Previous Politech message: http://www.politechbot.com/2005/04/20/congress-threatens-to/ -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: [Politech] Congress threatens to stifle TV-over-fiber plans [econ] Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2005 12:22:55 -0700 From: Mike Roberts <mmr@private> To: Declan McCullagh <declan@private> References: <42670CBB.60409@private> I think maybe we need to plagiarize JP Barlow's "Information Wants to be Free," into "Bits Want to be Free." There is considerable irritation among university Internet folks about the notion that broadband access providers get to block ports just because they want to for anti-competitive reasons. But most people are on the sidelines until Supreme Court decides Brand X, which among other things is a good example of the adage about hard cases making bad law. We'll just have to see. - Mike -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: [Politech] Congress threatens to stifle TV-over-fiber plans [econ] Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2005 01:05:13 -0700 (PDT) From: Thomas Leavitt <thomas@private> To: <declan@private> References: <42670CBB.60409@private> This discussion displays a remarkably out of date point of view... My wife and I just downloaded and watched a 40 minute, semi-professional video production, "Revealations" (a "Star Wars" "fan film"). Does this mean Cruzio (my local ISP) has to follow all these regulations because it provided me with the network connection that I used to download the video? Perhaps SBC, because Cruzio resells their service? The private server we downloaded it off of? No, we didn't use BitTorrent, although we could have - whose responsibility would it be in that case? The production company's?!? Fast forward ten years, when I have a library of over a million pieces of digital video available at my fingertips, and more every minute, and you'll see how absurd the discussion is... Trying to translate a regulatory framework designed for an analog/broadcast era to a Internet-era video distribution service is ludicrous. A decade from now, when video on demand over the Internet rules, and the whole concept of a "TV station" or "network" or television shows "broadcast" at a specific time is as antique and alien as rebroadcast "kinescope recordings", readers will laugh hysterically at this discussion. Prohibit SBC and Verizon from offering "digital tv"? "Must carry" rules for local broadcasters? Mandated "set top box" interoperability? "Public access channel" requirements? "Indecency rules"? They obviously don't get it: it's a stream of bits. Anyone can start spitting them out, from anywhere on the planet, to anywhere on the planet. The bits can be video, audio, text, photographs, interactive game data... none of the items in the previous paragraph are operative. The only reason Verizon and SBC are attempting to replicate cable and broadcast television is a lack of imagination on their part, and a perceived lack of imagination on the part of the viewers. If people are doing "podcasts" of audio on a relatively wide scale today (I'm going to call into one of these shows tomorrow at noon, my time), how long do you think it will take before they are doing podcasts of video on a similar scale? Broadcast television, indeed "television" as we know it, with the whole idea of a programming schedule, "channels", etc. no matter what medium it is transmitted over, will vanish into the Ethernet in short order, along with the entire regulatory framework designed around it. Any attempt to promulgate that regulatory framework onto programming "broadcast" over the Internet will only result in handicapping those few sources of video data that happen to fall under it, with the natural result being that the forces of free market competition will provide substitutes which aren't constrained by these limits. Regards, Thomas Leavitt _______________________________________________ Politech mailing list Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/)
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