Disney Strikes Against Net Neutrality 442
1 a bee writes "Ars Technica is running a story by Matthew Lasar about how Disney's ESPN360.com is charging ISPs for 'bulk' access to their content. According to the article, if you visit ESPN using a 'non-subscribing' ISP, you're greeted with a message explaining why access is restricted for you. This raises a number of issues: '... it's one thing to charge users an access fee, another to charge the ISP, potentially passing the cost on to all the ISPs subscribers whether they're interested in the content or not.' Ironically, the issue came to the fore in a complaint from the American Cable Association (ACA) to the FCC. A quoted ACA press release warns, 'Media giants are in the early stages of becoming Internet gatekeepers by requiring broadband providers to pay for their Web-based content and services and include them as part of basic Internet access for all subscribers. These content providers are also preventing subscribers who are interested in the content from independently accessing it on broadband networks of providers that have refused to pay.' So, is this a real threat to net neutrality (and the end-to-end principle) or just another bad business model that doesn't stand a chance?"
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
If ISPs agree to pay for content they pass on... (Score:4, Interesting)
Do they then become more responsible for what it is they are allowing through?
Compare it to cable companies, where some individual cable channel broadcasters get paid by the cable companies for their content, and the cable companies then have some responsibility over what gets presented.
Re:Well, the cable industry should know. (Score:4, Interesting)
Who cares. Disney is to culture what thyroid cancer is to metabolism. I wouldn't waste a 2400bps connection on their drivel.
Re:What about going through proxies? (Score:4, Interesting)
If the exit node is in one of those willingly-paying-through-the-nose ISPs, probably. (Q: Does Tor let you pick where your exit node is?)
The problem is that the (in this case, not grandmas, but) Grandpas who were sent a link to the site by the grandchildren can't see what they're supposed to be seeing, and, simultaneously, people who don't *want* to access the content (like me and mine) are forced to pay for it anyway.
Re:Well, the cable industry should know. (Score:5, Interesting)
(Whatever happened to all those proposals for 'ala carte' cable?)
There are a number of objections the cablecos raise against a la carte. In the old days, they'd cry that it wasn't technologically feasible to offer individual channels to each household. That was sort of true; analog filters could block out groups of channels, but if they had rearranged channels logically and used the filters to filter out these groups, they probably could have gotten close to a la carte.
Nowadays, the technology issue is moot. Many, many people have digital boxes, making a la carte extremely simple. All modern cablecos are also in the process of switching their analog customers to digital boxes anyway. Many won't even sell you new analog service. However, the cablecos will say that large channels subsidize the smaller ones (of course that's true), and that if they did a la carte, smaller channels couldn't survive. E.g., fewer people would be paying for BET or whatever, so BET would die out. I don't think anyone actually knows how the numbers would turn out, but there is a lot of crap on cable that people would probably be interested in NOT paying for... however, what I think is crap might be interesting to some people (e.g., sports).
Re:Well, the cable industry should know. (Score:3, Interesting)
A la carte cable would be the death of 75% of cable channels out there.
Says who? The cable companies say that, and certain channels. But I don't think anyone knows for sure.
The fact is that cable companies already pay more for certain channels anyway. Sports programming is ridiculously expensive. "A la carte" doesn't mean you'll get each channel for $0.75 either... it's all going to depend on how many people are interested in watching stuff. If there's enough interest in something, people will be willing to shell out even $5 a month for a channel now that they're not paying $15 for loads of sports they never watch. And if there's not enough interest in a channel to keep it afloat, then let it die! It's just wasting money.
I'm not surprised it's ESPN starting this (Score:3, Interesting)
ESPN loves to milk tons of money out of cable systems, and in fact, their channels are amongst the most expensive for cable providers, mostly because Disney insists that they be on the "basic" tier. Funny thing is the more ESPN channels they add the worse their programming seems to get, and my days of making sure I didn't miss SportsCenter are LONG gone thanks to the Internet, but I digress.
So, I'm not surprised that they are trying the same thing with ISP's. I don't think this is going to work out that well though. Getting to see broadcasts of games online won't be more than a niche until much faster broadband is available and wireless broadband is more ubiquitous. ESPN was one of the first to start charging for web content in the first place, which is where I'd think it'd be appropriate to sell subscriptions to their video service, but it seems to me that they want to force the ISP's to pay, hence forcing every SUBSCRIBER of that ISP to pay for it as it will be passed on, thus netting them cash from people who don't want their video service and won't use it.
Given how they've been larding up their website with screaming video ads that start playing immediately I've been going to it less and less. They really are living on past reputation only as their content has really gone down hill the past couple years. I certainly don't want my ISP to pay and pass the charges on to me.
So... (Score:1, Interesting)
Usenet vs. Disney 360
How many people did not use usenet but everyone was paying for it? Discuss how this is different.
Trollish yes but most devil's advocates are.
Re:Well, the cable industry should know. (Score:5, Interesting)
For the actual issue being discussed here about the ESPN programming - this is indeed the same as the NFL Network deal. I'd prefer to see this ESPN offering die than have my ISP pay extra (and up my bill proportionately). Either make it free to ISPs like content should be, and, if needed, allow individual subscribers to sign up and pay for the content or make it all free and ad supported. Their choice. But none of this back door forcing the ISP to subscribe on my behalf.
Re:Ooohhh, they have a "Feedback" feature! (Score:3, Interesting)
What did you say? "I don't like your products so I'm not your customer base anyway." or "I'm an avid user of your products who will probably pay you anyway." Because that's how they're going to see it. I'm not saying you shouldn't voice your displeasure, just wondering how you framed it. This is a "win-win" for them. They get to charge more for the same works AND promote anti-net-neutrality which would eventually help them curb those pesky fair use works, parody works, and, of course, infringed copies.
No you say I'd really like to become a paid subscriber to your website but my ISP can't afford to pay you the extortion money.
I'm confused (Score:3, Interesting)
Ok, let me see if I understand this:
Disney's against Net Neutrality while Slashdotters like Net Neutrality.
But Disney = Pixar, which Slashdotter's like.
And Pixar = Steve Jobs.
Some Slashdotters don't like Steve Jobs.
But Steve Jobs = Apple.
Slashdotters like Apple.
Oh man, I'm confused.
Re:Well, the cable industry should know. (Score:3, Interesting)
However, the cablecos will say that large channels subsidize the smaller ones (of course that's true), and that if they did a la carte, smaller channels couldn't survive. E.g., fewer people would be paying for BET or whatever, so BET would die out.
And what's the real reason they don't want to do a la carte? I doubt it's to save BET. I mean, if the bigger channels subsidize the smaller ones, then presumably they carry BET at a loss. (I mean, that's the logic, right?) So then why don't the cable providers want to drop BET, stop taking a loss, and make a bigger profit on carrying only the popular channels?
Shrek != Disney (Score:4, Interesting)
Here's three screaming kids. Your move.
I lead with a DVD of DreamWorks' Shrek. And if they ask for specific titles of public-domain fairy tales that happen to have been filmed by Walt Disney Pictures, I have plenty of comebacks for those [amazon.com].
Re:Well, the cable industry should know. (Score:5, Interesting)
I hate to use the stale "I have a black friend" interjectory, but I do have a black friend and asked her opinion of "Song of the South" and the whole Uncle Remus thing. She stated that it was a depiction and a snapshot of historical standards and expectations and should be considered as such. Disney has been around a long time and has evolved with the times. Ultimately, she says it is just fine to her because it is historical in a way and should be preserved as it was in spite of any other political correctness problems.
She's rather intelligent and I appreciated her view on it. However, not all of "our black friends" have such a wide view on things which is rather unfortunate, but it is typical as not all people have a wide view on things. It is most unfortunate that the rather Nazi-like intolerance we call "political correctness" is even permitted at all.
Re:Is This A Threat to Net Neutrality? Yes. (Score:2, Interesting)
I disagree and am probably going to get tarred and feathered for this, but they kinda have a point. However they are doing it wrong.
ISP's are nothing more than distributors of content. They don't create or provide content, they just distribute it.
Disney is a large scale content provider. They make the content which an ISP then distributes. Disney has every right to charge for that content. If they decided not to put their content on the internet who would pay comcast or verizon or whomever for non-existent content?
What I mean by they are doing it wrong is that they should put a bid out to ISPs to distribute their content at a byte or GB distribution level. So comcast could offer to pay Disney $1.00 per GB to route their content, comcast can then charge other ISPs $1.10 per GB for their content. Verizon would then have to charge $1.20 to its customers for internet access on top of whatever monthly fee. Comcast could charge $1.10 to its customers since it had the premier content.
Then Verizon makes an offer to YouTube for $1.20 per GB to distribute its content... and the cycle continues.
Not only that but since every node on the internet is potentially a content provider contracts can be set so that whatever content you upload you could get paid for. Anything you download you pay them for and the costs are passed to the actual content provider.
Using this model the itunes store could distribute music for "free" although it would be charged at the per GB rate. Market competition should keep the costs down.
Hosting content isn't free. Distributing content isn't free. The internet isn't free... right now a lot of companies are providing their internet content at a loss. This type of model would fix the newspaper mess. An ISP would pay big bucks to host the WSJ, a small town newspaper would also benefit from this method. This is the answer to the question "How do you make money on the internet." Now we just have the means to pay the content providers directly.
With this kind of distribution method the 2 million+ Joss Whedon fans could have been directly supporting his program and theoretically firefly could still be being produced.
With this kind of distribution there is no reason for conglomorates to own all the media, the directors and producers have a direct line and business model that would work to support their production costs.
It would limit the pirating of software since it would still cost you to torrent, when you could just get the content directly for the content owner. I mean if you could just go to the artist website and download the song "for free" and they earn money from it wouldn't everyone be better off? If it cost you $3 do torrent a movie from TPB or $3 to download it from http://www.transformersmovie.com/ [transformersmovie.com] wouldn't you rather have your money support the actual content providers?
Re:Well, the cable industry should know. (Score:3, Interesting)
You talk like it would have been different had the corrupt other guy been elected.
Re:Well, the cable industry should know. (Score:5, Interesting)
Think again.
Lifetime gets better ratings than the Discovery channel and SciFi.
TruTV gets better ratings than CNN, the History channel or Comedy Central.
Soap, Oxygen, and the golf channel all get better ratings than G4, the military channel, biography, or BBC America.
source [tvbythenumbers.com]
Re:Well, the cable industry should know. (Score:3, Interesting)
True enough, though I'm in Canada, so I doubt it's much of an issue for me, seeing as most American networks have decided I, being foolish enough to live north of the 49th, can't watch any of their programming (we won't mention bittorrent here).
Re:Well, the cable industry should know. (Score:5, Interesting)
During college, I knew a lot of African immigrants (as in, people who'd come to the US from Africa, either to stay for good, or to get a degree).
Without exception they agreed on one thing: American blacks are racist dumb shits. They couldn't understand where the "dignity" was in rap "music", hip-hop "culture", or the idea of teaching your kids that it's "acting white" to be smart. And they were constantly assailed by American blacks who bugged them about precisely those things - "acting white", not sounding black when they talked, not listening to the "right" music, not being in the "right" major to be black, etc. They were some of the smartest people I knew, and that's because they held themselves to a high standard, worked hard, and didn't think the government owed them a living like 99% of American blacks seem to.
Political Correctness has always been bullshit. I've been to "America's Black Holocaust Museum" in Milwaukee. You know what? It's a piece of shit. Slavery was bad, but the deep South was never anywhere close to Nazi Germany, and they want to hide the truth that blacks sold blacks into slavery, and there were plenty of black slaveowners in America (over 3000 in New Orleans alone according to the 1860 census).
The so-called "history book" you learned from as a kid was a bastardized, sanitized, rewritten version of "history" that had about as much relation to the truth as a made-for-TV "based on a true story" movie.
Re:Well, the cable industry should know. (Score:3, Interesting)
Had they left it in, as is, then there would have been 100 folks offended for every one of the folks that would be offended by the blurred faces.
Welcome to human nature. You can't please everyone.
racism? (Score:3, Interesting)
I hate to use the stale "I have a black friend" interjectory, but I do have a black friend and asked her opinion of "Song of the South" and the whole Uncle Remus thing. She stated that it was a depiction and a snapshot of historical standards and expectations and should be considered as such.
Something like this happened in the "Black Like Monica [touched.com]" episode of "Touched By An Angel". In it a small city is preparing a celebration for someone who was part of the Underground Railroad [wikipedia.org] with Rosa Parks as a guest. One white city councilman asks a black councilwoman if they should use a better term instead of "Negro preacher" and she says that in her historical research that was the term used and she was comfortable with it. At one tyme Negro [wikipedia.org] was a neutral term and not racist.
Falcon
Net neutrality goes both ways. (Score:3, Interesting)
If you want your cable company to let you look at whatever YOU want, regardless of how much of a "good deal" they can get on providing it for you, you need to fucking hunker down and support the tards who want to look at Disney content.
I see this as a twist on what broadband providers want. They opposed net neutrality because they wanted to be able to charge content providers fees for not slowing down content but now the content providers have turned it around and want to be paid to provide the content. People talked about how Time Warner or ComCast would try to charge Google, but now they won't want Google to charge them for providing searches. Now let's see if those who opposed net neutrality now come out in support of it.
Falcon
Re:Well, the cable industry should know. (Score:3, Interesting)
However, a Lifetime viewer is probably not as desirable a consumer as a SciFi viewer, for certain classes of product. So it's not clear that pure eyeball statistics represent how marketable the channels would be in an a la carte world.
They discovered this in the UK when Channel 4 was set up. It was supposed to be a niche channel with arts programs and strange comedies, and the legislation was set up so that it would be funded by the mainstream ITV (game shows and sitcoms). After a couple of years, Channel 4 ended up funding ITV.
Re:Well, the cable industry should know. (Score:5, Interesting)
It's funny, because for the whole first part of your comment, I thought you were talking about this [youtube.com]. For those with short attention spans, it's the Top Gear episode where they ravage a toyota truck. For example, they put it on top of a sky scraper they demolish, among other things. The cool thing was, the engineers were only allowed to use a can of wd-40 to get it running again, and it started up without much of a problem through each course.
But you're defending American cars, which are the laughing stock of every Mechanical Engineer I know. I owned 2 Fords, and the mechanics I would sometimes goto would just end the list of problems with, "But you know, it's a Ford." I have a Honda now, and I can tell you, I'm never going back. With the current economic climate, it might not even be an option anyway. Now, they have def caught up in recent years, but to say they surpassed, or even caught up to the Japanese is ridiculous.