The New York Times expressed some reservations about the Comcast-Times Warner deal, which in any sane country would be illegal, and probably is, though no one will do anything about it. Among other things, the Times worried that Comcast might make use of its market position to extract money from services such as Netflix, destroying net neutrality in the bargain. But in a letter in today's Times, industry shill Chad Gutstein says not to worry:
Your concern that Comcast as an Internet provider will discriminate against unaffiliated content companies like Netflix now that the Federal Communications Commission’s “net neutrality” rules have been overturned is also misplaced. Comcast agreed to a version of those rules during federal review of its acquisition of NBC Universal and now stands as the only Internet service provider that must adhere to them — something the merger review could actually extend.
via New York Times
That was this morning. Today we learn that Comcast and Netflix have struck a deal. Netflix will pay extra to get its content streamed more quickly by Comcast. Well, there goes net neutrality. You can quibble about legal technicalities, but if this stands, that's the end of the open internet. The truly infuriating thing about this is that Netflix did it not because they necessarily wanted to one up the competition, but because Comcast's service sucks so bad that they needed to do something to satisfy their own customers, for you see, in this country we pay more and get less when in comes to internet speeds.
Netflix certainly has plenty of incentive to pony up. Comcast falls near the bottom of Netflix’s rankings for which ISPs deliver the best streaming experience to its subscribers, and less than a week ago, Netflix groused that streaming performance for its service on major ISP networks was getting worse.
via Techhive
One reason for the shitty service may be (why do I say "may") the lack of real regulation in this country. Why improve service when you can simply milk a monopoly? And why not take advantage of that monopoly to favor the big guys who can pay over the small guys who can't? The big guys don't really mind; in the end they just pass the costs along.
There's nothing new under the sun. Once again I'm reminded of Doris Kearns Goodwin's Bully Pulpit, in which she describes the long and bitter fight to regulate the railways, who did exactly the same thing Comcast is doing today. The railroads made deals similar to the Netflix/Comcast deal with the big guys and charged prohibitive rates to their small competitors (if they were willing to transport their stuff at all). It helped that the same guys who controlled the railroads often controlled the companies whose products were being shipped, just as Comcast controls some content providers. It only stopped when the Federal government stepped in and imposed "railway neutrality", if I might coin a term. In a measure of how far we've come, while Roosevelt and Taft managed to get that reform through a recalcitrant Congress, it is impossible to even conceive of our Congress doing anything to protect us from the new monopolists.
Post a Comment