Comcast-NBC Deal Accidentally Protects Internet?

jfruhlinger writes "Details of the conditions that the Department of Justice required to approve Comcast's purchase of NBC have emerged today. Blogger Kevin Fogarty looks at the details — Comcast is forbidden from blocking Netflix over its pipes, and must sell NBC shows via iTunes and other similar services — and concludes that Internet access for everybody, including business users, has been protected, more or less by accident."

Comments

One-page "print" link

[bwintx]

http://www.itworld.com/print/138431

Not at all

[captaindomon]

What this actually does is accept the fact that a corporate merger can specify what is blocked and what isn't. This is actually a dangerous trend for network neutrality, because we are seeing the Justice Department agree with the idea that what is blocked and what isn't is a matter of contractual language between corporations, instead of the inherent right to a free internet.

Re:Not at all

[LoverOfJoy]

Well, I haven't RTFA yet but from the summary it doesn't sound like a matter of agreed contractual language between corporations but rather a demand from the DoJ to the merged corporations. While it doesn't go so far as to assert an inherent right to a free internet, it does seem to acknowledge that potential harm can come from an ISP also being a content provider.

Re:Not at all

[chemicaldave]

What this actually does is accept the fact that a corporate merger can specify what is blocked and what isn't. This is actually a dangerous trend for network neutrality, because we are seeing the Justice Department agree with the idea that what is blocked and what isn't is a matter of contractual language between corporations, instead of the inherent right to a free internet.

The article certainly doesn't paint it that way. FTFA:

Still, in approving the deal, federal officials attached dozens of conditions, including several big ones to protect Internet video: Comcast must sell its content to online video services. That gives them access to marquee NBC Universal programming. Comcast can't interfere with Internet video traffic flowing over its broadband network. That means that it cannot prevent its subscribers from accessing Netflix and other Web video services, or slow down traffic from these services to make them jerky, unreliable and hard to watch. Comcast must sell stand-alone Internet access at a reasonable price, without tying it to a cable TV package, to enable cord-cutting. That includes offering a standard 6-megabit-per-second plan, which is fast enough to handle Internet video, for roughly $50 a month.

The phrase "Comcast can't interfere with Internet video traffic flowing over its broadband network." Sounds pretty universal to me. I just hope the author wasn't paraphrasing a document that specified Internet video only from certain providers and not others, i.e. youtube, netflix, hulu, etc.

Re:Not at all

[Anthony Mouse]

What this actually does is accept the fact that a corporate merger can specify what is blocked and what isn't. This is actually a dangerous trend for network neutrality, because we are seeing the Justice Department agree with the idea that what is blocked and what isn't is a matter of contractual language between corporations, instead of the inherent right to a free internet.

I can see your point, but I'm not at all sure that this is a negative development in the interim. Because what it does is drive a wedge between the different ISPs.

Before this deal if you tried to propose network neutrality rules, all the ISPs were against it with a united front. Now, if Comcast already has to follow the rules, why shouldn't they take the position that their competitors should have to as well? They certainly don't want a situation where AT&T can block or delay NBC content in favor of AT&T's "preferred" partners or whatever, or charge NBC for access to AT&T customers.

The real problem is if the settlement rules aren't really effective. If Comcast can still pull the sort of thing they are with Level 3 and Netflix and that isn't considered a violation of the settlement then the settlement is meaningless, because it isn't a barrier to bad behavior -- it's a fence post they can just walk around. In which case they retain a shared interest with the other ISPs to be able to keep doing things like that.

Re:Not at all

[NeutronCowboy]

It seems you, the blogger and the Justice Department missed the entirely more insidious, but far more realistic way that Comcast is going to control what content is being accessed: user-based billing. Start with a plan for - oh, $20. Everything is accessible at full speed. Make it something juicy like 20 mbit per second. Then add user-based billing, and a soft cap at 50 GB. And finally, the coup-de-grace: the cap limit does not apply to Comcast owned and operated sites, but applies to Netflix, Youtube, etc.

What do you get? Everyone's surfing along happily for the first week, and then bam! - the download cap hits. Suddenly, that cap free site for Comcast shows looks mighty good. And Netflix might as well serve video at 320x240 resolution in a 56 kbit/sec stream, because that's all they'll ever be able to show anymore to Comcast users.

It's beautiful, isn't it? Comcast doesn't do a single thing to its traffic. The entire Internet is accessible. It's not even throttled. But the users will, en masse, flock to its sites and desert anything that's not on the basic, cap-free plan. And thanks to the monopolies and duopolies that Comcast enjoys, many end-users won't even have the option to switch to something better.

We're fucked. We've left the best times of the Internet behind us.

Yeah, but -

[Anonymous Coward]

Comcast is forbidden from blocking Netflix over its pipes, and must sell NBC shows via iTunes and other similar services

Are they forbidden to charge more, or deliver at lower priority than their own content?

We've got to get back to forbidding mergers of infrastructure providers with content providers. Look at what happened when the "approve anything" frenzy let the banks spread into areas that created conflicts of interest.

Re:Yeah, but -

[KarrdeSW]

Summary is somewhat lacking. Quote from TFA:

Comcast can't interfere with Internet video traffic flowing over its broadband network. That means that it cannot prevent its subscribers from accessing Netflix and other Web video services, or slow down traffic from these services to make them jerky, unreliable and hard to watch.

No direct mention of charging more from what I can see, but I think that would fall pretty clearly under "preventing its subscribers from accessing".

The more detailed DoJ press release

[chemicaldave]

here is a more detailed press release from the DoJ itself. It has more specific language such as:

The settlement also includes other relief aimed at ensuring that Comcast cannot evade the provisions designed to protect competition. For example:

• Comcast may not retaliate against any broadcast network (or affiliate), cable programmer, production studio or content licensee for licensing content to a competing cable, satellite or telephone company or OVD, or for raising concerns to the department or the FCC;
• Comcast must relinquish its management rights in Hulu, an OVD. Without such a remedy, Comcast could, through its seats on Hulu's board of directors, interfere with the management of Hulu, and, in particular, the development of products that compete with Comcast's video service. Comcast also must continue to make NBCU content available to Hulu that is comparable to the programming Hulu obtains from Disney and News Corp;
• In accordance with recently established Open Internet requirements, Comcast is prohibited from unreasonably discriminating in the transmission of an OVD's lawful network traffic to a Comcast broadband customer. Comcast must also maintain the high-speed Internet service it offers to its customers by continuing to offer download speeds of at least 12 megabits per second in markets where it has upgraded its broadband network. Additionally, Comcast is required to give other firms' content equal treatment under any of its broadband offerings that involve caps, tiers, metering for consumption or other usage-based pricing; and
• Comcast may not, with certain narrow exceptions, require programmers or video distributors to agree to licensing terms that seek to limit online distributors' access to content.