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IPTV Providers To Pay Same Regulatory Fees As Cable Companies
An anonymous reader writes "The FCC is looking to put regulatory fees on a per-subscriber basis for IPTV providers. 'We will assess regulatory fees on Internet Protocol TV (IPTV) licensees and we will create a new fee category that will include both cable television and IPTV,' says the report. What services they consider IPTV is yet to be seen; they call it simply 'digital television delivered through a high speed Internet connection.' We can only hope it doesn't affect too many internet video sites. "
Why does the FCC need to regulate IPTV at all? It's not like traditional TV where viewers are stuck with a few providers that have an FCC granted monopoly through spectrum allocation, or a single cable company granted a monopoly by municipal contracts.
What is there to regulate with IPTV? If you don't like your IPTV provider, you can choose another one instantly.
The FTC can regulate the IPTV providers like any other business to prevent monopoly abuse, unfair business practices, etc. Why does the FCC need to get involved?
Another name for government imposed "regulatory fees" is a "tax".
What justification in the world would there be for the FCC to regulate and license video transmissions over the Internet? Their job was to ensure orderly sharing of the public airwaves, nothing else.
What it won't include: Pirate Sites
It will add new ammunition to prosecute them --- suddenly they are guilty of the federal crime of evading the tax man. With the FCC; if you fail to file and pay fees, they can assess massive forfeitures.
For example mom and pop ISPs or VoIP providers that buy PSTN connectivity from a wholesalers that fail to meet the new complicated FCC Reporting requirements, about their number of customers down to the level of ZIP code and Census tract, can be assessed fines of millions of dollars a day, and thrown in jail until they pay.
No, they haven't. Read the FCC paper. The IPTV services they're discussing are essentially traditional cable services that use the Internet as their transport layer (e.g. AT&T ustream, CenturyLink Prism). They're clarifying that the exact technology used for regulated services doesn't create a loophole, not extending their regulation to Youtube or Hulu or Netflix (or ustream or justin.tv).
rage, rage against the dying of the light
The Internet is not only in the USA - it is also in the rest of the world and outside your jurisdiction
Netflix isn't an IPTV service, none of this applies to them (or likely to any of the sites you're talking about). It's to ensure that AT&T uverse, CenturyLink Prism, and the like (which are essentially cable/fios systems that use the internet for transmission rather than purpose-built lines) don't have a regulatory loophole simply because they use a different technology for transport.
rage, rage against the dying of the light
False. It includes only licensees, which are things like AT&T uverse and CenturyLink Prism. As they note in the paper, it's basically stuff that to the end-user looks exactly like cable ("[f]rom a customer's perspective, there is likely not much difference between IPTV and other video services, such as cable service") but happens to use the Internet for data transport rather than dedicated cable lines. It's not an extension to generic video streaming a la Netflix, Youtube, hulu, justin.tv, whatever.
rage, rage against the dying of the light