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."

Comments

can traffic shaping be proved in court?

[crazybit]

How can we prove a provider is shaping our traffic?

they will probably allege the slow download is because of net traffic, spam, etc.

transparent bridges for traffic shaping are very hard to detect

Re:can traffic shaping be proved in court?

[Auckerman]

They're shaping it by send malformed packets, causing bittorrent connections to be reset. The process is well known now and easily proved in court.

Re:can traffic shaping be proved in court?

[crazybit]

A provider can also choose to use a Linux bridge + htb, which won't sent any strange packets, it will just make p2p connections slower.

Silly DRM trix are for kids

[Anonymous Coward]

Why does everyone insist on using DRM when it clearly doesn't work

Re:Silly DRM trix are for kids

[crazybit]

I don't understand why people pay for a service that helps a company push it's propietary format in the market.

Re:Silly DRM trix are for kids

[grm_wnr]

Put it on iTunes or wind up like all the "Plays For Sure" suckers did. Is there a supportable, platform agnostic DRM available for the movie industry? No there isn't, because FOSS OS users don't want DRM to begin with - which is a noble cause but, of course, also prohibits them from playing nice with The Man until the revolution finally comes. Which is most likely a very negligible loss, but you really shouldn't whine about not being able to watch DRM'd movies on Linux, because it's a feature, not a bug.

FAIL

[Anonymous Coward]

Great, another DRM service doomed to fail.
One thing that Bell doesnt understand is that nearly all of its subscribers know how to get non drmed content for free... and those are the ones that havnt left bell due to the bandwidth cap for a 3rd party reseller with an unlimited cap still.

Two issues with Bell Canada

[suck_burners_rice]

I see a two issues with Bell Canada. First, this so-called Traffic Shaping is really a way to artificially screw up what would otherwise be a nicely working system. Who are they to dictate what traffic gets priority? Secondly, on the issue of using DRM, I think Steve Jobs put it nicely in his open paper about DRM-less music being sold on iTunes. Turns out that all this hoopla about piracy that caused the invention of DRM is over-exaggerated and some big businesses are agreeing with him. After all, if piracy were as large a problem as many would like us to believe, then how come iTunes is making Apple boatloads of money? I think Bell Canada would be wise to stop the traffic shaping and do something to support Linux and Mac. Otherwise they are really limiting themselves to that portion of the market that doesn't care about P2P and doesn't use Macs or Linux. Just my two cents on the whole matter.

this can't be legal?

[v1]

Let me see if I understand this right... they're getting ready to open up their own video store, at the same time they are starting to deliberately degrade the performance of other content providers their customers are using which are using P2P to distribute?

That's gotta be covered under some anticompetitive law somewhere? "We're going to start selling you a product, while at the same time sabotaging our competition's product, to make sure you buy ours instead."

Re:Cable? Are you nuts?!?

[guidryp]

It is a case of choosing the lesser of evils, and in this case that is cable. I get to drop all of Bell and tell them why. As a bonus my throughput will probably quadruple (DSL is 1.5mb/s where I am) Rogers throttling doesn't appear as choking as Bells.

There is nothing to stop me from switching back to DSL in a few months if Rogers annoys me and the 3rd party DSL situation improves. Or maybe looking into a 3rd party wireless option.

I realize this may hurt tekSavvy and other small DSL players, but it is the only way, I can stop paying Bell any revenues at all. If enough people did this, there would be policy changes.

Re:Rogers Bandwidth Caps (2008)

[CastrTroy]

Yes, and except for the ultralight 2 GB cap, they all seem pretty reasonable. They are at least telling you what they are, and presenting the pricing scheme for going over the cap. 60 GB is quite a lot of content. I could download a movie every day and still not go over. It wouldn't be a DVD ISO file, or BluRay, but the H.264 rips come in under 1 GB and look pretty good to me.