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The Future of Web Video At Stake In Comcast-NBC Regulatory Review

Posted by Soulskill on from the keep-your-grubby-mitts-off-my-htpc dept.

Phoghat writes with this excerpt from the Washington Post: "It won't be long before video from the Internet is always within reach — whether it's on a smart phone, a tablet computer or a high-end television in your living room. But what if there's nothing worth watching? ... Regulators are pushing for tough conditions to ensure that Comcast can't stifle online video services by withholding content or pushing up prices for marquee NBC programs at a time viewers are starting to turn to the Internet for recent movies or the latest episodes of 'Saturday Night Live,' '30 Rock' and other popular TV shows. The concessions they extract from Comcast in its bid for NBC will help determine whether customers can someday realistically drop their cable subscriptions and go online-only for their TV. ... Comcast has been resisting federal regulators' efforts to tear down some of those walls, arguing that those efforts are unnecessary because NBC Universal accounts for about 10 percent of television viewing in the US and less than 10 percent of US box office revenue — and is therefore too small to dictate how the industry will develop."

2 of 121 comments (clear)

  1. Enforce Separation of Medium from Content by timeOday · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Tim Wu's new book, The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires," is relevant and worth looking at here - if nothing else, read the salon.com review:

    Wu, a prominent champion of net neutrality, proposes what he calls "a Separation Principle for the information economy." He wants to see "those who develop information, those who own the network infrastructure on which it travels, and those who control the tools or venues of access ... kept apart from one another." He also wants the government to "keep its distance and not intervene in the market to favor any technology, network monopoly, or integration of the major functions of an information industry."

    I'm sure the book is more nuanced than this, but IMHO allowing competitors to control access to each others' content is simply bound to fail, converging at a point advantageous to those who own the toll booths, and bad for almost everybody else and the economy and culture as a whole.

  2. Re:apple by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Right. Because Apple, which had less than 10% market share, has had 0 effect on the computing market, and other related markets, in the last decade, because of a

    because of a .... what?!? Dammit! Do I have to wait 'till next week to find out?!? Get the DVD?!?

    What!? What ?!?