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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.
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.
when it was called AOL.
Someone hates these cans.
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
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?
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.
Comcast's management also has other things in common with squirrels.
They always have nuts in their mouths?
I believe nearly everything he said, perhaps you never listened. Track them yourself. http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/ While Obama made some overly optimistic promises it's pretty clear that congress and political fear mongering are limiting factors. Obama is not a genie. He has no magic wand. Real progress takes time.
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)