Digital Media Bytes

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A periodic roundup of relevant news… that we may have missed due to database issues. 

7 thoughts on “Digital Media Bytes”

  1. The new HBO Go ads are pretty entertaining. They certainly indirectly capture the core appeal of HBO to me back when I was 14yo. (No original programming back then, but a heavy diet of R-rated movies…)

  3. Speaking of “A periodic roundup of relevant news”, if I recall properly, there was some odd news item in the last day about all US citizens now being required to offer up their first-born child to Comcast.

    The freakiest thing about the announcement was that I initially thought it was about solving the peering dispute, (which I prefer to refer to as the “first-mile” issue. Can all humans agree to accept that terminology?) But I was wrong! It actually has nothing to do with “first-mile”, and is only about establishing “last-mile” paid access. You contract for and pay your ISP for a certain “last-mile” bandwidth speed, but you can’t actually get what you contracted and paid for unless the server pays too. Zounds.

    From the WSJ, my favorite pullquote:

    One top cable executive said, “I have to say, I’m pleased.”

  4. And the real beauty part of this clusterf*ck is that it seems to get Comcast out from the promise it made to get the NBC/Universal purchase approved that it would conform to Net Neutrality until 2018 no matter what happened in the courts…

  5. And the suckers are Netflix. They just promised so much money to Comcast for a “first-mile” tax that they’ve got to raise rates by 25%, and now a couple of weeks later, they learn they’re got to pay a “last-mile” tax too…

  6. “And the suckers are Netflix.”

    Of course, the customers of Netflix and its ilk are being made suckers too.

    What would be really Comcastic! is if they’d now negotiate a “last-mile” contract with Netflix, take the money, and then find a way to slow down OTT bit delivery through a new “mid-mile interconnection” issue that would require another tollbooth.

    So my question: if my ISP, no matter what speed I pay for, requires the server I’m doing communication with to pay for “first-mile” and “last-mile” in order to provide me the actual speed I’m paying for, why shouldn’t my ISP service be regulated so I don’t have to pay more than $10/month for the measly bit traffic they’ll let through for “free”?

  7. I mean, it’s almost as if the FCC were currently being chaired by the President of the NCTA…

    —–

    From the NYT article, former FCC chair Michael J. Copps provides my favorite pullquote:

    Based on what the F.C.C. has revealed so far, he said, the commission appears to be going beyond what the appeals court laid out.

    “The courts did not tell Chairman Wheeler to take the road that he is reportedly taking,” Mr. Copps said.

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