Slashdot Mirror
Disney Strikes Against Net Neutrality
1 a bee writes "Ars Technica is running a story by Matthew Lasar about how Disney's ESPN360.com is charging ISPs for 'bulk' access to their content. According to the article, if you visit ESPN using a 'non-subscribing' ISP, you're greeted with a message explaining why access is restricted for you. This raises a number of issues: '... it's one thing to charge users an access fee, another to charge the ISP, potentially passing the cost on to all the ISPs subscribers whether they're interested in the content or not.' Ironically, the issue came to the fore in a complaint from the American Cable Association (ACA) to the FCC. A quoted ACA press release warns, 'Media giants are in the early stages of becoming Internet gatekeepers by requiring broadband providers to pay for their Web-based content and services and include them as part of basic Internet access for all subscribers. These content providers are also preventing subscribers who are interested in the content from independently accessing it on broadband networks of providers that have refused to pay.' So, is this a real threat to net neutrality (and the end-to-end principle) or just another bad business model that doesn't stand a chance?"
They're experts on charging everyone for content, whether they want it or not.
(Whatever happened to all those proposals for 'ala carte' cable?)
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
Could using proxies like Tor assist getting around blocks based on your ISP?
These companies seem to be stuck in the TV mindset, and view web sites sort-of like internet channels. Web site owners like ESPN want to be able to sell their "channels" to cable companies, and cable companies want to charge their users extra for "premium content." They're trying to pound a square peg into a round hole. My worry is that they'll manage to do it, via monopoly pressure or government legislation, and end up making my internet service about as convenient as my television service (that is, not at all).
I really wish companies would learn to adapt instead of trying to shoehorn everything into their existing business models. Why do we pay CEOs these ridiculous salaries again? It sure isn't because they're visionaries.
Do they then become more responsible for what it is they are allowing through?
Compare it to cable companies, where some individual cable channel broadcasters get paid by the cable companies for their content, and the cable companies then have some responsibility over what gets presented.
Get off my launchpad!
Isn't Disney a mickey mouse outfit anyway?
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
Obviously. There is really no distinction between charging an ISP for service and forming a partnership with them to provide content. Both are just an agreement between two parties.
This is just another reason why CONTENT providers should be prohibited from making any kind of business deals with SERVICE providers. This is a perfectly reasonable anti-trust regulation and one that I've even seen written up in the editorial section of the WSJ, of all places.
This was before net neutrality was such a hot-button issue, and the article made the point that deregulation would have been much more effective if it had been done in a way to encourage competition instead of prevent it; by preventing this partnership, competition between providers would be enabled. This makes sense even without considering there higher-minded principles behind net neutrality.
Guess they want some feedback on this topic:
http://espn.go.com/broadband/espn360/feedback
No access to Disney content resulting in lower ISP charges? Win-Win! How do I sign up?
Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.
I have relatives that worship Disney. They go to Disneyland 4-5 times a year, buy up every DVD they put out, and one of them even has their bathroom painted to look like a Dalmatian, with little Dalmatian statues scattered about everywhere. It's scary. That being said I hope this blows up in their face. I hope that people realize that the good wholesome fantasy world Walt set out to create is dead, and what's left is just a giant faceless corporation with their tentacles raping our society like a scene out of a Urotsukidji manga. It would be nice to see a boycott over this.
The problem at the bottom of all this is the existence of local broadband monopolies. If local broadband markets weren't monopolies, there'd be no problem. Disney could try to extort money from ISP #1, in order to force all of 1's customers to pay an ESPN tax, regardless of whether they wanted to view ESPN via the internet or not. If there was a second ISP, then ISP #2 could position itself as the no-frills ISP in the area, not offering ESPN, and people like me who aren't interested in ESPN would go with ISP #2. In this competitive economic environment, Disney's business plan wouldn't work. All they'd accomplish would be to create a class of users, the customers of ISP #2, who wouldn't even have the option of paying to view ESPN if they wanted to. Disney would recognize that, and wouldn't try this business plan in the first place.
Find free books.
as an Earthlink subscriber through Time Warner in Los Angeles. http://imagebin.ca/view/Zt9dp58.html
ESPN loves to milk tons of money out of cable systems, and in fact, their channels are amongst the most expensive for cable providers, mostly because Disney insists that they be on the "basic" tier. Funny thing is the more ESPN channels they add the worse their programming seems to get, and my days of making sure I didn't miss SportsCenter are LONG gone thanks to the Internet, but I digress.
So, I'm not surprised that they are trying the same thing with ISP's. I don't think this is going to work out that well though. Getting to see broadcasts of games online won't be more than a niche until much faster broadband is available and wireless broadband is more ubiquitous. ESPN was one of the first to start charging for web content in the first place, which is where I'd think it'd be appropriate to sell subscriptions to their video service, but it seems to me that they want to force the ISP's to pay, hence forcing every SUBSCRIBER of that ISP to pay for it as it will be passed on, thus netting them cash from people who don't want their video service and won't use it.
Given how they've been larding up their website with screaming video ads that start playing immediately I've been going to it less and less. They really are living on past reputation only as their content has really gone down hill the past couple years. I certainly don't want my ISP to pay and pass the charges on to me.
Corporatism != Free Market
I am paying my ISP for routing to the Internet. They had better not mess with that. If some web site wants to block me, that is their prerogative.
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
If this is against net neutrality, then at least its the 'ethical' version. If they want to build AOL 2.0, then let them.
The difference between someone saying "you can't access my content unless someone pays" and someone saying "you can't see this content unless the content provider pays me to let you, even though you've alredy paid me" is vast.
ESPN360 is just a estoteric version of a pay site where the choice to pay is made by your ISP rather than you. If you don't like their choice, you have the option to complain to them or switch.
If the ISPs feel it isn't a good investment or feel that it's unfair: they shouldn't pay for it. If they do think it provides enough value: they should if Disney asks them to.
Yes they will pass those costs on, but they can only put their prices up so high before they lose value to their customers and they walk. And yes even cable providers and ISPs have a threshold to their value beyond which the price ain't worth it.
If enough of their customers want Disney, they'll continue, if not they'll buck the deal.
Think about it: if Disney and other majors cost the ISPs too much, the ISPs may well tier their services for consumers; if consumers feel the extra price to access Disney is worth it more power to Disney and the ISP. The extra value will be worth it... I suspect on the Internet people would find other content (maybe even non-Disney content, shudder) rather than pay a premium. If ISPs don't offer enough service for price, people won't buy the service.
Going to the FCC or trying to steal the content isn't going to solve anything and ultimately punishes those that create the value.
Once upon a time, when I was your age, we were able to go anywhere on the internet that we wanted. Then the websites realized they couldn't make any money that way and started packaging themselves together and selling access rights to ISPs just like cable tv does. And guess what? The websites made money, and people payed more money to the ISPs for access, and all the corporations rejoiced. Thus died the golden age of the internet which we now just call 'interactive cable'
The excuses they use in opposition to Net Neutrality have viable compromises/work-arounds. It seems like they can still be evil to the consumer in a Net Neutral World. It's just harder to but a barrier to competition, so that consumer would have alternatives. The only reason I can see is that they are trying to be anti-competitive which is, well.. monopolistic/evil/illegal.
Suppose Net Neutrality were there accepted rule:
Would it be in violation for a website to offer a faster experience to premium users? I don't think so. I think it's okay for a site to throttle their out-going traffic. This has nothing to do with shaping traffic en-route.
Would it then be in violation of Net Neutrality to run a promotion with Comcast, say: "Sign up now and get a life time pass to the ESPN Express Lane (TM)". I don't think so. They are not restricting access by messing with the Tubes.
I think the real reason they wouldn't do something like this is because it wouldn't stop a newcomer for providing a better experience for free. It's clearly an intent to squeeze out the competition and limit choice for consumers.
The site in question seems to work fine from Europe. That was actually my guess beforehand: indeed, how could Disney make deals with all the ISP from overseas...
So it seems that Disney has chosen to only close it to 'some US citizins', ie those of certain ISP's.
(Those which are not one of their choosing).
Guess Disney should be glad to be in the States, and not somewhere in Europe where our Dutch Neelie could get at them ;-0
(See e.g. http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/03/31/1328249 ).
fsck you. And when their customers complain about their limited access, tell them to take it up with the broken website they are trying to visit.
its very different for a service to filter connections than a backbone. the real threat to end-to-end and neutrality
would be if transit providers start charging for traffic involving certain endpoints (which is how this discussion
got started)
endpoints can make whatever restrictions they like, even if they are as idiotic as trying to get access providers
to handle their sales and billing.
of course it would suck if i couldn't get internet access without also paying for some 'content plan', but thats a
different issue entirely
Ok, let me see if I understand this:
Disney's against Net Neutrality while Slashdotters like Net Neutrality.
But Disney = Pixar, which Slashdotter's like.
And Pixar = Steve Jobs.
Some Slashdotters don't like Steve Jobs.
But Steve Jobs = Apple.
Slashdotters like Apple.
Oh man, I'm confused.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
Here's three screaming kids. Your move.
I lead with a DVD of DreamWorks' Shrek. And if they ask for specific titles of public-domain fairy tales that happen to have been filmed by Walt Disney Pictures, I have plenty of comebacks for those.
This is just another reason why CONTENT providers should be prohibited from making any kind of business deals with SERVICE providers.
While I agree in principle, I'm not completely opposed to an Internet subscription model where I get to choose between Package A (basic Internet with no frills) and Package B (basic plus ESPN.com). If I don't want that crap then I don't have to pay for it.
Seriously, who's to say that it wouldn't be a reasonable business move for AT&T to offer Internet Plus that comes with built-in subscriptions to Wall Street Journal, New York Times, ESPN, etc., for a fraction of the cost of subscribing to each individually. I don't consider that a challenge to Net Neutrality as long as the option exists for me to subscribe, at will, to those services like we do today.
Right now, however, the Internet providers aren't particularly interested in giving me any choices, including choices between different providers (Time Warner is the only provider in my area in the middle of freaking south Austin -- we can't even get DSL). In the rush to provide the illusion of "more" in order to raise prices, nobody seems interested in providing "less."
I disagree and am probably going to get tarred and feathered for this, but they kinda have a point. However they are doing it wrong.
ISP's are nothing more than distributors of content. They don't create or provide content, they just distribute it.
Disney is a large scale content provider. They make the content which an ISP then distributes. Disney has every right to charge for that content. If they decided not to put their content on the internet who would pay comcast or verizon or whomever for non-existent content?
What I mean by they are doing it wrong is that they should put a bid out to ISPs to distribute their content at a byte or GB distribution level. So comcast could offer to pay Disney $1.00 per GB to route their content, comcast can then charge other ISPs $1.10 per GB for their content. Verizon would then have to charge $1.20 to its customers for internet access on top of whatever monthly fee. Comcast could charge $1.10 to its customers since it had the premier content.
Then Verizon makes an offer to YouTube for $1.20 per GB to distribute its content... and the cycle continues.
Not only that but since every node on the internet is potentially a content provider contracts can be set so that whatever content you upload you could get paid for. Anything you download you pay them for and the costs are passed to the actual content provider.
Using this model the itunes store could distribute music for "free" although it would be charged at the per GB rate. Market competition should keep the costs down.
Hosting content isn't free. Distributing content isn't free. The internet isn't free... right now a lot of companies are providing their internet content at a loss. This type of model would fix the newspaper mess. An ISP would pay big bucks to host the WSJ, a small town newspaper would also benefit from this method. This is the answer to the question "How do you make money on the internet." Now we just have the means to pay the content providers directly.
With this kind of distribution method the 2 million+ Joss Whedon fans could have been directly supporting his program and theoretically firefly could still be being produced.
With this kind of distribution there is no reason for conglomorates to own all the media, the directors and producers have a direct line and business model that would work to support their production costs.
It would limit the pirating of software since it would still cost you to torrent, when you could just get the content directly for the content owner. I mean if you could just go to the artist website and download the song "for free" and they earn money from it wouldn't everyone be better off? If it cost you $3 do torrent a movie from TPB or $3 to download it from http://www.transformersmovie.com/ wouldn't you rather have your money support the actual content providers?
Yeah, I've long been a proponent of the idea of breaking up the vertical monopolies that are causing a lot of these problems. However, I think the key thing to break up is that the infrastructure providers should be prohibited from being service providers or content providers.
So, for example, if Verizon is laying the fiber and hooking up the routers to provide the internet, then they should be forbidden from being an ISP or providing voice service or acting as a "cable company" (providing video services). They should be required to openly license their infrastructure to basically any service provider at a set price (no special deals). Cable companies (like Comcast, Time Warner, etc) should be required to cease providing video services themselves, and allow some method of allowing customers to choose their own video providers from a free marketplace.
This would mean that everyone looking to provide services, whether they be web hosting, voice, or video (including original content) would essentially be on equal footing. No one would be able to use special access to the infrastructure as leverage to squeeze out competitors.
If you don't like their choice, you have the option to complain to them or switch.
If there were choices in broadband providers net neutrality would be a non-issue.
Literalism isn't a form of humor, it's you being irritating.
If Comcast is going to muck with forwarding my packets, they should reroute requests for espn.com to cbssports.com. Hopefully Comcast and Disney both go nuclear, then Canada takes over the world.
ISP's are nothing more than distributors of content.
When you receive Netflix DVDs over snail mail, does it mean that your local post office is "distributor of content"?
I don't think so, and it applies just as well to ISPs. They don't sit down and think, "gee, how about we distribute some of Disney's content to our customers today". They merely provide me, their customer, access to some part of their fat pipe, so that I can go to the place of my choosing, and get the content I want. If the content provider wants money, they should ask me to pay, not the ISP.
There is no fire like passion, there is no shark like hatred, there is no snare like folly, there is no torrent like greed.
-Buddha
I hate to use the stale "I have a black friend" interjectory, but I do have a black friend and asked her opinion of "Song of the South" and the whole Uncle Remus thing. She stated that it was a depiction and a snapshot of historical standards and expectations and should be considered as such.
Something like this happened in the "Black Like Monica" episode of "Touched By An Angel". In it a small city is preparing a celebration for someone who was part of the Underground Railroad with Rosa Parks as a guest. One white city councilman asks a black councilwoman if they should use a better term instead of "Negro preacher" and she says that in her historical research that was the term used and she was comfortable with it. At one tyme Negro was a neutral term and not racist.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
So, is this a real threat to net neutrality (and the end-to-end principle) or just another bad business model that doesn't stand a chance?
This is the other boot dropping.
1. ISPs try to charge media companies for discriminatory access to their customers.
2. Media companies try to charge ISPs for content.
3. Big ISPs and big media discover that they can scratch each others' backs and put the cost on the independents.
We're on the first part of step 2. Step 3 is absolutely inevitable if we do not pass net neutrality. The Internet will become as inaccessible to individuals and small business as television, radio, and print.
"Freedom of the press belongs to those who have one." The big ISPs and big media will eventually realize that is a value proposition if they can buy enough power from the DC corrupt.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
If you want your cable company to let you look at whatever YOU want, regardless of how much of a "good deal" they can get on providing it for you, you need to fucking hunker down and support the tards who want to look at Disney content.
I see this as a twist on what broadband providers want. They opposed net neutrality because they wanted to be able to charge content providers fees for not slowing down content but now the content providers have turned it around and want to be paid to provide the content. People talked about how Time Warner or ComCast would try to charge Google, but now they won't want Google to charge them for providing searches. Now let's see if those who opposed net neutrality now come out in support of it.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
the ISPs.
The only thing to understand is greed.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Wow, your foreign friends must be amazingly skilled sociologists, in order to draw such concise conclusions on such a large population. They must have studied the social patterns of the United States for many years, in order to make any such claim. Because most people would not dare to try to summarize the nature of a population of 36 million individuals in a three-word phrase. Why your sociologist foreign friends must be absolute fucking geniuses! Either that, or maybe they don't really know what they're talking about (that is if your friends really did say what you claim they did).
May I offer my summary instead: that some black folks are racist and some are not; some are dumb and some are not. But now it's not such a pungent little assessment, and applies to all sorts of groups.
Oh, I forgot, your friends are from Africa, so that gives them the right to make blanket generalizations about American blacks!
. . . and therefore it must not exist!
You need to meet more black folks, bro.
$META_SIG_JOKE