News Corp. Shuts Off Hulu Access To Cablevision 316
ideonexus writes "Normally when we advocate Net Neutrality, we are talking about preventing ISPs from discriminating against content providers, but in this case, the content provider is discriminating against the ISP. Is this a new dimension in the Net Neutrality fight? From the article: 'Cablevision internet customers lost access to Fox.com and Fox programming on Hulu for a time Saturday afternoon — the result of a misguided effort on News Corp.'s part to cut off online viewing as an alternative in its standoff with the cable operator over retrans fees. Fox stations in NYC, Philadelphia, and New Jersey went dark at midnight Friday when negotiations between the two broke down.'"
Oblig. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Oblig. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Oblig. (Score:4, Insightful)
Quality programming for them is pretty much accidental and a failing on the part of the execs to properly kill it.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
This is not about programming this is about censorship. Basically if you used their cable to access the internet, the censored your connection whilst they entered into negotiations with a supplier and used that loss of customer access to leverage the negotiations in there favour.
Their customers were of course just screwed over and used as nothing pawns to barter with to Fox's advantage
This is forewarning of exactly why net neutrality is required and why the executives who did this should go to jail. Th
Re:Oblig. (Score:5, Insightful)
Except it wasn't the ISP that did it. They're allowing full access to Hulu.
It was Fox, who runs Hulu, because another division of the ISP rejected a rate increase from Fox.
In this case, you're arguing for being unable to drop China at the firewall protecting your web server, for instance - that would violate your definition of net neutrality.
Alternately, the only other way that would work is that literally everyone that wants to get paid for access gets paid what they want to get paid, and if you don't pay someone, you get shut down. That's a disgusting thought.
Real net neutrality means that you can access any site without your ISP blocking or slowing down access, and there's no signs that that's been breached here, as Cablevision isn't blocking Hulu for Cablevision customers, HULU is blocking Hulu for Cablevision customers.
Re:no one blames the fans? (Score:5, Informative)
Firefly has a 9.5 rating on IMDB [ahttp]. Very, very few programs have ever accomplished that. As for ratings, they are also affected by time slots, moving programs around, and showing the episodes OUT OF ORDER. And yes, the media blitz that was planned for Serenity was cancelled at the last minute by the studio, so it had to sink or swim purely by word of mouth. With DVD sales, it still managed to better than break even, although not by much.
Yea, Family Guy had lousy ratings and was cancelled by Fox. Right before it set a new record for DVD purchases of a TV show. And they cancelled it yet again after that.
Re:no one blames the fans? (Score:5, Insightful)
Have you not watched Inception or Toy Story 3?
Re:no one blames the fans? (Score:4, Insightful)
Dollhouse did suck. It only lasted two seasons as an apology for Firefly
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Dollhouse's plotting was more like a compressed Buffy and less like Firefly. The first 5 episodes or so were awful, the middle half of the first season was decent, and the last 1/4 of the first season and the entirety of the second season was amazingly good.
I'm just sayin' - if you didn't stick it out for a bit, you're missing out.
Re:Oblig. (Score:4, Interesting)
One explanation of Firefly I'd heard was that, while Fox didn't like Joss Whedon, they knew he was too good to allow the competition to have him. So they got him on contract, then ran the show in a terrible slot for its demographic, messed up the order of episodes, and generally, did everything they could to submerge the show without outright killing it.
Re:Oblig. (Score:4, Insightful)
Would a corporation sacrifice profit to screw with Joss? No. It was an incompetent TV exec that wanted to give priority to shows appealing to the female tween market. Just look at the line up now from all the networks except for CBS and NBC. How many vampire or metro-sexual 90210 wannabes do we have to have?
Tweens rule the broadcast market...
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It was an incompetent TV exec that wanted to give priority to shows appealing to the female tween market.
You know, its funny that you should bring that up that because I mentioned Firefly to one of my coworkers last year and, after watching a few of the episodes on Hulu with his tween daughter, they liked the show so much that he bought the television series and Serenity on DVD as a birthday gift for her. Firefly was, to paraphrase Leonard Nemoy, one of those "lightning in a bottle" type shows that come around only once in great while and the executives at Fox still managed to frak it all up because they can't
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I mentioned Firefly to one of my coworkers last year and, after watching a few of the episodes on Hulu with his tween daughter, they liked the show so much that he bought the television series and Serenity on DVD as a birthday gift for her.
I am strangely persuaded by your sample size of one.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
And how did Fox reward the show that made the network and the reward the fans. By Canceling it without a goodbye epi
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I believe the term, when applied to 30+ year old adults, is murder.
You just need to be a little more generous in how you apply the term limit.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I believe the term, when applied to 30+ year old adults, is murder.
You just need to be a little more generous in how you apply the term limit.
Anything up until the 150th trimester is fair game?
Re: (Score:2)
It's the viewing of everything in life as a football game that's problematic.
Re: (Score:2)
And nothing of value was lost...
Currently FOX has:
- Fringe - Decent SciFi replacement to the XFiles mechanic, only even better.
- House - One of the better medical dramas on today, though I have to admit it's gotten stale.
- Bones - A decent crime procedural drama following a forensic anthropologist. I still DVR it from time to time.
I couldn't care less about Simpsons / Family Guy / Cleveland Show. And a lot of their stuff is fluff.
But they have some decent primetime shows as well.
Re: (Score:2)
Better than Boycott (Score:2)
If there's a show from Fox you want to watch, do it via bittorrent. eztv is a good source. So you wait a day to see the latest episode. If "talking about last night's episode around the water cooler" is important to you, find a way to not be such a loser.
If you see a company that advertises on Fox, support their competition. Hell, even the creator of Family Guy, which is a Fox program, encourages his fans to watch it from some other source besides on Fox.
See? No down side.
But of course.... (Score:5, Interesting)
The Fox content at Hulu was restored when they realized they didn't have the capability to block only Cablevision customers in the area. All of the NY/Philly area was blacked out, when their beef is only with one ISP.
Re:But of course.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Did they really do that? Idiots. It isn't hard to get a list of IP blocks allocated an ISP.
To me this brings up another example of how the general idea of net neutrality is simple, while the details are not. Most of us would agree that this behavior is anti-competitive, but where do you draw the line? Many sites block entire countries, because they don't have the legal right to serve the same content in all regions. Many sites ban entire countries or IP blocks due to spamming and/or other malicious behavior that has come from those blocks. Is that acceptable? If so, given that you can find malicious behavior coming just about every IP block (botnets), does that mean that it could be used an excuse to ban whoever you wish?
Re: (Score:2)
Many sites block entire countries, because they don't have the legal right to serve the same content in all regions
Do they have some other operation in that country? Why should they care about foreign laws?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
They care about their local laws and business contracts.
Let's suppose I'm in USA and have an agreement with a company in USA that allows them to distribute my content only within countries A, B and C. If they I see them distributing it worldwide with no restrictions at all, then my lawyers start counting money already.
Re: (Score:2)
Take BBC iPlayer for example. They buy the UK rights to some TV shows from companies who sold other country rights to other people. Those companies would not be happy if the BBC made their shows available on iPlayer to those other countries.
Also, for shows they make themselves, they sell other country rights to TV stations abroad. Those TV stations wouldn't be happy about handing money over to the BBC if the shows are available for free on iPlayer.
Re:But of course.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Most of us would agree that this behavior is anti-competitive, but where do you draw the line? Many sites block entire countries, because they don't have the legal right to serve the same content in all regions. Many sites ban entire countries or IP blocks due to spamming and/or other malicious behavior that has come from those blocks. Is that acceptable?
The line is drawn at anticompetitive behavior.
Leveraging your power in one market in order to influence a related market is anticompetitive and it's what Fox just did.
Not having [regional] rights to air something & banning malicious network blocks are completely unrelated.
Re:But of course.... (Score:5, Informative)
Many sites block entire countries, because they don't have the legal right to serve the same content in all regions.
Note that we should not confuse copyright with idiotic contract terms attempting to manufacture a licensing model.
Obviously a website (or a TV broadcast antenna, or a book manufacturer) has to obey copyright law at that location. Obviously they have to license any relevant copying or distribution rights, at that location.
The website *is* licensed to serve the content. The issue is contracts that require websites to block IP address ranges in some warped attempt to simulate licensing of the person at the other end.
A TV show can license a TV broadcast antenna that happens to be in the US, but there is nothing "regional" about licensing. The copyright holder is not licensing the people who receive it, he is licensing the broadcast antenna. Someone in Canada does not need any license at all to turn his TV to that channel and receive it. The most the copyright holder can do is get the antenna station to sign a contract promising to point the antenna away from Canada. There is nothing "regional" about any of the the copyright licensing itself. The station has the licensed right to transmit. If someone in Canada, or even Japan, has a really good TV set and can pick up the signal that is not a violation of any license.
A book author can license a book manufacturer who happens to be in the US, but there is nothing "regional" about licensing. The copyright holder isn't giving any sort of license for "regional readers". The copyright holder is not giving any license at all to any readers, because under copyright law there is no such thing as a license to read. People without licenses can just plain read, regardless of any permission the copyright holder wants to grant or deny. The most the book author can do is get the book manufacturer to sign a contract promising not to willfully mail the book out of the US themselves. The manufacturer is licensed to print copies. There is no license violation if someone in Japan buys the book secondhand from someone in the US and reads it. The person reading the book in Japan doesn't involve any sort of "regional licensing" because they don't need any license at all to read it.
The same goes for websites. A copyright holder can ask the website to sign a contract promising to block various IP-ranges, but is just an effort to manufacture or simulate some sort of regional idea. Aside from the contractual promise to block certain IP addresses there is nothing actually regional about any of the copyright or licensing. And is is false and stupid to try to use IP addresses in that manner. Yes, IP addresses are usually pretty accurate at telling you were the other end is located, but it is a grossly flawed assumption. Hopefully the increase of proxies and advancing internet technology will make it increasingly obvious that an IP address is not a location, and that trying to us IP addresses to limit websites to national borders is impossible and stupid.
-
Re:But of course.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't abuse the racism charge, lest it gets watered down and becomes worthless.
Hulu blocking other countries is a business decision. They don't have the distribution rights to transmit overseas, and they don't have an infrastructure to sell ads appropriate for overseas customers. There's no reason to show most US ads to non-US people.
To call this tantamount to racism is really twisted in my opinion. There's no reason to ask them to deliberately lose money to fulfill your sense of justice, especially over an entertainment medium.
Re:But of course.... (Score:5, Insightful)
If you don't think it already is, you haven't been paying attention for the last twenty years.
Re: (Score:2)
Race discrimination laws don't require me to do business with Nigeria if I don't want to. I have to do business with Nigerians living in this country on the same terms as everyone else who lives in this country but that won't be coming from Nigerian IP addresses.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't see why you're surprised at the claim. Are you picturing them carefully picking countries on the basis of how those places treat copyright law and how widespread piracy is in them? Choosing IP blocks because they belong to service providers that don't cooperate with take-down notices? If they were sticking pretty close to the known numbers there, it might be ethically acceptable, and whether it was or not, claims of racism wouldn't hold water. But historically, some major sites have made some terrib
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
When some site management discovers a DOS attack is coming from Belgum and does nothing for two days, then runs across a very odd unconfirmable rumor that the attack originates in an African nation and starts a blanket block of all of them within the next half hour, then hears another rumor the attack comes from a North Korean group and blocks NK, China, Hong Kong and Tibet (of all things), what more do you need to take a claim of racism seriously?
It's hardly racist to make decisions based on how likely leg
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I don't think this is as easy as [arin.net] you think [he.net]. Search for "Cablevision" and you're suddenly in a maze of twisty little /24s, all alike.
Re: (Score:2)
It should not take a server all of a microsecond to compare an IP against a very slowly changing list of IP blocks.
However, it's a really silly stunt, I would hope that Hulu had contractual requirements to justify doing this, which there might be.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You've missed the point. How do you properly vet the IP being compared? There are a truckload of blocks associated with the name "Cablevision". Do you block them all? What if the SWIP info says "Cablevision" but the addresses are being used by someone else (which happens a lot more than you would think)?
Access Denied to Fox? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Sorry, but censorship is bad. To cheer it on is even worse.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Access Denied to Fox? (Score:4, Insightful)
Not exactly... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not a new dimension (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Not a new dimension (Score:5, Insightful)
Web sites aren't "channels". If we let them get away with turning the internet into another fucking channel lineup of large websites, all of humanity is fucked.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
ESPN produces content, and if they want to charge for that content they have a perfect right to do so. To suggest anything different makes no sense.
There are millions of sites already doing this. Just like TV channels, some use an ad-supported model, and some use a subscription model. Either way, they exist in order to and because they can make money off their business.
Also, to the GP: Hulu is *not* free to all, they also have a subscription model (Hulu+) to stream content more conveniently (ie to a TV)
Re: (Score:2)
We'll know nine months later what the effect was (Score:5, Funny)
No TV? No Internet? What are we gonna do?
The effect of this will be manifested about nine months later...
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:We'll know nine months later what the effect wa (Score:3, Funny)
will be manifested about nine months later
Ah yes, the great nerdling babyboom of 2010.
-
Torrents (Score:3, Insightful)
I think this is a really stupid move on the part of News Corp, now they're just gonna deprive themselves of the advertising revenue that Cablevision customers brought to Hulu. Meanwhile, torrents still exist, and the downloaded shows tend to have the ads cut out...
Not *network* neutrality (Score:5, Insightful)
Network neutrality is about the network being neutral w.r.t. the content it carries.
This is about content providers being neutral, not about network neutrality. Please do not try to confuse the network neutrality discussion by mixing it up with other, unrelated debates.
Re:Not *network* neutrality (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't be fooled by the apparent dissimilarity of the two problems. At a fundamental level they're very much related. You have large, entrenched organizations that own content and, in some cases run broadband networks -- facing off against large entrenched organizations that own broadband networks and, in some cases, produce content. The two nearly identical sides are running an experiment, trying to use their market power to try to force each other into favorable business terms.
In both cases the customers are being treated like an asset to be sold, or held hostage, while the corporations use them as a bargaining chip in their real business decisions. Sure, the negotiations can go either direction, but eventually it's the smaller players who are going to get locked out of the game.
In fact, this kind of thing is directly related to the net neutrality argument, because it presents a terrific counterargument for the ISPs. If the ISPs are required to be neutral, but the content providers aren't, then we're essentially going to take away one of the ISPs only weapons in what is really a two-sided business war. I don't love this argument, but I believe it could be persuasive.
At very least you need to understand this as one skirmish in a much broader conflict.
Re: (Score:2)
Dennis Potter had it right (Score:3, Interesting)
-- Dennis Potter (source [youtube.com])
News Corp/Fox is out of control (Score:5, Informative)
A lot of the Dish Net/Cablevision customer won't see beyond "my channels are gone" and switch to a different provider. That is exactly the wrong thing to do. Dish Net/Cablevision are fighting to keep our rates down, but they can't do it if everybody jumps ship. Dish won the recent battle against Fisher Communications, they were trying to raise their rates 78% for over the air, tax payer subsidized "free" channels. Fisher Communications was already the highest paid among their piers, and wanted to nearly double their rates.
Re:News Corp/Fox is out of control (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Ironically, videos delivered over the Internet should be rescuing us from this sort of behaviorOf course, we are, once again, relying on large corporations (Youtube, Hulu) whose conduct we have no say over to provide us with our videos...
What's ironic is that the Fox shows that cablevision dropped and are available via hulu are passing through people's bodies for free right now. A $40 antenna should pick up Fox in most markets. The HD picture is actually seems better over the air compared to cable. The only time I use my set top box now is for the DVR and for some channels that are only available through the STB. I'm planning on building a mythtv box to fix that. Unfortunately there's one channel I can only get through a cable/sat/fios p
Dish charging customers in the process. (Score:2)
It doesn't sound like Dish is the good guys here either.
As far as I'm concerned,
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I heard on the radio the other day on the Clark Howard show that Dish is still charging their customers full price for the News Corp channels that people paid for ( I guess you have to get a premium package or something to get them) even though they aren't receiving them
It is early in the dispute. With the Fisher Comm. dispute, Dish customers were given $1/month off their bill for that lost channel. $1 doesn't seems like much, but the locals run $5/month for about 8-12 chans, so it was appropriate. Dish hasn't had time to make that kind of decision, but I think they will if this drags on longer. But you will probably need to call in and ask for it.
Re:News Corp/Fox is out of control (Score:5, Insightful)
...and switch to a different provider. That is exactly the wrong thing to do. Dish Net/Cablevision are fighting to keep our rates down, but they can't do it if everybody jumps ship.
No doubt most of the people here understand what you're saying and agree entirely. Unfortunately, I'd guess News Corp knows that any strategy that depends on regular people being informed or showing some kind of conviction is a lost cause. That sucks. :(
Re:News Corp/Fox is out of control (Score:4, Insightful)
Which explains why News Corp target the totally uninformed and easily swayed demographic...
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I think cable companies have it worse than Dish because they have to pay fees on "homes past", meaning they are paying a fee for every home that could potentially subscribe to the content. I've been told by multiple people "half your cable bill is ESPN, whether you wanted it or not".
Cab
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Your credibility is quite gone when you say "piers" instead of "peers"
I would say your credibility is worthless in that most of your posts are modded 0 or -1.
Solution (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Cancel my Cablevision TV service (their rates are way too high anyway). I've been thinking about it for a while, and I think this latest dispute is the last straw.
2) Connect antenna to TV.
3) Watch FOX.
4) No profit for either of them.
I can buy all of the shows that I want to watch from iTunes or Amazon and still come out way cheaper than my current cable TV bill. And that's ignoring the "torrent" option that many people will choice to use instead...
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I'll most likely be doing a combination of either Linux or Windows 7 Media Center recording the over-the-air channels that I can receive with my antenna and getting the rest from Hulu (with pro
Predicted Path (Score:5, Insightful)
This is what I have believed is the path this matter will take, and I (and probably many others) have been arguing exactly this. The following is the rational path:
Big ISP threatens big content. Big content counter-threatens big ISP. Big ISP and big content reach an agreement to shut out small competition. General public does not know about or care about small competition. Small competition dies, oligarchs win.
Oligarchy or net neutrality. Those are the only two outcomes. Net neutrality depends on an altruistic and long-term focused government. While it has happened before (telcos went through exactly this way back in the day, resulted in common carrier), I do not believe our current government or lackluster activism are capable of making it happen again. In short; oligarchy will win.
I've been trying to think of solutions, not much so far, a few thoughts:
1. Diaspora (or similar) farms that are big enough to buy a seat at the table.
2. Oligarchs sufficiently overstep to incite popular revolution. (unlikely, they're not that stupid -- they know how bread and circuses works -- it is a cookbook to them)
3. Diaspora (or similar) running over surreptitious channels.
4. Indie mesh networks similar to ham operations.
5. Geek revolt (ie: we realize we have all the power here, decide that our paychecks are not worth the price, and shut down the oligarchs before they gain unstoppable power)
None of these seem particularly likely to succeed, to me. One thing seems obvious: The further we get down the road, the more extreme the solution will have to be. Well, make that two things: The short term gains to the oligarchs will be enormously outweighed by the friction, and hence loss, to our GDP growth rate -- punishing us all, including them, in the long run.
Companies create their own competition. . . (Score:2)
I'm not against net neutrality, but at the same time, in the end, when companies don't do the right thing for their customers, they do create an opportunity for someone else to start competition - basically, any company which enacts policies and procedures which alienate their customer base, they create a big opening in the market for a new competitor to step in and take business away from them. No monopoly or oligarchy can last forever with unhappy customers.
In the case of Hulu, nobody has to watch Hulu. I
The fault in the Hulu Business Model (Score:4, Insightful)
This has been the fault line in the Hulu business model since Day 1 - there is no way Hulu wanted to do this (block Internet users based on who they are affiliated with?), but they are a creature of their owners, who basically don't want Internet TV to succeed. It is a little surprising to see Rupert Murdoch do this so nakedly over such a comparatively trivial dispute.
If you think you are going to "Cut the Cord" with Hulu, think again.
And if you're a DirecTV customer . . . (Score:2)
who happens to use Cablevision as an ISP you get screwed. As News Corp. has been pushing DirecTV as an alternative to Cablevision for Fox programming, that's probably not a can of worms they really wanted to open. Most of the DirecTV customers I know in the northern NJ area are using Cablevision as an ISP.
The really lame part of this is how much of an increase News Corp is asking for - they currently get $22 per subscriber per year, they're looking for $44. The FCC really, really should be able to take this
ISP's Take Note (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Net Neutraility? (Score:5, Insightful)
using the government to force private businesses
use government to force individuals
How many times do we have to go over this? Look, I'll make it simple for you: businesses != individuals.
Re: (Score:2)
"Look, I'll make it simple for you: businesses != individuals."
I'm a sole proprietor, you insensitive clod!
Re:Net Neutraility? (Score:4, Interesting)
My business is just me (technically) plus a few contractors. At what point are we and our interests no longer individuals? When I hire my first full-time employee? My tenth? My twentieth?
As a disregarded entity (the technical term for 'I pay personal income tax on everything rather than corporate taxes') there is a lot of co-mingling between my personal funds and my business, mostly because I can wave my hand and decide to pay myself whenever I want, since I have to pay income tax on all of it anyway. Should I be restricted from spending some or all of that money on political contributions or PACs?
Obviously, the larger my business gets, the more likely its interests will start diverging (or at least running parallel as a separate entity) to my personal interests, but that's perfectly normal. I still have to earn money, and once I've earned that money, why should anyone other than me decide what causes I can support with it?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I think we have have to resort to something simpler here.
businesses individuals
Re: (Score:2)
And yet, they're engaged in interstate commerce, unlike most individuals. Puts them in a bit of a different situation.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Personally, I think that the government should be restricted, and that businesses should also be restricted, and that individuals should enjoy more freedom than any government agency or business.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Would you blame the car used in a hit and run or would you blame the driver? Your analogies are trying to blame the car and leave the driver blameless.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
When a 'business' murders someone, some individual(s) at the company murdered that someone. Those individual(s) are punished.
Huh? I don't know about murder, but corporations certainly commit what amounts to homicide all the time, and seldom if ever do their executards pay any sort of legal price.
Just look at all the bogus drug testing results big pharma used to have dangerous drugs approved for sale. Celebrex , Bextra, Vioxx - all approved for use on the back of fraudulent research. Assuming the crooks ru
Re: (Score:2)
So, you're in favor of powerful unions, then?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Also according to a judge's ruling a corporation has almost all the rights of an individual, oh AND they can't be sued for more than they are worth.
Name the judge. I'll then explain why you are wrong. The key is simply that corporate personhood is a legal fiction used to represent the individual rights of the people who own a corporation and the people who work for the corporation. No judge has changed that.
And as a practical manner one cannot sue a business or for that matter an individual for more than they are worth.
Re: (Score:2)
And that's what the world, right and wrong, and life itself are all about, right? Lawsuits. And the amount you can sue for.
It you can sue for one amount, all is right with the world. If you can't sue for that amount, it justifies all manner of hatred for people who work and invest to provide a service, and who want to be paid for their efforts if you benefit from them.
Re: (Score:2)
Governments are also collections of individuals.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah! How dare we force businesses to serve both white and black people! You can give it a fancy name, but it's like all other Progressive measures designed to use government to force individuals to do what you want.
Or maybe, when you run a business, it's okay for the rules to be different?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course for an ISP to only be able to service a single block and be unable to provide anything beyond that, it would be significantly less useful than the BBSes of old.
Re:Net Neutraility? (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't like it? GTFO.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Who are the good guys? (Score:4, Interesting)
It's the same with all cartels, be they drugs, media, or internet service: the true bad guy is the government for failing to properly regulate the market.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Um, liberals despise fox NEWS. There is no despising going on regarding Simpsons, House M.D. etc. - i.e. all the non-news content they send.