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Comcast Seeking Control of Both Pipes and Content?
techmuse writes "Reuters reports that Comcast may be attempting to use its huge cash reserves to purchase a large media content provider, such as Disney, Viacom, or Time Warner. This would result in Comcast controlling both the delivery mechanism for content, and the content itself. Potentially, it could limit access to content it owns to subscribers to its own services, thus shutting out competing services (where they still exist at all)."
We can only hope that they're one Administration too late to pull it off.
We see this in many areas. Soon you will have to select brand of TV depending on cable operator too.
Like it is today with some telecom operators - you may only select the phones THEY are offering, not the phone you want.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Its times like these where the landowners and cities that own ground where Comcast's wires are going through should have leased the land and forced them to pay more or upgrade the infrastructure to keep up with the times to keep using it. With the pathetic condition of Comcast's network, they should use the money to make their network halfway reliable.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Comcast can just wait until Obama needs something, then get it in a quid pro quo.
Or do you really still believe anything Obama says?
Troops out of Iraq? Yeah, on BUSH'S schedule?
End to warrantless wiretapping? Not so fast.
95% of us will get a tax cut? Yeah, sure.
Healthcare reform? Let's cut a deal and split the saving with big drug companies!
I think it's clear that our strength is technology and our weakness is the legal system. The legal system will always be in favor of those with deep pockets and have (at best) a tenuous grip on the ethical and moral considerations of the larger society. It's become so ineffective, insepid and innane as to become harmful to society -- Forget them. Laws do not govern moral conduct and never have. Integrity has no need of rules! But that's just a stop-gap. We need new technology -- and I think we need to go back to the basics to get there.
We need to bring the internet back as a peer-to-peer exchange, but to do that we're going to need to create protocols that are specifically designed to resist attack and interference from intermediaries. The original concept of the internet was based on a flawed model that the network could be trusted to deliver packets from point A to point B using the same logic throughout; It was assumed that the network would be managed by a central authority. This hasn't been the case for awhile, and now we are seeing an increasing desire to bend and break the original standards to serve commercial interests. The protocols must be redesigned to only present the minimal amount of information necessary -- the source and destination, and the actual payload encrypted and made tamper-evident.
To hell with demands that we have protocols with data exposed for "law enforcement", "national security" or "protecting the children" or any other specious argument. The ultimate expression of democracy is the free flow of information between citizens, and that's an ideal that comes ahead of all other considerations: We need to make a conscious and deliberate choice to accept the risks that come in embracing those early ideals, and not let the edge cases (terrorism, sexual predators, and elvis) sway us from the immense benefits of doing this. If the signal is to travel at all, it must travel freely.
If this doesn't come to pass then our future as a democratic society is at an end. Democracy is more important to me (and I hope you as well) than my personal safety or material comforts. A free and open communication medium between all members of society must be a universal, because it's the only way to maximize our individual and collective potentials. This is another step in a slow descent into a life we do not want, and we won't notice until it's too late how much we've lost.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
The FCC has no interest in protecting individual rights or promoting a competitive market. They are there to sell off public assets to private corporations, and enforce rules and fines to ensure societal conformity to the morals of politically important voting blocs.
If Comcast is prevented from acquiring someone due to federal interference, they will probably sue because they will claim that the free market is being tampered with. Just like any corporation, their definition of free market has nothing to do with the liberty of individuals to have access to a competitive market system. It has to do with the corporate right to be unbound by any rules and have the freedom to stifle competition and destroy the market for their own profit.
To widen the market and to narrow the competition, is always the interest of the dealers. To widen the market may frequently be agreeable enough to the interest of the publick; but to narrow the competition must always be against it, and can serve only to enable the dealers, by raising their profits above what they naturally would be, to levy, for their own benefit, an absurd tax upon the rest of their fellow-citizens... It comes from an order of men, whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it. --Adam Smith
Doesn't anyone remember the AOL/Time Warner merger? it was approximately 10 years ago now that it was announced. it was a dismal failure as technology changed in 2 years to make the whole thing worthless. The only media deal that can make sense is to buy the NFL, MLB, NASCAR or NBA because people will pay up for sports even in a recession. If the Disney channel suddenly becomes a premium channel I won't be getting it. even though i have a child.
and with Verizon laying fiber along with AT&T were a few years away from another networking technology explosion that will make this deal obsolete.
Only because AOL utterly failed to capitalize on their market dominance or prepare for the future. What did they think, dialup would last forever? That people would actually want their terrible service on top of broadband?
How is this any different than Time-Warner/Roadrunner?
If Comcast is prevented from acquiring someone due to federal interference, they will probably sue because they will claim that the free market is being tampered with.
As the summary states, Comcast has an enormous stash of (not-so-hard-earned) cash. They're acting like squirrels: if they see food they don't need right away, they just shove it into a hole somewhere until they find a use for it. That probably should not be allowed: it's one thing to put something away for a rainy day, but when corporations end up so flush with cash that they can influence entire markets and ruthlessly suppress competition something is wrong. It also means they're probably significantly overcharging for their goods and services (as an ex-Comcast-down-to-the-depths-of-Hell subscriber I can attest to that.)
Comcast's management also has other things in common with squirrels.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
yah, these rights are firmly installed in the Constitution AND the Bible.
They are part of anti-trust. Or do you expect the supreme document to detail every last thing that we do in this country? Seems excessive.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Has the poster never heard of Time Warner Cable? You know.. the nations second largest cable network and one of the largest ISPs in the US?
Pretty sure Time Warner already owns pipes AND content... seeing how they still own AOL and about a dozen high-traffic websites, not to mention a ton of TV channels and network programs (each of which has substantial web content of course)
Somebody who hadn't heard of a scroll wheel, that's who.
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
Sadly short of armed insurrection you are both wasting your breath. Why? Because neither of you can compete with the legal bribery allowed to corporations. Hell have either of you seen a major law passed in 20+ years that wasn't bought and paid for? from rebuilding Iraq (Haliburton, who BTW moved rather than pay taxes on war profiteering) to copyright extensions "for the artists" and the DMCA (bought by your good friends at the *.A.A and a certain company with a mouse eared logo) our political system has become nothing more than a graft machine.
Look around, don't like what you see? It is only gonna get WORSE from here on out. The bribes have gotten so big and the corporations so powerful that selling our their own country will be just another day at the office for our corrupt politicians. Thanks to "free trade" where we allowed our trading "partners" to prop their currency and do product dumping while poisoning their peasants we have lost our ability to pretty much manufacture anything but weapons, which will probably go next, these corrupt leaders now push for higher and higher education and a "services and IP" economy, while ignoring the fact that counterfeiting IP is a way of life for much of the third world, hell I could go on forever.
The simple fact is if a multinational corporation goes to a politician and says 'fuck your country" while writing a check with a bunch of zeroes he WILL do it. I have no doubt that 30 years or less from now we will look like Brazil, with huge slums while the rich protect themselves with armed gated communities. You simply can't compete with legal bribery, and all this "Dem VS Repub" bullshit is just that: total bullshit. BOTH sides will fuck you over in a New York minute, the only difference is which asses they prefer to kiss. The Dems like the taste of *.A.A booty, while the Repubs get their bread buttered by the defense industry. NEITHER side gives a flying shit about you.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I don't care much about guns...I'm not against them, they're just not an issue for me. I don't have one, I don't want one.
If you care about the rest of your civil liberties you should care about the 2nd amendment. You don't have to own a firearm to realize the value of protecting the right of your fellow citizens to do the same. Put another way: If Government can infringe on the 2nd amendment then what's to stop it from infringing on the 1st, 4th or 5th amendments?
Go take a look at the UK -- they started with gun "control" and have since neutered the right to keep silent, the right against self-incrimination and they keep expanding the length of time you can be held without being charged. If the people are willing to surrender one civil liberty why should the government assume that they won't surrender others?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.