NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Re: Internet Becomes Weapon in Fox-Cablevision Fight
What about services like (I think) ESPN360 which only allows access to some
of their services by customers for cooperating cable companies? Is this
"allow in" approach significantly different than Fox's approach. They are
trying to preserve the TV subscription model by associating the access with
the physical cable it came in on.
HBO and others have taken a simple and more transparent approach by
requiring you login using an explicit account associated with your
subscription. And they do in fact allow you to login from anyway (at least
in the US)
BTW, when my son was in Paris recently he was able to use the free Wi-Fi
supplied by Free (no relationships between free and Free) in the Paris parks
to VPN in through his school to watch US Hulu content. Not sure if they
block non-US news. But if he had been a Cablevision subscriber he would
indeed have bypassed this kind of block.
It doesn't matter much to Fox as long as their message of denial gets
through. Fox does have leverage since it can set the terms by which Hulu can
use its content. And video content is very encumbered. SNL on Hulu
explicitly says they omit specific scenes while even with Hulu Plus you'll
get missing episodes of shows.
-----Original Message-----
From: nnsquad-bounces+nnsquad=bobf.frankston.com@nnsquad.org
[mailto:nnsquad-bounces+nnsquad=bobf.frankston.com@nnsquad.org] On Behalf Of
Barry Gold
Sent: Wednesday, October 20, 2010 01:50
To: nnsquad
Subject: [ NNSquad ] Re: Internet Becomes Weapon in Fox-Cablevision Fight
On 10/19/2010 6:40 PM, Lauren Weinstein wrote:
>
> Internet Becomes Weapon in Fox-Cablevision Fight
>
> http://bit.ly/aff1st (New York Times)
I think this illustrates the futility of what Fox was trying to do. It
fails in two ways:
1. Anybody who is reasonably net-savvy will simply go through an anonymizing
proxy, thereby defeating the fox.com and hulu.com block on Cablevision IP
addresses.
2. In the process, they blocked access for some people who _were_ paying for
Fox content, e.g., via satellite services. That must have turned some faces
red at Fox. Or maybe not; from what I've seen, News Corp. is completely
shameless.
[ Beyond the policy issues, the apparent fact that (2) was not
adequately considered *before* blocks were deployed, would seem
to call into question the technical competence of the involved
parties. The lack of "appropriate" blocking granularity should
have been completely obvious ahead of time.
-- Lauren Weinstein
NNSquad Moderator ]