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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
The Fox content at Hulu was restored when they realized they didn't have the capability to block only Cablevision customers in the area. All of the NY/Philly area was blacked out, when their beef is only with one ISP.
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.
This is like two Mexican drug cartels attacking each other. Save the popcorn, one and a half stars.
Net Neutraility? What's neutral about using the government to force private businesses to do what you'd like? 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. Nothing neutral about that.
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
In response to declining Buggy Whip demand, one of the major buggy whip distributors have announced they are withholding shipments of buggy whips, instead of adapting to the market.
"Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it."
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Philadelphia is on Comcast, not Cablevision. And as far as I know, Fox is still on. Bummer.
No TV? No Internet? What are we gonna do?
The effect of this will be manifested about nine months later...
What one fool can do, another can. (Ancient Simian Proverb)
Rupert Murdoch owned News Corp. is a fascist, totalitarian gangster group. Flock them all and their mentally retarded agenda. http://carloz.newsvine.com/_news/2010/10/01/5213354-news-corp-parent-company-of-fox-and-wall-st-journal-makes-second-1-million-donation-to-pro-gop-group?pc=25&sp=25
I thought the whole "more babies are born 9 months after a blackout" theory was debunked...
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...
What happen to freedom of speech? Now they want to remove hulu from people who want to watch other peoples views? I see news corp getting sued by cablevisions customers for this in the near future.
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.
It's true, that claim is bunkers...However, on average, more vampires are born after a blackout.
If they would just put the ads into high quality HD torrents that go online before show time, it would solve the problem.
the surface is near.
You mean the porn stored on my hard drive can get pregnant? Oh shi--
not much, just being forced to manually insert line breaks into my comment
-- Dennis Potter (source)
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
I work in the satellite dish industry. We are dealing with and fairly informed on the News Corp/Dish Network dispute. On the CableVision side, News Corp is trying to raise their rates from $70 mil to $150 mil, over a 100% increase. With Dish Network, they are trying to force Dish to include the Fox Sports regional networks into the lowest package, which would raise that package $5/month ($40 to $45). News Corp is trying to tell Dish how to run their business. There are plenty of people that don't care about sports and don't want to pay the extra money for it. The reason News Corp wants their Sports channels in the lowest package is to increase (the perceived) viewership numbers so they can raise their advertising rates.
A lot of the Dish Net/Cablevision customer won't see beyond "my channels are gone" 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. Dish won the recent battle against Fisher Communications, they were trying to raise their rates 78% for over the air, tax payer subsidized "free" channels. Fisher Communications was already the highest paid among their piers, and wanted to nearly double their rates.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
So Fox is obligated to provide service to anybody, no matter how much the compensation is?
How about slashdot runs my ads for free? Please don't discriminate me just because I don't want to pay your price.
No, what the researchers actually said was "We'll be in our bunks".
Yet another type (aside of being cut off completely) of damage we are supposed to be able to circumvent.
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
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...
Right, because the only reason we're not having sex is because we're on the internet too much.
It doesn't sound like Dish is the good guys here either.
As far as I'm concerned, paying for TV is a rip-off - there are no decent providers.
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
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.
As the content of cable and satellite providers becomes more and more laden with commercials and narrowed down content more people are going to flee them for alternate feeds of content and news. They are in a panic to re-secure the advertising revenue streams as well as open up new ones. They control both the content and in some cases the delivery making for the inevitable happening. Control of the content that transits their networks "for the good of the customers". In our area, upstate New York, they provide a small pipe to the internet to limit bandwidth. We pay for 10Mbps and get on average 2Mbps. Stand by, it's gonna get worse. This is not just about Fox, this is happening on a whole lot of fronts and will continue to be played out again and again until the media corporations find a model that provides them with total control of our viewing experience and a large, ongoing revenue stream. Remember that a captive viewer is an appealing thing to an advertiser and will further the financial goals of the media corporations. The cost of even basic basic cable is getting out of hand. Cable and satellite providers are not even giving you all the locals in the area now that ATSC digital terrestrial is in place. For that we were paying $10.00 a month on top of the $30 we pay for their poor internet service. We now pull the locals via an antenna and get far better quality and more channels for free. Add in the internet based sources and we have a well rounded source of entertainment for the cost of the internet. The $10.00 we save a month goes to Netflix and further expands the content we have at our fingers. We use HD homerun dual tuner from SiliconDust and a media player and we record all the programs we want to watch and just skip past the commercials. Personally I don't mind one or two commercials but when I am literally stepping through 5 minutes of them to watch 6-7 minutes of content, I start to look for alternatives. They can try and narrow those but there are always ways around their road blocks.
I'm not against net neutrality, but at the same time, in the end, when companies don't do the right thing for their customers, they do create an opportunity for someone else to start competition - basically, any company which enacts policies and procedures which alienate their customer base, they create a big opening in the market for a new competitor to step in and take business away from them. No monopoly or oligarchy can last forever with unhappy customers.
In the case of Hulu, nobody has to watch Hulu. I used to be a pretty big user of Hulu, but they've changed a lot in the last year, for the worse. I've decided I really am not all that interested in their content or their service anymore. Case in point - I was flirting with the idea of subscribing to their Hulu Plus service (to get access to back-catalogue material mostly), but I recently went back to Hulu.com after not using the site for months, just to catch a couple episodes from the new season of Stargate Universe. Well, they've apparently decided that on the 'free' Hulu, they won't give you access to any higher than 360p resolution. I can see not offering 720p or 1080 resolution on the free service, but 360 just looks like absolute crap. That's their right, but I've decided it's my right not to do business with them. I'm not interested in subscribing now, because of the way they they decided to run their business.
Firefly topped at like, 98th in the ratings. Dollhouse? Didn't do much better and it stayed put for two seasons.
Serenity's boxoffice draw sucked.
Besides, Firefly wasn't that good to begin with.
Give me good character dramas, lousy SciFi shows about ships that are less reliable than my Hyundai Sonata just aren't interesting.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
who happens to use Cablevision as an ISP you get screwed. As News Corp. has been pushing DirecTV as an alternative to Cablevision for Fox programming, that's probably not a can of worms they really wanted to open. Most of the DirecTV customers I know in the northern NJ area are using Cablevision as an ISP.
The really lame part of this is how much of an increase News Corp is asking for - they currently get $22 per subscriber per year, they're looking for $44. The FCC really, really should be able to take this sort of thing into account when local affiliate broadcasting licenses come up for renewal.
If there's a show from Fox you want to watch, do it via bittorrent. eztv is a good source. So you wait a day to see the latest episode. If "talking about last night's episode around the water cooler" is important to you, find a way to not be such a loser.
If you see a company that advertises on Fox, support their competition. Hell, even the creator of Family Guy, which is a Fox program, encourages his fans to watch it from some other source besides on Fox.
See? No down side.
You are welcome on my lawn.
That happens in situations in which some website (like southparkstudios.com) has acquired rights to broadcast content online... But only in USA. So, they have to block all IPs from other countries or the copyright holders can sue. It is pretty common for us europeans to not get to watch online content that americans do (Especially everything by Comedy Central). Of course, a proper VPN takes care of that problem and doesn't cost much.
"No, it's not. In fact, it's very close to racism and is certainly discrimination, but some people will do it anyway until the law notices them and tells them they can't."
Discrimination is the ability to tell the differences between two things. It is not, nor has it been, WRONG IN ANY WAY. Only 'politically correct' idiots fail to grasp the meaning of the word.
Racism? There is only one 'sentient' race on this planet, the human race. When certain people behave like shitheads, they get banned. SIMPLE. This is not racism, it is common sense. I do not care to hear what Einstein said about common sense.
Come to my house and misbehave, you leave, whether you like it or not. I am under no obligation to put up with anyone's shit, EVER!
Blocking entire countries is a good way to handle the overwhelming number of assholes from a particular region. Get over it!
I am an independent contractor and most of my work is with Cablevision. I am also a consumer of some of Cablevision's services.
During the last Oscars and the series finale of Lost, ABC and Cablevision were in the midst of a dispute, which resulted in ABC cutting their feed to Cablevision. Cablevision hired some interactive TV developers to connect a block of channels to stream loops of popular ABC shows from Hulu, advertisements and all.
Sounds like some kind of interference of interstate trade.
...and yet you are outraged when your access to Fox content is cut off. WTF?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I really don't know why affiliates are hard nosed on this. They should view sat, cable and IPTV as ways of getting their signal to viewers with MINIMAL COST, compared to a broadcast tower.
If I were an affiliate, instead of demanding fees I'd insist that the cable, sat and IPTV guys provide to signal to EVERY home that was hooked up or has a sat box, regardless of service or not, or over service tier. For the sats it would be TRIVIAL to do this, just some programming and then push out the authorizations. Cable would take more time, they'd have to put in the filter as the techs went around to every pole on other jobs.
But imagine being the only affiliate around that EVERYONE on sat, cable and IPTV could access for free? The ad sales would offset any lost fees.
All this anger and venting towards Fox and Rupert Murdoch - but no one's brought the Nazi meme to the party yet. Won't you think of poor Mike Godwin?
#DeleteChrome
will be manifested about nine months later
Ah yes, the great nerdling babyboom of 2010.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
perfect reason this is so dammed important. net neutrality would have prevented the network from blocking the internet stream. they can pull them from the tv all they like but not the internet. this is why corps fear it they lose control of the content on the net.
I was born a little early, should I have been born on time it would have been nine months after a blizzard in the north-east long ago. There was also an increase in babies born that September.
It also depends on if the parents don't have children yet. I'm the first born. So any studies into that needs to look at childless couples: no power so do you think people will let their kids(in non hick situations) here them boinking?
This kind of dispute is as old as cable. The only new dimension is also cutting off the Internet stream.
This is why comcast can not buy NBC! If you think NO CSN Philly on dish and Directv is bad just wait for it be the rest of the comcast channels, THE CSN RSN's and NBC channels + golf and VS.
Ii's good comcast only has 20% of CSN Chicago and the teams have 80%
You thing no VS on Directv was bad no FSN / NETGEO / FX on DISH is much bigger. Just think of the power NBC / Comcast will have with
NBC
NBC Universal Television Group
USA Network
Syfy
CNBC
MSNBC,
Bravo
qubo
Telemundo Television Studios
The Weather Channel
Hulu
A&E Television Networks (15%)
E!
Style Network
Golf Channel
Versus
G4
MountainWest Sports Network (50%)
and there RSN's
Bay Area (45%)
California
Chicago (20%)
New England
SportsNet New York (part owner)
Northwest
Philadelphia
Mid-Atlantic
Southeast (50%)
Southwest
This is why A la carte cable / sat television is needed bad.
the RSN's and Disney are the high cost ones.
Most other channels are like $0.20 /M or less per SUB.
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.
Raising fist to sky and yelling: "Ruuuuupert!"
Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
Isn't Hulu already not distributed outside of the US, so what does one ISP more really matter?
... and nothing of value was lost.