We are throttling the FCC to dialup modem speeds until they pay us for bandwidth
neocities.org
neocities.org
Just make them see how bad removing net neutrality would be.
If Netflix had a lot of popular original content, they would have a lot more leverage here. For an example of that, see how much HBO gets paid for letting the cable companies carry their stuff.
Anyway, sounds like they're off to a good start, but I imagine it's still not enough to give them decent leverage. Maybe a few more years of this and they'll be in a more HBO-like negotiating position, though.
Also, film companies themselves aren't inclined to go vertical; there was a time when studios owned chains of theaters but antitrust litigation brought that to a painful end (United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc., 334 US 131), so the industry sense is that self-distribution is too risky legally, and setting up their own independent competitor looks dangerously close to cartel behavior. Film economics are so brutal to begin with that litigation over anything other than well-defined copyright cases does not sit well with investors. Also, nobody wants to sink all the time can capital into building a CDN; being a technologist is a career-limiting move in Hollywood because the power revolves around the ability to bring stars, stories, investors and distributors together, so it's very much people-driven.
Of course film production involves a great deal of technology but if your specialty is in a technical role then you're considered a craftsman, not an artist. The thing is, the film product doesn't depend on technology for success; of course you'll want to use it for an action or superhero movie, but great movies can also be very simple, technically. Case in point: Joss Whedon directed The Avengers in 2011, but took two weeks off during post-production to shoot an (outstanding) adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing at his home. He used digital cameras to save time and cash, but it could just as easily have been shot on film and edited on a moviola.
It's kind of like saying: "I don't get eBay's business model. It's so thin. Distribute other peoples' products from other peoples' facilities using other peoples' trucks."
Exclusive licenses do indeed keep them ahead of competitors, but why would content owners give them an exclusive license? Netflix's leverage over content creators is their customer base, but that seems so thin to me when it's so easy to just sign up for another streaming site. My wife and I have a few subscriptions (Hulu, Netflix, Amazon Prime), and if say Paramount started their own service, it wouldn't be a big deal to add another one to the list. It seems like the studios have all of the leverage in that relationship, and a lot of incentive to cut out the middle-man.
The game Hollywood talent is starting to play is to flirt with companies like Netflix as sources of financing and distribution in order to play them off the studios. Talent benefits from more players on that side of things, which is why Netflix is able to get someone like Kevin Spacey (whose production company is quite forward-looking).
Netflix has a lot of cash to throw around, even by Hollywood standards. So far they're using it pretty intelligently, in a long, broad game.
They had an aborted earlier attempt with the DVD business to do something similar, Red Envelope. That was going to be their own distribution company. They were in here LA for a couple years, but from what I saw of them, the people running it were the wrong people. I think they've found the right people for their content business now. Seems to be working well, anyway.
They're also playing their strengths well, doing series instead of motion pictures for the most part. Series are binge-able, and that's something they have the networks and studios don't.
It's my perception that Netflix sort of triggered the start of binge watching as a phenomenon when they bought Lost for $40 million. There was a cohort who binged through that and talked about it, and then that got the idea out there. Then Breaking Bad was an interesting example when binging on Netflix and Amazon sort of retroactively moved the show from cult to huge.
They have lost exclusive distribution partners in the past, most notably Criterion (who went to Hulu) and Starz! Those hurt them, but they seem to be coming back from it.
In exchange for money?
> EBay's trick is that they connect (big number) buyers with (big number) sellers, and take advantage of network effects to stay ahead of the competition. In Netflix's line of business, the number of sellers is very small and well-known (a handful of large studios own almost all the valuable content).
> My wife and I have a few subscriptions (Hulu, Netflix, Amazon Prime), and if say Paramount started their own service, it wouldn't be a big deal to add another one to the list.
For Paramount to release their own service, they would have to pull their content from Hulu, Netflix and Amazon or no one would have any reason to use it. So they would have to spend big money on marketing only to regain the revenue lost by pulling their content from the existing distributors. Then they would have to build their own distribution infrastructure, code and maintain apps for different brands of smartphone and smart TV, etc. Why would they want to incur all that expense instead of just trading content for cash with the entities that have already done it?
I guess it works out for Netflix if users place a really high value in being able to get all their content from one place. At least watching my friends, who subscribe to a bunch of streaming services, I don't know if that assumption is a really great one.
Also, as as user, I've stayed far away from video content hosted by the big studios. They can't seem to keep their own executives from crippling access to their product - it almost seems like they need a Netflix to prevent themselves from overreaching to the point that it's a big customer negative.
Netflix isn't in all that weak a position if a given content holder withholds rights. For me anyway, Netflix already offers programming in excess of my time to consume it. As long as other quality content is available, then other content providers will end up getting that revenue.
Again, Netflix has a lower marginal cost for distribution than the content producer because their fixed costs can be amortized over more than one content producer and the marketing expense of convincing customers to sign up for the service is a historical cost for Netflix but a future expense for the content producer. Simply put, Netflix is more efficient at converting content into money than the individual content producer.
> Or I can license my content to an upstart Netflix competitor that charges (small dollar value) less.
The upstart Netflix competitor has the same problems as the internal studio distribution endeavor. They would have to duplicate all the costs Netflix has already paid. Meanwhile they would have to outbid Netflix for content from the studios. So the new Netflix competitor would have to spread their distribution costs over less content while paying the studio more money and yet charge lower prices. Who is going to enter the market under those conditions?
> Netflix is in a much weaker position. It can't easily replace my content if I pull it.
Why not? If you won't sell them distribution rights for X-Men then they can use the money they didn't pay you to buy distribution rights for Batman from the other guy, or produce more original content like House of Cards.
See also: HBO GO.
It's very different from EBay's situation, where sellers have no practical way of identifying and reaching customers themselves, and risk getting lower sales' prices if they go with a competing auction site because of the network effects EBay brings to the table.
It's true that I'm not locked-in strongly, but there is some stickiness there.
[0] http://blog.level3.com/global-connectivity/observations-inte...
To use your example of Netflix: they could work incrementally through a list of ISPs and make object lessons of them. What do I mean? Well, take Comcast, Netflix/Google/whomever subsidizes the ISPs competitors through value added offers. Eg. 100gb of Google Drive space for each comcast user that switches to <insert non-shitty ISP here>. Do that for a month or so, then move to the next ISP. The benefits from this far out-weight the negatives, the idea here isn't a mass switch from ISP A to ISP B, more the publicity such an action would generate - would make the ISPs position untenable.
I would LOVE to see this done across the board to obliterate ISPs control of their customers content. Filter my porn? Fuck you! Throttle my bit-torrent? Fuck you! etc etc
Ah wishful thinking, but you get the idea :)
I'd enable that setting and I imagine lots of others would. I imagine Cloudflare already have a lot of sites under their control.
What's more is that they are in a prime position to do this from a technology perspective too. The already have DDOS protection that does browser testing to make sure you aren't a bot. The could repurposed that by IP block.
They also have enough engineers who understand which companies own which IP blocks.
I'm envisioning a banner at the top of my Cloudflare account that simply says 'save the internet and participate in protecting net neutrality'. When I click on that I have three options:
- Yes. Opt in.
- No. Opt out.
- Custom.
Yes. Opt in: Cloudflare automatically throttle all blacklisted IP blocks. Users visiting from those IP blocks are presented with a page that explains why they are about to be throttled and tells them how to protest I.e. contact your congress representative, etc. The user is then throttled.
No. You don't participate.
Custom: you get to tweak the blacklist. You can whitelist ranges, in case you have important business customers that you don't want to piss off. You also get to select which of the different core blocked ranges you want to include. I.e. maybe there is a range for Comcast customers as well as Comcast offices and I find it cruel to penalise the Comcast customers, so I can unchecked them.
As an added bonus you can opt in to a 'I want to publicise my site'. If you opt in to the protest then your site gets listed as a participant. Cloudflare can feature the big companies on the user pre-throttling warning page I mentioned earlier. They can also randomly show a list of smaller sites that are participating as well. They could also keep a leaderboard of the numbers of throttled users per site.
I absolutely would - I run a few sites under Cloudflare.
Instead of slowing down the traffic coming from the FCC (which is likely to be small), I'd recommend throttling by geography. For example, Comcast is based in Philadelphia (they already own the tallest building in Philadelphia[0], and are building another even larger one[0]).
I imagine (e.g.) the denizens of Philadelphia would become a lot more vocal in their support for net neutrality with their elected officials if they started getting throttled.
You could say that it's unfair to pick on Philadelphians when they haven't done anything wrong themselves. I'd agree, but on the other hand, that's what makes this so effective - it shows people how unjust and unfair the concept of content-based throttling is.
It reminds me of Dan Savage's response to a poor woman who happened to share a last name with Rick Santorum, and wrote to him asking him to stop dragging her name through the mud[2], as she was only distantly related to him. His response was something along the lines of, "Instead of writing to me asking me to stop, write to him and ask him to stop being a bigot and tarnishing your name".
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comcast_Center_%28Philadelphia...
[1] Which says a lot about what they expect their business to be like in the near future....
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campaign_for_%22santorum%22_ne...
Perhaps he should also have suggested that she write to Google and ask them to stop supporting it. That would presumably have been similarly effective, and therefore a similarly constructive thing to suggest.
If this were the Bush White House, there would be endless press stories (and rightfully so) about cronyism and how Bush & Co. were in the pockets of big business. Meanwhile, the Obama DOJ is shortly going to allow a Comcast merger that will lock up the cable industry under a monopoly. The same Comcast that donates overwhelmingly to the Democratic Party, and whose CEO is an Obama golfing buddy.
Wheeler isn't the problem. The Obama White House is, they're directing all of this.
How is it so many people are missing what's obviously occurring here.
FCCNET2 (NET-192-133-125-0-1) 192.133.125.0 - 192.133.125.255
FCCNET (NET-192-104-54-0-1) 192.104.54.0 - 192.104.54.255
FCC2-126-30 (NET-4-21-126-0-1) 4.21.126.0 - 4.21.126.255
FCC (NET6-2620-610-1) 2620:0:610:: - 2620:0:610:FFFF:FFFF:FFFF:FFFF:FFFF
SPRINTLINK (NET-208-23-64-0-1) 208.23.64.0 - 208.23.64.127
TBD (NET6-2600-803-230-1) 2600:803:230:: - 2600:803:230:FFFF:FFFF:FFFF:FFFF:FFFF
Q0503-65-125-25-64 (NET-65-125-25-64-1) 65.125.25.64 - 65.125.25.127
A simple (probably flawed) example: "Oh hey, I found this pastebin with the FCC's IP block, don't know where it came from"
If we could find a 3rd party the FCC depends on for their IT infrastructure and then limit that pipe, it might have some effect.
Heck, sell off Whitehouse and congressional network "fast lane" bandwidth too.
EDIT: Grammar
If, some ISP, say, "Bombcast", decides to throttle some website, say "Slacker News" as part of an extortion plan, can't we have every other content-providing internet service - be it Wikipedia, reddit, AirBnB, Facebook, maybe even google, if they're on this side of the fight - throttle all of Bombcast's customers right back.
Suddenly half of Bombcast's customers find their favourite sites moving at unacceptable speeds, with a black border around the edges and an annoying black popup window telling them exactly why their website access is being throttled, and recommending they switch to some less heinous ISP instead. Naturally, hit the FCC, any part of the US legislature that voted against Net Neutrality and so forth into the bargain. Force customers to choose between the faceless drones who laid the cable to their door ten years ago and send them a bill every month, or the guys who provide all the shiny internet stuffs that they enjoy for more or less free.
Might some sort of content provider's union be quite powerful? Because of who they are, they have a head start at winning hearts and minds so they'd have leeway when it comes to taking action that might alienate their public.
ISPs have proven time and time again that they can't be bothered to care about their customers. So while I would like to see your idea come to fruition the only people who really lose are the customers. The ISP doesn't care, the FCC doesn't care, the rest of the government doesn't care, even the people don't care enough to do anything substantial.
Next day the email address to helpdesk, next email address to executives etc
[1] http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2014/05/dear-internet-lets-d...
The FCC chairman is not elected. Nor is he appointed by Congress. They can all genuinely claim that they had little or no control over his decisions.
So it does not matter if everyone pulls a stunt this time.
Besides, if the man isn't lying and he somehow subverts state laws that prohibit municipal networks, then that more than makes up for any other wrong he has committed. I can sure as hell influence my city council more easily than I can influence the federal government.
If I were in netflix's shoes I'd just charge each comcast customer enough extra to cover the surcharge and mark it clearly on their bill. Let comcast deal with the deluge of complaints to their call centers.
This goes way beyond just building in costs to your subscribers, what about new start ups with bandwidth heavy ideas? What if Google or Netflix get in a huge fight with Comcast when they can't reach an agreement? Do consumers just lose out on being able to view that content?
It's going to turn the web into a fractured mess like cable television, where everyone has to pay to play and the only winners being giant telecoms.
The way the 'unregulated web' works now will never return, and we will all lose out for it. The argument you are making is purely academic, it will have no reflection of the new bifurcated web that will exist. Where content is completely controlled by gatekeepers demanding tolls at every step of the way.
Nothing is more clear than the fact that Comcast cares nothing about customer service. American ISPs regularly appear at the bottom of customer satisfaction surveys. They just don't care.
Putting the charge on the customer's Netflix bill might be effective if it led the customer to conclude that switching ISPs in order to remove the charge would be cost effective. But when the customer has no viable alternative ISP, all it does is make Netflix more expensive. Since presumably Netflix is already charging the profit-maximizing price for its service, adding an additional charge would do nothing for Netflix but exceed the profit-maximizing price and cause it to lose money.
If you really just have one ISP in a substantially-sized city, go blame your municipal government because it's almost always their fault. I just have Comcast or 1.5 mbps DSL here in Wilmington, and it's 100% the government's fault. Verizon wanted to build FIOS here, but the city killed the deal with ridiculous demands: http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Dont-Actually-Demand-Anyt....
In order to have enough competition that the free market can behave as it does in capitalist philosophy you would need to have a dozen or more separate ISPs to choose from. But building that many competing networks is a waste of resources, and to recover their costs each ISP would then have to charge $500+/month because the cost of the network (which has significant costs that are per mile rather than per customer) would have to be amortized over far fewer customers.
The way you can get the desired level of competition without building duplicative infrastructure is local loop unbundling (with a prohibition on the entity providing the local loop competing for customers against the entities leasing it). But that isn't any less of a regulatory burden than network neutrality.
Here is (I believe) the current franchise agreement between Wilmington, DE and Comcast: http://www.wilmingtonde.gov/docs/1320/3716Rev1.pdf.
Note Section 1(F), that it's a non-exclusive franchise. Then note 2(A)-(C). 2(C) states that Comcast must offer service in any part of the city with at least 40 residences per linear mile of cable plant, without cost-sharing with residents. It also extracts almost $2 million in grants, on top of the franchise fee, which is 5% of gross.
Basic cable here in Wilmington is $13.50/month (which is usually regulated by state law). This is usually a regulated rate set by state law. Serving the least dense linear mile at basic rates therefore offers a potential maximum revenue of $540/month. Out of that comes recouping your capital costs, marketing, bill collection, etc.
Wilmington is a city of ~70k people, and about 2/3 of the land area is in census districts that have a poverty rate in excess of 30%, and a good part of the downtown core is in districts that have a poverty rate of around 50%. These are not people buying $150/month cable packages.
Now, say you're an enterprising new VC-funded fiber internet company. You think: you know, there's a few areas in the western part of the city and downtown that have the right combination of income level and density to support premium internet service profitably. If the city let you build in just those areas, it'd be a huge boon to competition against Comcast, because it hits them among the subset of customers that actually justify their business in the city. This is true even though only a relatively small number of customers may have an alternative to Comcast. You don't get perfect competition this way, but it weeds out a lot of the obviously bad behavior.
Instead, the city says: if you want to operate here at all, you have to operate in all the marginally profitable or outright unprofitable areas. So the returns aren't there, the VC's throw their money elsewhere, and Comcast gets to keep their de-facto monopoly.
In your scenario the newcomer could easily drive Comcast out by aggressively competing on price. Since they don't have to subsidize other parts of the city they could profitably charge lower prices than Comcast, and internet service is a fungible product with price sensitive customers, so Comcast would no longer be able to make enough in the affluent areas to carry on subsidizing the rest of the city. Comcast would be forced to walk away from the whole city and leave the newcomer as the new monopolist.
The alternative is that the newcomer doesn't compete aggressively. This is the status quo in areas where there is an incumbent cable company and an incumbent telco both offering similar service. They both know that they can each torpedo the margins of one another through aggressive competition, so neither makes any concessions to customers lest the other respond in kind and make the gesture a pure cost yielding no competitive advantage. Similarly, if one of them does something customer-hostile, the other takes it as an invitation to follow suit, because maintaining balance is more profitable than taking the other's customers thereby inviting them to take yours.
The whole problem is that last mile is a natural monopoly. Aggressive competition in that situation is ruinous -- it just drives all but one of the providers out of business because the point at which it ceases to be advantageous for a non-colluding provider to gain customers by undercutting the other's prices is well past the point where each provider can recover its roll out costs. One way or another you end up with either a monopoly or a cartel that behaves as a monopoly.
(Not legal advice.)
The only reason you would signup for DSL/fixed wireless/dialup would be if you were not wired for cable.
Yes DSL isn't as painful as dialup, it's 100x faster or whatever. But the 5mbit is the TOP speed (which we all know you never get) and the likely usable speed is anywhere from down in the dialup range up to perhaps a couple of megabit.
The problem is that, in most places, broadband is a monopoly or at best a duopoly. Currently, I have two choices: Verizon or Cox. Luckily, Verizon's FiOS is pretty good, so I'm happy, but it would be pretty easy to get screwed.
Where I used to live, there was one choice for broadband: Comcast. Verizon might have been an option, but they only offered DSL, offered a max of 1.5Mbps speed, and they couldn't even tell me for sure whether or not the service was even available for me or not.
There are a lot of people for whom it's Comcast or no broadband internet at all, and that gives Comcast way too much power. Instead of "duke it out" it becomes a completely one-sided fight where Comcast just holds the other guy down and dictates terms. The only thing restraining them at all is the fear of government action if they go too far.