Net Neutrality Dies With a Whimper, Not a Bang → Corporate Wars

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In the States AT&T's "sponsored data" is a perfect example, promising users "free data" that doesn't count against their cap, while really giving AT&T significantly more power while giving deeper-pocketed content companies an advantage over startups and small companies.

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The problem with this concept is that the deeper pocketed content companies did not get that way by spending money. They got that way be not spending. As Netflix told their investors (page 6)

said by Netflix :

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The motivation could be to get Netflix to pay fees to stop this degradation. Were this draconian scenario to unfold with some ISP, we would vigorously protest and encourage our members to demand the open Internet they are paying their ISP to deliver.

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The ISPs are going to have a hard time coming out on top in this fight and should they attempt to charge more for access they may end up with greater government regulation, something that ISPs want to avoid.

For every still-trying-to innovate Netflix there's going to be five just-trying-to-protect turf ESPN's who think this sort of thing is a wonderful concept.

This was likely regulator's plan all along too, they don't have the backbone or political backing to pre-emptively stop ISPs from doing this. Instead they watched and waited for their hand to be forced. The end result may very well be regulators get more control than they would have being pre-emptive as well. Still, it is the people who the regulators are supposed to protect who are being harmed in these power struggles.

So, what else is new?

Our wonderfully corrupt governments at work, being paid for by the lobbyists with the deepest pockets!

@Karl

Read this thread to see what's going on up here
»ITMP undue preference complaint filed against Bell

Netflix isn't innovating anything.

Low price. On most every device available. Use it anywhere there is internet (except Comcast so far). No pay-per-view upcharges. No commercials. Watch what you want when you want from a large library.

That's quite a change. A nice change from what is available anywhere else.

Netflix works on Comcast, though the accusation Comcast throttles it has some merit based on my experience.

Looks like the complaint is on hold? Any idea for how long?

Yeah, no innovation there, huh?

Nope. Pay attention to that on-going thread in Canadian Broadband. As soon as there's news to post it'll be posted there within minutes of it happening.

There'll be a real shitstorm (that's straight from Romulan Hyperspace) if the CRTC cancels the proceeding, or significantly waters it down.

It's on hold for a bit to deal with Procedural Requests, so we don't have 3 proceedings about the same thing all going on at once.

PIAC didn't get their own way with Ben's Part 1, so they started Part 1s against Rogers & Videotron..

Netflix isn't offering the same prime content as pay-tv and premium channels.

They have leftovers, table-scraps, and direct-to-video junk.
Stuff you never have to worry about someone else checking out from the public library collection.

Hastings deserves credit for "eliminating late fees" in the DVD rental era, and for catching the studios off-guard to sell their junk for even less than its worth, but that isn't innovation, its negotiation. What he is providing isn't something new, it is a rehashing and reformatting of something old, at a price point low enough that people will buy it and then do their best hand-wringing and attempt to compare it to premium channel and PPV fare.

If he actually caused cord-cutting (he isn't), then you could say he's a disruptive force, but really, that only applies to the downfall of the DVD rental stores.

True. But they also have the "prime" stuff too. Sons of Anarchy, Walking Dead, Breaking Bad, and many, many others. Generally the previous season and back. But if you aren't using cable, like me, previous season is new season. They also recently contracted with Disney for early run rights and a bunch of their other material.

They are also producing their own quality content, as is Amazon.

Me thinks you're just being contrarian.

They took a DVD empire online and successfully navigated performance pitfalls, completely revolutionized the way many people consume video on mobile devices, did it at an excellent price, and gave cable industry executives bad dreams. They're the first streaming company to win an Emmy award via original content, and they're bringing a significant amount of foreign TV overseas.

Again, yeah. Nothing much impressive going on there. Great point.

I find things to watch on Netflex whenever I want. In case you don't know, there's crap on the other services too. Even free TV has crap on. It may be "New" crap during prime time. but crap is crap...

Probably cable's biggest advantage is their half hour commercials for the latest colon cleans that'll cure all your health problems and 3 others you don't have.

I miss cable. Yeah, right.

You illustrate my point.

Instead of watching what you want - that's on prime, pay-tv, and premium networks, you are settling for finding "something" to watch, and justifying it.

While there is nothing wrong with making the economic choice to buy Netflix over premium channels or PPVs or other cable tiers, so long as you or Netflix is willing to pay the overhead for the delivery stream, Netflix content remains not comparable to what one obtains on cable or satellite.

Cable executives don't lose sleep over Netflix.

No one cares for foreign TV. That just exemplifies the weakness of their catalog and their inability to obtain prime content.

They did NOT take a DVD empire online - their DVD library is not available for streaming. They were simply wise enough to realize there was an opportunity to stream tripe for cheap, and they had an existing subscriber base to sell to.

People aren't going to be consuming video on mobile data service, there isn't sufficient bandwidth to allow that - you protest so daily over wireless data caps. Again, just because the technology exists and Netflix standardized the delivery, doesn't make it innovative.

Ahem. I'm *not* being contrarian.

I give Netflix credit for providing a low-budget service, eliminating late fees, and providing a large, diverse library by mail. But the streaming service is not on par, and it will only appeal so long as Hastings can keep it cheap and browbeat the ISPs into providing a free ride for his bits, even though he's the biggest data hog in the world.

Adding in-house production is swell, but it comes at the price of losing what little prime content they already contracted.

Even if they wanted to, governments generally do not have jurisdictions over the details of how ISPs operate their network so they would be unable to do anything about ISPs not buying sufficient external transit or building sufficient internal transit to handle more traffic, exactly how traffic gets routed internally and tons of other internal stuff that could be leveraged to favor selected content sources without specifically interfering with any other.

Same goes for cache appliances: I seriously doubt governments can order ISPs NOT to improve their network's efficiency by deploying CDN and content provider caches at strategic points across their network to reduce both internal and external load and latency.

It really boils down to economies of scale: large companies have the capital and influence to buy their way into networks to reduce their net cost while improving services. While Netflix is crying about network neutrality now, there was a time not so long ago where Netflix did make peering with their CDN mandatory for subscribers to gain access to their HD/2k resolution options.

Disagree. Netflix is changing things in the way iTunes changed things. It's a complete paradigm shift.

Do you actually use Netflix at all? Serious question. I find Netflix to be the most amazing amount of entertainment available for my money. Ever. Hands down. Does it have everything? No. Does it have plenty for the money I pay? Absolutely.

So is that why MSOs are so afraid of them stealing their marketshare? Remember: cord cutters don't exist. Hardy har har.

The future is on-demand and the future is here. If cable companies and content producers want to cling to the old model, that's fine. This is why Netflix plus piracy gives you everything you need.

Nope. iTunes brought all the content providers together at once, and got them to agree, for a long time, to uniform pricing, making ~95% of popular music available, for purchase.

Netflix brings unseen and unheard of material, and its many fans "find something to watch".

It isn't changing anything.

A paradigm shift would require delivering the same content one obtains on cable or satellite, as a baseline.

We had the DVD service for years. I've tried the streaming service long enough to know what it doesn't have, and occasionally, I sample it when the opportunity arises - to date, there have been no surprises; they simply aren't going to pay the price necessary to license the content.

The price necessary under the old thinking. If they did, Netflix would cost double what cable does. The providers are going to have to rethink they way they price their content.

That's my point. Netflix is either going to have to charge a lot more, or they aren't going to offer the content people pay for on cable and satellite, and therefore, they will remain an afterthought, an also-ran, an add-on, but not actual competition for cable and satellite.

I think they are doing just fine, and it's the old model who will end up having to rethink the prices they pay for content. However, Netflix, while doing well right now is clearly caught between a rock and hard place.

Greedy content providers, and our non-competitive ISP situation who believe Netflix should have to pay tolls to exist on the Internet.... and BOTH those groups are joined at the hip.

All they really have to do is squeeze. Netflix's only defense from such a situation is Consumer backlash (notoriously fickle) and Government regulators (who seem quite beholden to their competition) so I would say they may be on their own.

Of course crushing Netflix lends itself back to the argument that Piracy is actually a moral and ethical form of protest.

Ah interesting times.

The old model, again, doesn't "have to" do anything.

They probably should - in the end, people will actually pay more, and greater profits will be had, but there are so many variables and pitfalls along the way.

No one (content) company is going to stick its neck out and take the 12-figure hit when it tanks - a Primestar+Voom+Betamax+HD-DVD+DAT+(Circuit City) Divx+3DO+MovieBeam+GoogleTV+WebTV combined nightmare product rollout opportunity on steroids.

Meanwhile the other so-called "innovative" firms won't ante up the 12-figure down-payment for the licensing to crack the dam.

I see nothing wrong with "greed" - its a prime motivator to attract financing for those who take the risks to produce the goods we all want. But I can't see how that applies to the content owners; they're simply protecting, via the "old model", what belongs to them, as they continue to risk and produce more.

Netflix *should* pay tolls.