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Hulu Again Removed From Boxee and Again Added Back
An anonymous reader writes "In a mouse and cat game, Hulu the popular online content provider of shows, movies, and more has blocked Boxee yet again from accessing the Hulu content from the Boxee application. Just as Boxee added RSS feeds to include Hulu content, Hulu responded with blocking Boxee users from accessing the content via RSS feeds the very same day. RSS feeds are publicly available and it's really disappointing to hear that a site would block certain applications from accessing their content in such a manner. I would assume that the Boxee development team is currently working on disguising its browser to look like Firefox, Internet Explorer, or some other known browser in an attempt to fool Hulu."
They're aliens.
And that's how they roll.
I'd feel like a damn idiot for momentarily forgetting how the Internet works and for trying to have a lawyer solve an engineer's problem.
"How would you feel if someone hot-linked your content, consumed your bandwidth, and gave you no advertising revenue in exchange?"
Probably like a person with a very broken business model, but that's just me.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
Seeing as hulu lets you embed their content like youtube, it is strange if their objection is that in-site ads are being skipped. (And are we back to the AdBlock extension == theft argument?)
Otherwise, I assume the ads embedded in the video are still be played.
The only reasons I can imagine for Hulu to wat to block Boxee are (1) ignorance of their own profit model (2) planning to release their own hardware box, or else partner with someone else in order to get the same vertical monopoly going.
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
Boxee does not strip out the ads. It is still the same video stream, boxee just gives a remote-friendly interface to the media. It is no different than watching Hulu in full screen with your computer plugged into a TV. Hulu allows embedding into another website just like Youtube and other media sites, so how is embedding into the Boxee media player any different?
Also, Hulu's ads are played in the video. How are they being deprived of advertising revenue?
Said, "It's just like dice but it's got more sides And it tells me who lives and who dies"
There is no "ripping" of content. Hulu lets you embed their videos into another website. Their ads are in the video. Boxee just provides an interface to play the video with it streaming from hulu. If you are wondering why you need another interface, realize that Boxee is a Media Center app. It is streamlined to be controlled with a remote and its main function is playing your own content. Adding hulu into the mix gives you the ability to watch hulu's content legally without having to navigate with a normal web browser. The price you pay is you watch the normal Hulu ads. Sounds like free advertising for Hulu to me.
Said, "It's just like dice but it's got more sides And it tells me who lives and who dies"
There is a possible solution though: inject the ads into the video itself, so they can't be separated. Make the videos 'dynamic' flash videos, so the advertising can't really be removed without modifying a .SWF file.
Hey, you just described exactly how it works. There is no copyright infringement going on here. Boxee is not a web site, it is a media center application. Hulu allows embedding of their videos. They have ads in the video stream. Boxee basically just embeds the video, ads and all, into the application so that it can be played on your computer screen or TV with a simple interface.
If I recall correctly, Hulu originally provided code to help Boxee display Hulu content. So why the change of heart? I read some speculation somewhere that Hulu is actually being pressured by the content owners to stop Boxee because there is less advertising revenue from web streaming than there is for live TV. Since people use boxee to play videos on their TV and not a computer screen, the content owners feel they are losing out. What I don't think they understand is that you can watch Hulu's videos using your computer on your TV with or without Boxee.
Said, "It's just like dice but it's got more sides And it tells me who lives and who dies"
My understanding: Content providers gave Hulu a license to display their works on computers. However, they don't perceive Boxee as a computer; instead, they perceive it as a TV. They haven't given Hulu a license to display their works on TVs, so they're unhappy with Hulu being on Boxee. Of course, there's no difference between "display on a computer" and "display on a tv" anymore, but they don't want this to be true. It's dumb, but that's the media industry for you.
Except Boxee didn't strip the commercials from Hulu. I used to watch Hulu in the browser in the beta days, and then later in Boxee. I saw the same ads inlaid in the show whether I watched on the site or via Boxee. The difference was that Boxee had better UI for browsing the programs, and that Boxee's method of reading the stream gave me considerably better framerate/performance than trying to view full-screen in Flash on the site did.
In other words, Boxee was a great deal more usable for me as a viewer, and I saw all the same commercials I did as a user of the website. (Hulu doesn't do sidebar advertising, their adverts are in the programs themselves where ad-breaks would normally be.)
--Rachel
You're quite welcome to miss the point, if you like. Who am I to stop you if such a thing makes you feel better?
On the other hand... if you'd rather understand what it is I'm actually saying, you should take note of the fact that RSS is meant for content syndication and is meant to be interpreted as a set of individual items, while a web page is meant to be displayed as a whole. Unless Boxee is stripping the RSS content itself, its use is consistent with the purpose of an RSS feed. That's my point.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
Jason Kilar, CEO of Hulu, admitted on the company's blog that the content owners demanded that Boxee stop displaying Hulu content.
It's scary being a Flash and Flex developer on Slashdot. You guys are unnaturally rabid.
openness of Hulu
Ah! Is this an oxymoron contest?
My turn then: "Atheism of the Pope"
You can't take the sky from me...
This code, executed on a dd-wrt router, will give all your clients 30 seconds of nothing during commercials when watching Hulu videos. It will block most other browser ads also but what the hell... Works really well with Slashdot.
Just add it to your startup section and enjoy a nearly ad-free internet.
---- /tmp/dlhosts /tmp/hosts\nlogger DOWNLOADED http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.txt\nkillall -1 dnsmasq" > /tmp/dlhosts /tmp/dlhosts /tmp/dlhosts /tmp/hosts /etc/hosts /tmp/dlhosts" >> /tmp/crontab
logger WAN UP Script Executing
sleep 5
test -s
if [ $? == 1 ] ; then
echo -e "#!/bin/sh\nwget -O - http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.txt | grep 127.0.0.1 | tr -d '\015\032' | sed -e '2,\$s/127.0.0.1/0.0.0.0/g' -e 's/[[:space:]]*#.*$//' -e '2,\$s/0.0.0.0 localhost$/127.0.0.1 localhost/g' -e '2,\$s/0.0.0.0 pagead.*.googlesyndication.com//g' | grep 0.0 >
chmod 777
fi
ln -s
echo "45 23 * * 5 root
-----
Interesting theory. Please, let me know when you develop a means to pay the bills with your lofty ideals, it sounds much more fulfilling than selling out the way everyone else does.
You mean like when my girlfriend releases digital copies under creative commons, allows book publishers, music publishers and event promoters to use her images free with attribution, and then sells the original works of acrylic painted on canvas in higher volume and for higher prices? Works real well... gets a lot of commissioned pieces for murals, does live paintings of performers at raves and spoken word events and festivals, the list goes on.
It's called dealing with the realities of the world. Sell what is naturally scarce and share what is naturally plentiful as wide and far as you can, and people will come knock on your door. Now, contrast that with a business model whose entire existence relies on the continuation of wildly unpopular and wasteful legal structures that treat bits on a wire as though they were carrots dug out of your garden. Who is the idealist here?
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
YOU CANT STEAL WHAT IS FREELY GIVEN TO YOU.
Why cant you people get that through your heads??
Boxee did nothing but showed the EXACT SAME CONTENT in a better UI. Commercials all were there.
Just because some low IQ moron says something is not to his liking, it does not make it illegal or wrong. Whomever said that Boxee was stealing anything is a complete and utter moron that really needs to be killed so that he does not cause the rest of us to become dumber simply from his existence.
This is the Crux. Hulu said , "no more boxee" because some really really REALLY stupid executive at some content provider that Hulu does nto have the balls to name said they did not like it.
Only the incredibly low IQ people think that boxee was stealing anything. These same people think that Best buy employees are highly educated and know what they are talking about.
That movie would have been 1000% better if they'd tried to invade on a rainy day.
This is a joke. I am joking. Joke joke joke.
It's still a retarded move though; hulu and similar services have been drawing people away from "pirated"[sic] content and back to revenue-generating content, and now that it is hitting critical mass the content owners are shooting themselves in the foot. The folks at Hulu seem caught in the middle. Who are the losers? Both consumers and Hulu.
What content producers, software producers, and so forth are STILL failing to realize is that they are making the "pirated"[sic]/counterfeit product MORE valuable than the real thing because the "pirated"[sic] content is invariably not crippled by DRM.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
However, you CAN bypass DRM for the purpose of interoperability. Want to watch media on Boxee? You now fall under the requirements for the clause which allows defeating/bypassing the DRM.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
You make a grand assumption that most people have some creative contribution to add to this world. Sorry, but most don't. Creative types have a hard time believing this could be true, but it is. Many people have functional contributions that cannot be subsidized by the whims of the internet's paying customers. In fact, it is the case for the vast majority of people. I wish it weren't true, but *that* is the reality of the world, not the one you describe for your talented girlfriend. I wish her well but your scenario doesn't work for the general population.
We're not talking about most people. We're talking about professional creators. If you don't have a creative contribution to add to this world, you sure as hell shouldn't be getting paid to sit around all day publishing.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
No matter how they engineer it, someone can possibly scrape their streams
As long as they don't CROSS their streams. That would be bad.
Honestly, I don't know the full history of this story, nor how exactly Hulu works.
This is the point where you should have canceled your post.
I wouldn't be surprised if the cable/satellite companies and local broadcasters are pressuring the national networks, as they have the most to lose from Internet-streaming set top boxes.
Local broadcasters don't have enormous profit margins. They're hurting right now, and if ten percent of their market decide to stream Hulu to their TV, it could mean bankruptcy for many smaller providers. NBC and Fox have done the math; they don't want to lose the majority of their audience (who still watch whatever's on the tube) just to make a minority (who've learned about this whiz-bang Internet thingy) happy.
Cable and satellite companies, of course, have tremendous influence over the networks as well, as they provide the majority of the audience these days. They also have a history of doing whatever it takes to prevent competition and sweeten their contracts with the networks. If NBC has to choose between Comcast and Hulu, they'll pick the one that has 25 million paying subscribers. Hint: It's not Hulu...
Honestly, I don't think this is really about Boxee at all. I think it's just an attempt to set precedent. Lots of people are scared to death of a box that lets people watch whatever they want, whenever they want, with no monthly fee (beyond their broadband service). End distributors (local networks, cable companies) are afraid of the competition. Networks are afraid of losing their position as the gatekeepers of content, as the Internet makes it far easier for content creators (the individual production companies) to deal directly with the "distributors" (YouTube, etc).
So the networks have to walk a very fine line here. On the one hand, they can't afford to anger (or bankrupt) their current distributors. On the other, they can't afford to lose their dominance, even as people start switching to Internet-based services.
As a result, the networks seem to be taking a cautious approach: They work to popularize their own online services, like Hulu, in hopes of transferring their content oligopoly to the online world, but they avoid direct competition with their major distribution methods.
I'd wager that if streaming ever reaches a "saturation point", where everybody is watching TV on their computer and the market seems ready to switch, the networks will release some ordained "magic box" which streams their content (and maintains their control over the content market), and happily give their old distributors the metaphoric finger.
Or, if one large content owner makes a big push for streaming set top boxes, expect the rest to follow suit fairly quickly.
Until one of those occurs, though, expect more of the status quo. To use an analogy that describes technology adoption by most large industries: Nobody wants to be the only one in the pool, but they definitely don't want to be the only one out of the pool. They may all decide to jump in together, but if one decides to jump in now, the rest will follow.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?