Saturday, September 04, 2010

Horrors, The New York Times got it wrong


“Which brings up one of the true oddities about the fervor over net neutrality. Cable television distributors make decisions all the time about what people can see and how much they have to pay for it. If special sports-only tiers aren’t an example of placing some content over other content, I don’t know what is. Yet because it is merely television, and not the sacred Internet, nobody seems to view this practice as a crime against humanity. But I digress.”

Digression is in order.  All that is wrong about cable may soon happen to the internet. 

How many of you watch the myriad of channels you get from your cable, DSL or satellite provider?  No hands I see.  Who would love a la carte TV channels.  Ah, I see all the hands up.

Let the internet pipe providers control the content and you will have what you have with TV.  That pretty much says it all for me.

Oh, and remember, Comcast is in the process of eating, is it NBC?  That’s going to be just a wonderful mechanism for neutrality and competition. Biggest cable controls one the biggest content providers.  What would you think about Apple controlling online music.  Damn, sorry that already has happened.  Sorry.  Then there’s Google going after some music and TV and Apple going after TV and Ping, as I understand it, a social network.

Boys and girls, it is time for some regulation; and, unfortunately the feds haven’t got a clue as to what the problem is or what to do about it.  It almost makes you long for the days of Big Blue or Bill Gates’ blue screen of death, but not quite.

2 comments:

Big Mark 243 said...

Love the IBM reference. I miss Ma Bell as well. Good entry. You should do a editorial for one of the Sunday news magazines.

Dave said...

I may try to start with the local weekly business advertiser.