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How Hulu, NBC, and Other Sites Block Google TV
Shortly after the launch of Google TV, it became clear that several networks and services were blocking access. Reader padarjohn points out a blog post from Lauren Weinstein explaining the blocking mechanisms being used and wondering why it's being tolerated. "Imagine the protests that would ensue if Internet services arbitrarily blocked video only to Internet Explorer or Firefox browsers! Or if Hulu and the other networks decided they'd refuse to stream video to HP and Dell computers because those manufacturers hadn't made deals with the services to the latter's liking." Various workarounds are being used to get around the blocks.
Imagine the protests that would ensue if Internet services arbitrarily blocked video only to Internet Explorer or Firefox browsers! Or if Hulu and the other networks decided they'd refuse to stream video to HP and Dell computers because those manufacturers hadn't made deals with the services to the latter's liking.
You mean like country restrictions?
It would be nice to side with Google here, but they do exactly the same on YouTube. Apply restrictions that content producers require. This time they're just on the other side of the game, and get restricted themself.
The more onerous restrictions legitimate services impose, the more people will be drawn towards services that don't impose such restrictions, like thepiratebay.
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From TFA: "Ironically, NBC -- one of the networks blocking Google TV -- offers a CNBC Google TV application for fans of its news channel."
... because of the generosity of Comcast ... streams just about everything to Google TV: ABC, NBC, Fox, all but CBS ... The ironic part is that the content seems to be provided by Hulu itself"
This seems to clearly be a case of one hand not knowing the other hand is doing.
From T[o]FA: "Google TV isn’t totally a lost cause
Wait... How many fucking hands do I have?
Sometimes I really wonder is these media companies are just run by pre-pubescent boys. Does someone have the invitee list to the CEOs' birthday parties?
I've been blocking certain sites and services for certain groups like forever. If you live in a specific Asian country you haven't been able to send email to me or any of my users for like ten years.
It's my website, and I allow or disallow you to see my content. Just like I allow or disallow people to enter my house. Why should things be different when you are Hulu, NBC or anybody/anything else? Within the bounds of law anybody has a right to discriminate.
My immediate thought was, isn't this more like blocking hot linking of images? Plenty of sites do that, it's not a bad thing at all.
Google should just make an advanced configuration settings page, and let users set whatever user-agent/etc they want there.
If users can edit all of the http request headers, then there will be no way for providers to filter by browser/etc. They just need to put in the headers for IE9 or whatever and they're done.
Google of course should not distribute anything with those settings to stay in the clear.
Don't worry - the average consumer is pretty smart and they'll get their smart next-door-neighbor's kid to set them up.
About the only way studios could block this would be to put keys/certificates on boxes that they want to provide content to. That will last about as long as HDCP...
'saving bandwidth' is not the term I would use. I call it 'stealing bandwidth and services'.
Hulu has every right to dictate how you may use their content. Being liberal in what they allow would be smart, since more viewers means more eyeballs for their advertisers, but at the end of the day it is their right and no-one else's.
Owners of a content distribution channel for content are attempting to exercise their right to control how that channel is accessed, albeit in a stupid and pointless way! Horror!
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
They have the right but that doesn't mean that we have to like it.
The reality is that TV used to be free. You put up an antenna and got TV for free. The networks made money by showing commercials. What consumers want is a return to that type of system. We do not want to pay $100 plus dollars for two hundred channels of which we watch 5. This is going to be the new reality and the Networks need to get a grip on it. The Cable TV model is passing. My mother in law lives near Dallas and gets all her TV OVA again. She gets like 30 channels and all the networks for free.
Where I live that isn't an option which is too bad so my wife and I are probably just going to drop Cable and watch Hulu. The one channel we really want is CBS for Big Bang Theory but we are willing to stop watching that to save a thousand plus dollars a year.
If the other networks want to not have us watch that is their business or lack of.
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Read the articles and you will be enlightened.
Love sees no species.
Google can't complain about this until they stop the ridculous blocking of YouTube content on certain devices. I have an Android phone and around 1 in 3 videos I try to view on YouTube have a "not available on mobiles" error message.
I would guess that this is a 'security' option given to video uploaders. But why? Why allow someone to watch a video on their desktop or laptop, but not on their mobile? Much is made of having YouTube "built in" to mobiles, so why hold back progress by making the mobile world off-limits for certain content?
The more onerous restrictions legitimate services impose, the more people will be drawn towards services that don't impose such restrictions, like thepiratebay.
Yes, when will corporations realize that information services are not scarcity driven, but are plentitude driven? The more shows that you provide, the more customers you will attract.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
They have the right but that doesn't mean that we have to like it. The reality is that TV used to be free. You put up an antenna and got TV for free. The networks made money by showing commercials.
If they block you they are not showing their commercials to you, and they are losing money. That is what you should be telling them. Companies need money, rejecting customers is losing money, or at the very least leaving money (that they could earn) to a competitor.
You don't want goverment stepping in, you want corporate greed winning from stupid RIAA/MPAA-inspired blocks.
You block asia?
No, he said that he is blocking "a specific Asian country".
Fine, be a racist asshole
How do you know he was doing it to be racist? Perhaps there were significant problems almost exclusively associated with usage/abuse from a particular country that would justify blocking it.
Bottom line is that I don't even know if I'm playing Devil's advocate here, because there isn't really enough info in the original to determine if he's being a racist dick or not. And nor is there enough info to point the finger and yell "racist!"- every time someone does so on Slashdot when there is a hint of by-area blocking just makes them sound like the boy that cried wolf.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Hmm.. well Google ultimately (at the moment) has the most control.
What they did with the Facebook address book is interesting - they said "you either play nice, or we won't" - and that's a VERY interesting corporate precedent they've established.
It basically translates into a simple "quid pro quo" - or perhaps even better "we only have to play nice, when others do".
What I'd like to see Google announce tomorrow -- ..
Okay NBC, Hulu, etc. our new policy: we won't index sites which decide to arbitrarily support devices due to "incompatible business models"
and poof - from one moment to the next there will be a big black smoking crater where those websites once were in the google index.
I don't see why Google.com should be expected to maintain a compatibility database for sites, and return different results so they don't accidentally send Google TV viewers to NBC, Hulu, etc. it's probably easier for them to just drop those offending sites until they "work out their technical difficulties".
Alternatively Google can just put up big red warning messages adjacent to search results that basically say "this site is broken, it may not work correctly" as sort of a warning that "you either fix it, or we'll drop you in 30 days" or something like that.
"I will shit on the towel of anybody who pee's in the pool."
theres backlash with that too though. If Google excluded them from search they'd be defeating them selves by providing inferior service. Customers would soon notice. If they did something like that i'd start buying shares in MSFT, Bing would hit a whole new level of acceptability.
i wage a holy war against the apostrophe.
You say that facetiously, like it's not a big deal, but as the article points out, how long before this spreads to differentiating between what browser you're using?
I can easily imagine a scenario where a company like Hulu might start making exclusive distribution deals with someone like Microsoft. If you're not using Internet Explorer, you'll get a message that says something like, "We're sorry, but this program is only available to users using Internet Explorer 10. Click here to download the latest version..." Sure, you can edit the User Agent string, but most people won't bother. Users using Linux, Macs, etc. can outright be blocked based on the Adobe ID just as GoogleTV users are being blocked now from the shows as the article points out.
I agree with the the article. Some new legal framework needs to be set up so that discrimination based on platform like this is not legal. I know that it sounds harsh, but as long as it's legal and companies are willing and able to extort other companies for lucrative exclusive contracts, this is going to be extremely ugly.
Is that meant to be ironic? This was standard practice until a few years ago and I still come across it from time to time.
Google's Market Cap is currently at $199.88 Billion dollars. ABC is $86.45 Billion, CBS is $39.7 Million, and NBC is for all practical purposes a part of GE so they're not a target.
You could well see a Google takeover of ABC and CBS. That would be interesting.
We cant blame them, at least from what I have read. From what I read a while back, Studios license their content to these sites with explisit conditions that it's for computer viewing only. When a setup box can leach the videos, the service providers (like Hulu) get in trouble with the content owners and are forced to take action to stop it.
To be able to stream to TVs they need to get special licenses, that is why Hulu Plus does not have the same content as regular PC Web Hulu.
Netflix sort of dodges that bullet by foresight. They jumped into video streaming early, and they also got license for console streaming before launching the XBox version (some may recall Sony pictures did not grant license right away and were restricted to only play in PCs.)
At the end of the day, they want different fees and licensing terms if the stuff is going to be streamed to TVs, and I bet viewership be tracked by device and reported back.
So, what if i connect my computer to that 37" computer monitor with HDTV tuner, that is in my living room?
As far as networks care, cases like this are just outliers and they just don't worry too much about them.
I'm failing to see how a pc hooked to my TV is different than the googleTV computer hooked to my tv? Care to explain that to me?
Easy and yet complex. In short: If there is no difference between hooking your computer to the TV or Google TV, then GoogleTV is redundant and should not exist.
If you can think off any reason for GoogleTV to exist, you answer your question on why they are different. I can think of many reasons but I'll let you think off the ones you very likely already know.
Note, I'm not saying I LOVE the fact that this is happening, but I understand it.
Since language is all important in today's politics, I suggest that Network Neutrality is a misnomer. It suggests that it is an issue only for network providers.
It suggests correctly. Net neutrality is the network version of freedom of association. It's about forbidding the providers of the tubes say, "You must get this content from A rather than B." It has nothing to do with A saying, "I don't want you to have this content," or "I don't want you to have this content unless you do certain things (e.g., pay me, use the playback devices of people who pay me, etc.)."
A content provider discriminating against *users* is not a net neutrality issue, even if that discrimination is unreasonable, or even *illegal*. There are legitimate reasons to discriminate against users (e.g., users who haven't paid for content, protecting the privacy of other users, etc.) Not every reasonable person agrees on every single case of this, but I think most reasonable persons who has looked at the question of net neutrality would agree it's a good idea, provided they don't have some stake in giving network providers control over content choices.
The point of net neutrality is to preserve a free market for content. It's to keep low barriers to entry for people who have a new idea for an information service. Imagine you've got an idea that will revolutionize online music delivery. Imagine that as wonderful as this would be for users, the network provider makes more from its side deals with existing delivery services than it would from a deal with you. Good luck getting access to that network's subscribers.
Net neutrality is about maintaining an even playing field when it comes to accessing customers or services. It's not about forcing content providers to provide content to people they don't want to have it. Nor is it about things like bandwidth caps and pricing. I think the network providers should be free to slap bandwidth caps on accounts and charge premium prices for guaranteed bandwidth if they want, so long as they're (a) up front about what they're doing and (b) don't use bandwidth to favor one content provider over another.
"Freedom of the Internet" would be almost a Orwellian term, since it would force people to provide content to people they don't want to have it. Net Neutrality is a concept entirely consistent with the ideas of classical liberalism, like markets and competition. Case in point. I used Hulu for a bit a couple years back. Since then I've got several devices which I use to view media (including an Android phone with flash), and Hulu doesn't work on any of them. As a result Hulu's share of my media consumption time is diluted, and any chance of hooking me is quashed.
Hulu is not run by people too stupid to see something that obvious. I'm sure they'd be delighted to simplify their delivery model, reach more customers, and grab a greater share of their customers' attention, but they've got to juggle that with the intractable, self-destructive paranoia of the content owners. It's quite possible that they'll miss the wave as consumer habits change, but it won't be because they don't know the wave is coming.
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1) Remote friendly. There is no reason that it couldn't be run on my "normal" computer anyways. 2) Pre installed on a toaster like device. Again no reason that I or someone couldn't offer something similar running on x86 with win7, flash 10.1 and such already to go.
Despite you finding no reason why it can't be run in a normal computer, there is obviously a reason why no one is doing it. Either that or corporations hate money, and we know that is not true.
Many have tried to do these things and no one has succeeded so far. The best results have always been where the entire thing is just packaged as a setup box and made plug and play.
The distinction off the devices is not blurred just because you potentially can emulate the setup-box experience in your PC with some geeky work that would be impossible for the average Joe.
BTW, [from what I have heard] the reason Hulu blocked Boxee initially, was precisely due to realizing Boxee allowed to watch Hulu on your TV via Windows Media Center extender (specially with the XBox.) So this is not about you blocking something that can potentially be used on the PC, but to block something that can potentially be used to do "easy" TV streaming.
I'm using the future right now, I have a 65" Mitsubishi DLP TV with a super gaming computer hooked up to it via HDMI. I can play games like Bad Company 2 in stereo-3D. Its completely awesome, and then when I'm done I can watch hulu or netflix or whatever on my big TV in full screen mode. I use a USB extension cord so I can interact with it from across the room without getting that crappy mouse responsiveness problem you get with wireless (likewise so that the 3d sync isn't interfered with)
Just as a FYI, those sony and samsung 3D TVs you see on display every absolutely suck compared to DLP 3D. Go to RC Willy and try out their 3D TV demos if you haven't already.
Also technically GoogleTV is a computer, as is your Sega Genesis and your Xbox and your toaster...