Blackberry CEO: Net Neutrality Means Mandating Cross-Platform Apps

DW100 writes In a bizarre public blog post the CEO of BlackBerry, John Chen, has claimed that net neutrality laws should include forcing app developers to make their services available on all operating systems. Chen even goes as far as citing Apple's iMessage tool as a service that should be made available for BlackBerry, because at present the lack of an iMessage BlackBerry app is holding the firm back. Some excerpts from Chen's plea: Netflix, which has forcefully advocated carrier neutrality, has discriminated against BlackBerry customers by refusing to make its streaming movie service available to them. Many other applications providers similarly offer service only to iPhone and Android users. ... Neutrality must be mandated at the application and content layer if we truly want a free, open and non-discriminatory internet. All wireless broadband customers must have the ability to access any lawful applications and content they choose, and applications/content providers must be prohibited from discriminating based on the customer’s mobile operating system. Since "content providers" are writing code they think makes sense for one reason or another (expected returns financial or psychic), a mandate to write more code seems like a good way to re-learn why contract law frowns on specific performance.

Comments

Re:Bye_bye, Blackberry

[__aaclcg7560]

No one wants to switch from a Mac/Windows to a Windows/Mac system if their files or programs are not 100% guaranteed to work.

When my vintage Black MacBook (2006) died last year after eight years of faithful service, I exported my data into neutral file formats (i.e., cvs and xml), switched over to my Windows gaming machine, and imported my data into corresponding programs. Minimal downtime. Meanwhile, I'm saving up for a new Mac system.

Re:Please develop for my dying platform!

[Kjella]

In defense of Netflix, they support playing videos over HTML5 (with DRM extenstions of course). So if Blackberry would update their browser to support HTML5 with DRM, then blackberry users could watch Netflix on their devices.

You talk like Firefox could implement it, which they can't. They need keys, those keys need to stay secret and the content needs to stay protected until you can hand it over to the OS/graphics driver and probably all sorts of other nasty liabilities and penalties if you don't. The music industry had to abandon DRM, but the movie industry is still going full steam with HDCP 2.2 for 4K and when they finally make 4K BluRay this year it'll be choking full of AACS 2.0, BD+ 2.0, Cinavia 2.0 and whatever else they can throw at it.

I think they know this is their really last chance, BluRay looks pretty damn good (1080p, uncompressed sound) and 4K BluRay adds all the last bells and whistles like resolution on par with DCI 4K, high frame rate, 10 bit color, extremely wide color space Rec.2020, bigger dynamic range ,>HDTV 3D even if you only get half per eye, HEVC encoding... if you can rip one of those discs the source is likely to be better than anything you can play it with, so far there's not even a reference monitor at any price that can deliver 100% Rec.2020 coverage.