Slashdot Mirror
News Corp. Shuts Off Hulu Access To Cablevision
ideonexus writes "Normally when we advocate Net Neutrality, we are talking about preventing ISPs from discriminating against content providers, but in this case, the content provider is discriminating against the ISP. Is this a new dimension in the Net Neutrality fight? From the article: 'Cablevision internet customers lost access to Fox.com and Fox programming on Hulu for a time Saturday afternoon — the result of a misguided effort on News Corp.'s part to cut off online viewing as an alternative in its standoff with the cable operator over retrans fees. Fox stations in NYC, Philadelphia, and New Jersey went dark at midnight Friday when negotiations between the two broke down.'"
And nothing of value was lost...
On the Oregon Cost born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days
I don't know... I think that denying access to Fox's website and Hulu feed could be considered a public service, but that's just my opinion.
In this case, the owner of the content are deciding where/how they want it hosted versus net neutrality where ISPs can potentially act as the gate keepers to content and charge a toll for those accessing and those supplying content. The difference is that the latter prevents a neutral ground for competing or simply posting information up.
ESPN already does this, and we have already criticized them for it.
Palm trees and 8
using the government to force private businesses
use government to force individuals
How many times do we have to go over this? Look, I'll make it simple for you: businesses != individuals.
Palm trees and 8
I think this is a really stupid move on the part of News Corp, now they're just gonna deprive themselves of the advertising revenue that Cablevision customers brought to Hulu. Meanwhile, torrents still exist, and the downloaded shows tend to have the ads cut out...
Yeah! How dare we force businesses to serve both white and black people! You can give it a fancy name, but it's like all other Progressive measures designed to use government to force individuals to do what you want.
Or maybe, when you run a business, it's okay for the rules to be different?
Network neutrality is about the network being neutral w.r.t. the content it carries.
This is about content providers being neutral, not about network neutrality. Please do not try to confuse the network neutrality discussion by mixing it up with other, unrelated debates.
When you run a business that uses public property to operate you agree to give up some control. If they don't like it, you could always stop using the public right of way and stop operating across state lines. That would keep the intrusions mostly out.
Of course for an ISP to only be able to service a single block and be unable to provide anything beyond that, it would be significantly less useful than the BBSes of old.
Being a private business does not give you a blank check to ignore laws and regulations set by the government.
Don't like it? GTFO.
What does freedom of speech have to do with this?
They care about their local laws and business contracts.
Let's suppose I'm in USA and have an agreement with a company in USA that allows them to distribute my content only within countries A, B and C. If they I see them distributing it worldwide with no restrictions at all, then my lawyers start counting money already.
My solution:
1) Cancel my Cablevision TV service (their rates are way too high anyway). I've been thinking about it for a while, and I think this latest dispute is the last straw.
2) Connect antenna to TV.
3) Watch FOX.
4) No profit for either of them.
I can buy all of the shows that I want to watch from iTunes or Amazon and still come out way cheaper than my current cable TV bill. And that's ignoring the "torrent" option that many people will choice to use instead...
Don't abuse the racism charge, lest it gets watered down and becomes worthless.
Hulu blocking other countries is a business decision. They don't have the distribution rights to transmit overseas, and they don't have an infrastructure to sell ads appropriate for overseas customers. There's no reason to show most US ads to non-US people.
To call this tantamount to racism is really twisted in my opinion. There's no reason to ask them to deliberately lose money to fulfill your sense of justice, especially over an entertainment medium.
This is what I have believed is the path this matter will take, and I (and probably many others) have been arguing exactly this. The following is the rational path:
Big ISP threatens big content. Big content counter-threatens big ISP. Big ISP and big content reach an agreement to shut out small competition. General public does not know about or care about small competition. Small competition dies, oligarchs win.
Oligarchy or net neutrality. Those are the only two outcomes. Net neutrality depends on an altruistic and long-term focused government. While it has happened before (telcos went through exactly this way back in the day, resulted in common carrier), I do not believe our current government or lackluster activism are capable of making it happen again. In short; oligarchy will win.
I've been trying to think of solutions, not much so far, a few thoughts:
1. Diaspora (or similar) farms that are big enough to buy a seat at the table.
2. Oligarchs sufficiently overstep to incite popular revolution. (unlikely, they're not that stupid -- they know how bread and circuses works -- it is a cookbook to them)
3. Diaspora (or similar) running over surreptitious channels.
4. Indie mesh networks similar to ham operations.
5. Geek revolt (ie: we realize we have all the power here, decide that our paychecks are not worth the price, and shut down the oligarchs before they gain unstoppable power)
None of these seem particularly likely to succeed, to me. One thing seems obvious: The further we get down the road, the more extreme the solution will have to be. Well, make that two things: The short term gains to the oligarchs will be enormously outweighed by the friction, and hence loss, to our GDP growth rate -- punishing us all, including them, in the long run.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
This has been the fault line in the Hulu business model since Day 1 - there is no way Hulu wanted to do this (block Internet users based on who they are affiliated with?), but they are a creature of their owners, who basically don't want Internet TV to succeed. It is a little surprising to see Rupert Murdoch do this so nakedly over such a comparatively trivial dispute.
If you think you are going to "Cut the Cord" with Hulu, think again.
...and switch to a different provider. That is exactly the wrong thing to do. Dish Net/Cablevision are fighting to keep our rates down, but they can't do it if everybody jumps ship.
No doubt most of the people here understand what you're saying and agree entirely. Unfortunately, I'd guess News Corp knows that any strategy that depends on regular people being informed or showing some kind of conviction is a lost cause. That sucks. :(
Most of us would agree that this behavior is anti-competitive, but where do you draw the line? Many sites block entire countries, because they don't have the legal right to serve the same content in all regions. Many sites ban entire countries or IP blocks due to spamming and/or other malicious behavior that has come from those blocks. Is that acceptable?
The line is drawn at anticompetitive behavior.
Leveraging your power in one market in order to influence a related market is anticompetitive and it's what Fox just did.
Not having [regional] rights to air something & banning malicious network blocks are completely unrelated.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
When some site management discovers a DOS attack is coming from Belgum and does nothing for two days, then runs across a very odd unconfirmable rumor that the attack originates in an African nation and starts a blanket block of all of them within the next half hour, then hears another rumor the attack comes from a North Korean group and blocks NK, China, Hong Kong and Tibet (of all things), what more do you need to take a claim of racism seriously?
It's hardly racist to make decisions based on how likely legal remedies are going to work based on the source of some network traffic. If someone was DoSing your network from Africa, North Korea, or China, would you even know who to contact to attempt to address the problem? Are you suggesting that *anyone* in North Korea cares if someone is launching a DoS attack there? They've got bigger problems to worry about, like not starving to death or being forced to appear in bizarre private action films at the behest of their dictator.
Back when one of my sites had a monthly traffic limit, I blocked access to it from several of the biggest Russian ISPs. Was it because I suddenly decided to hate Russians? No. It was because someone in Russia with multiple dynamic IP addresses was being a jerk and downloading the same big file hundreds of times per day. I never found out why. I don't have time to play detective, and it took about ten minutes to block those IP ranges. I felt badly for the people in Russia who *weren't* abusing that site, but if I'd had the ability to press a big red "block all of Russia" button to avoid paying any more monthly overcharges, I would have done it in a second.
I have to agree with other peoples' comments that using "racism" in situations like this only waters down the term, to the point that people will ignore *actual* racism, because they associate it with arguments like yours. *That* is the real danger here.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
You've missed the point. How do you properly vet the IP being compared? There are a truckload of blocks associated with the name "Cablevision". Do you block them all? What if the SWIP info says "Cablevision" but the addresses are being used by someone else (which happens a lot more than you would think)?
Dollhouse did suck. It only lasted two seasons as an apology for Firefly
If you don't think it already is, you haven't been paying attention for the last twenty years.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
Which explains why News Corp target the totally uninformed and easily swayed demographic...
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
Um, liberals despise fox NEWS. There is no despising going on regarding Simpsons, House M.D. etc. - i.e. all the non-news content they send.
Oh please, that is TOTAL bullshit! You know what happens with NO regulation? Mergers, that's what. The big ones would simply crush the little ones until you have one or two big ones crushing anyone who looks at the funny....kinda like right now! in my area there have been a couple of attempts at local ISPs since the big boys refuse to service much of the area, so what happened? The big boys let them play in the sandbox until they started to cost them customers for their shitty dialup or sub par DSL, and then they jacked the backbone charges (which they own, being big boys) until they couldn't afford to compete and told them "sue us, just try!". Hell my buddy worked at one. Their lawyer told them "You'll probably win, but it'll cost you about a million five in lawyers fees and it'll drag on for a decade or so" and needless to say they just closed up shop.
So please let that "invisible hand" crap DIAF already. We have had unprecedented DE-regulation since Reagan, and what has it got us? Clearchannel, Comcast and Cox cable, AT&T. A handful of major players OWN the entire market and can get together and screw you ANY time they feel like. Money is POWER folks, money crushes competition, money buys exclusive areas, money buys laws. All deregulation does is help those top companies concentrate that money to the detriment of us ALL.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
well its up to the network to not fold to there demands. even if they pull there channels. there going to lose alot more then 44$ per subscriber. where talking millions of subscribers and billions in ads. any channel pull in the past has been proven to be ineffective. when they start losing the revinew from dish or cablevision guess what said network folds to dish and restores the channels. they stand to lose alot more money then dish will.
Your view is from the industry standpoint. As Joe User, both Dish and News Corp are losers and I am the third loser in this pissing match that I wanted no part of. I've now shifted my viewing patterns away from their shows with commercials and harbor animosity towards my provider. Now News Corp is warning that I may lose additional FOX related stations at the end of the month. Super! (yes I know about OTA, no I don't really give enough of a damn to buy an antenna for a local FOX affiliate)
Have you not watched Inception or Toy Story 3?
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Your credibility is quite gone when you say "piers" instead of "peers"
I would say your credibility is worthless in that most of your posts are modded 0 or -1.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
ISP's in favor of preferential access all seem to think they'll be able to charge providers big fees to allow their content to flow to the ISP's customers. For reasons this story should make clear, they're far more likely to end up making payments TO the content providers. There's a reason that every other medium in existance works that way.
Fox Noise is a blight on humanity.