big group hug and we can all share content. Until that day comes, all video content is delivered to you wrapped with Digital Rights Management (DRM). ... Bell Video Store is required by the content owners to put DRM on every video."
Wouldn't it make more sense for all *content delivery services* to have a group hug refusing to deliver content with DRM?
To make more bandwidth for their customers to download movies off their site.
*collective duuuuuuuhhhhh*
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
75% percent of the portable media player market is Apple's iPod. 75%. Any online store that prevents their target demographic from transferring their videos and music to the overwhelming media player of choice is choosing failure as a business plan. Bell has chosen failure. Microsoft's business plans are not in the best interest's of consumers or even business partners. Surely the latest MSN license server fiasco and the Play For Sure Zune betrayal are painfully evident lessons in who not to partner with when setting up a media distribution shop.
Fiat Homos et Pereat Theos
I took no time whatsoever to submit my comments. Be sure to tell Internet Pat what a wanker he is. I can't remember his last name, but he's the VP of marketing for Sympatico there. He's probably also responsible for those annoying cartoon beavers plastered all over the newspaper ads and television. I wish they would get rid of that ad campaign. Beavers are supposed to be symbolic for hard working Canadians. Nowadays most of their workforce lives in India.
Sorry, I'm just a little jaded. I used to work for a Sympatico call center here in Canada doing technical support. We were repeatedly getting wage cuts, benefits removed, workloads increased, sales targets increased (yes, I did say technical support), and jobs being sent overseas. We had over 300 employees. I left when it got down to about 30. When my cellphone contract ends next year I'm switching to Rogers - that will be the last Bell service I'll ever have.
It all makes sense now. Bell Canada is the Company that orchestrated Salem-style witch hunts against mom & pop brick & mortar satellite TV shops prior to launching their ExpressVu service. Even before they managed to lobby a dictatorship-style law forbidding foreign satellite service, they were orchestrating raids against their future competitors. The bandwidth throttling is just a modern day version of their Monopoly status abuse.
Cancel your DSL and move to Cable.
Teksavvy doesn't provide internet over cable. Rogers and Shaw have a tighter grip on their network than Bell has on the phone lines.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
This raises something that I've been thinking about for a while. There are two different kinds of network manipulation that ISPs can do and I think that it is important to make a distinction between them. They are:
1) Filtering/modifying/shaping traffic based on type (protocol), but not looking at source or destination. For example, giving streaming video priority over email.
2) Filtering/etc traffic based on source and/or destination. For example, giving streaming video from BellVideoLand priority over video from Youtube.
I think that ISPs can possibly make a case justifying the first type, based on protocol, on the basis of network management.
But the second, based on source, is just evil.
I think that we need to be careful to not lump both of these types under the single crusade of "net neutrality". I think that the term net neutrality should be reserved for source based filtering.
The problem with DRM on FOSS is that it's too hard to make it work in the slightest. With Linux you could easily write a video driver and a sound driver that just dumps everything to disk, thereby automatically bypassing the DRM. They could probably do some trickery by ensuring that you are only running specific drivers, but that will only go so far. The open source nature of Linux allows you to do whatever you want with the system. Thereby making DRM impossible. An actual open source library that would decrypt the DRM content would be even worse, because you could just recompile it to drop the decrypted info to the disk. No messing with drivers required.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.