Media coalition: Comcast merger to create power 'unknown' in U.S. history - The Hill's Hillicon Valley: Via .
A new group opposed to the merger of Comcast and NBC Universal says regulators need to consider whether the size of the proposed deal represents a threat to the public interest.
“It is important to recognize the sheer scope of the proposed acquisition,” the group wrote in a letter to Congress Thursday. “The merged entity will exert a degree of power unknown in our nation’s media history.”
Addressing House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Rick Boucher (D-Va.) and Commerce Trade and Consumer Protection Subcommittee Chairman Bobby Rush (D-Ill.), the Coalition for Competition in Media points to Comcast’s status as the country’s largest Internet service provider and cable company, and NBC’s ownership of “some of the most heavily-visited websites on the Internet," to make the argument that the merger could stifle competition in the media. read more... »
Glenn Beck's war on the FCC (and Satan worshippers): Via arstechnica.
Back in April, Beck railed against net neutrality, saying that "it's about eliminating traditional, constitutional points of view from the public arena. But that's not the way it's being billed. It is about stopping debate. But nobody will tell you that. It's about ending free speech. It is about Marxism."
Julius Genachowski, a former tech executive who worked with startups and media mogul Barry Diller, is pushing unfettered Marxism? The idea is risible, but Beck seems to believe that the FCC has been infiltrated by radical groups who will help to implement Obama's secret censorship agenda. Chief among these groups is Free Press, the nonprofit that pushed the FCC to censure Comcast for its P2P blocking. (Genachowski's press secretary previously worked for the group.)
Read Original Article:(Via arstechnica.)
NBC Removes Conan O'Brien From the Web: Via Peter Kafka | MediaMemo | AllThingsD.
Remember the whole Conan O’Brien/Jay Leno imbroglio from last month? Perhaps NBC wishes you didn’t. The GE (GE) unit has removed every episode of the show’s seven-month run from its NBC.com site, as well as Hulu, the site NBC owns with News Corp.’s (NWS) Fox and Disney’s (DIS) ABC.
A little odd, given that a couple of days ago, the network was offering every single “Tonight Show” episode O’Brien had taped on NBC.com. But then again, everything about this story has been odd. NBC declined to comment.
NBC–at least, I’m assuming it’s NBC–has also been aggressive about taking down Conan episodes from Google’s (GOOG) YouTube.
Read Original Article:(Via Peter Kafka | MediaMemo | AllThingsD.)
TV Everywhere: Collusion Anywhere?: Via Freedom to Tinker.
FreePress and the National Cable and Telecom Association (NCTA) are talking past each other about TV Everywhere, a new initiative from the cable TV industry. FreePress says TV Everywhere is the cable industry's collusive attempt to limit competition; the NCTA says it's an exciting new product opportunity for consumers. Let's unpack this issue and see who might have a point, and who is blowing smoke.
We're at a critical point in the history of television. In recent years, most people have gotten TV shows from a traditional cable or satellite service. Now more and more people are getting shows on the Internet. Cable companies need to adapt, somehow, or become dinosaurs.
Which brings us to TV Everywhere. The idea, according to the NCTA, is for cable companies to offer their residential subscribers online access to the same shows they get at home. Existing consumers get more, at no extra charge -- who would complain about that? -- but only if they keep buying traditional cable service.
FreePress tells a different story, in which cable industry companies have agreed among themselves that this is their sole Internet distribution strategy. If such an agreement exists, it is problematic -- it looks like a classic market division agreement, which is bad for consumers and (as I understand it) presumptively illegal. read more... »
DVR is TV's New BFF: Via EFF.org Updates.
Digital Video Recorders, once considered a mortal threat by the entertainment industry, have now become its new best friend. It's just the latest example of how the industry's constant warnings of the dangers of "piracy" frequently turn out to be baseless hysteria.
Remember 2001? Digital Video Recorders ("DVRs") like TiVo and ReplayTV were poised to win mainstream adoption, allowing consumers to fast-forward past advertisements more easily than before. In response, the entertainment industry behaved predictably — it freaked out and filed a bunch of lawsuits.
Industry analysts claimed that DVR "potentially threatens the very lifeblood of how television is funded and how it's used for marketing and advertising." A coalition of television studios including Viacom, Disney, and NBC filed suit against SonicBlue, makers of ReplayTV, arguing that skipping commercials "effectively circumvents the means of payment to copyright owners for the programming being viewed... (and) thus constitutes copyright infringement."
Fast-forward eight years, and these claims turn out to be — surprise! — wrong. This weekend, The New York Times announced that "DVR ratings now add significantly to live ratings and thus to ad revenue." read more... »
DRM by any other name: The latest from Hollywood: Via Freedom to Tinker.
Sunday's New York Times had an article, Studios' Quest for Life After DVDs. To nobody's surprise, consumers want to have convenient access to "their" media, wherever they happen to be, without all the annoying restrictions that come into play when you add DRM to the picture. To many people's surprise, sales of DVDs (much less Blu-ray) are in trouble.
In the third quarter, studios’ home entertainment divisions generated about $4 billion, down 3.2 percent from a year ago, according to the Digital Entertainment Group, a trade consortium. But digital distribution contributed just $420 million, an increase of 18 percent.
Given that DVDs are really a luxury good (versus, say, food or electricity), the 3.2 percent drop seems like Hollywood is getting off easy. read more... »
Supreme Court Serves Up Remote-Recording Victory: Via Threat Level.
The Supreme Court on Monday let stand a copyright case testing whether cable operators may permit customers to store television programming on company servers to be viewed at a later time.
The issue concerns an August ruling by a federal appeals court, which lifted (.pdf) an injunction against Cablevision Systems blocking it from offering customers a recording service that stores programming on the cable company’s own servers instead of on viewers’ in-house playback devices.
Hollywood and television programmers maintained Cablevision’s service directly infringes their exclusive rights to both reproduce and publicly perform their copyrighted works. read more... »
Into the DTV era, with no broadcast flag mandate: Via EFF.org Updates.
Today (June 12, 2009) marks the completion of the U.S. transition to digital television, as TV stations switch off their analog transmitters.
Just a few years ago, some broadcasters and movie studios argued that this transition couldn't happen without a DRM mandate -- a legal requirement for devices to obey the broadcast flag and apply DRM restrictions to free, over-the-air broadcasts. And they said they would hold up and obstruct this transition unless they got their way.
The DMCA has already been used to restrict the ability to produce innovative, useful products that copyright holders disapprove of. read more... »
Hollywood drives us into the "Analog Sunset": Via EFF.org Updates.
As Blu-ray.com reports, the AACS licensing authority has released the "Final Adopter Agreement" it plans to enforce against consumer electronics companies that make BluRay players (and any other AACS devices that come along). Buried inside that 188 page document is a plan to eliminate analog video... forever. BluRay device makers will have to restrict analog outputs to low resolution first:
2.2.2.1 Analog Sunset – 2010. With the exception of Existing Models,
any Licensed Player manufactured after December 31, 2010 shall
limit analog video outputs for Decrypted AACS Content to SD
Interlace Modes [composite video, s-video, 480i component video and 576i video] only. read more... »
EFF comments on Child Safe Viewing Act: Via EFF.org Updates.
Recently, EFF filed comments with the FCC in connection with the Child Safe Viewing Act of 2007, which requires the FCC to conduct a study of V-chip-like blocking technologies that might apply to media other than television – such as Internet access, perhaps. The law requires the FCC to study these "advanced blocking technologies" and report back to Congress, which might then take some further legislative action based on the report's contents. Our comments emphasized First Amendment issues, but there turns out to be a copyright angle lurking here too (which we'll discuss in a separate blog post). read more... »