Hot off the heels of a deal that brought 500 Paramount films to their movie rental service, YouTube has announced another major studio partnership with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. This ink brings over 600 MGM titles to YouTube/Google Play including some of the best action flicks of all time – Terminator, Robocop, and Rocky. They have not made clear all the titles included though, stating instead to “keep checking back” and see for yourself.
The reluctance to state additional titles leads me to doubt the existence of any recent films like Hot Tub Time Machine or *cough* The Pink Panther 2. With online film viewership expected to double in the next year (overtaking physical media), major studios are going to have their hands full trying to squeeze every penny out of their IP and, yes, you the consumer. Unless Google (or anyone else) can convince them that they will make more green on their platform, there will be no incentive for the big boys to cough up their high-profile content. After all, most of them are trying to pimp their own direct-to-consumer offerings like Epix, a joint-venture between Viacom (Paramount), MGM, and Lionsgate.
No matter how the digital dust settles, it’s great to see Google /YouTube/Google Play — whatever they want us to call them — picking up a heap of new content. We were beginning to get worried after a few flopped platform launches…
Viacom vs. You Tube is one of the more important litigations in the 1st decade of digital music as it seeks to provide an interpretation of Sec 512 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The question is essentially this: Is You Tube considered an “Internet Service Provider” as that term is defined in the DMCA, thus giving it access to the safe harbor provision of Sec 512 and shielding it from liability for copyright infringement? Judge Stanton in the Southern District of New York ruled in favor of You Tube, and the matter is now on appeal to the 2nd Circuit.
In the fall of 2010, an outstanding podcast was made available by the Intellectual Property Colloquium which framed the issues and arguments using exact text from the parties’ respective summary judgment motions. It’s an interesting and recommended listen. Get it here: Viacom vs. You Tube.
If you use the internet you should care about Net Neutrality – period.
To understand net neutrality, it is best to look (as usual) into the past, where the principle has already been broken on numerous occasions.
Look familiar? This is what shopping for an ISP could look like.
Really AOL? An “unintentional glitch”? Anyway, In case those breaches in network neutrality don’t explain the principle, here’s a definition:
“Net Neutrality is a principle that advocates no restrictions by Internet service providers and governments on content, sites, platforms, the kinds of equipment that may be attached, and the modes of communication.”
Net neutrality, believe it or not, is a principle that long precedes the internet and goes back to the good ol’ days of the telegraph. If we look at the Pacific Telegraph Act of 1860 we find that the United States Government clearly advocated a net neutral telegraph when data was being transmitted over government subsidized lines. The Act states that:
“messages received from any individual, company, or corporation, or from any telegraph lines connecting with this line at either of its termini, shall be impartially transmitted in the order of their reception, excepting that the dispatches of the government shall have priority …”
If you take a moment to replace the word telegraph with internet in the previous excerpt it is very easy to see how applicable it still remains to this day. If our government was all about net neutrality back in 1860, what happened?
Consumers make buying decisions partially based on the information currently available to them, the people controlling that information have tremendous amounts of power.
When you, the consumer, decide to buy a car, you hopefully spend plenty of time weighing your options and exploring different vehicles. You look through countless newspapers, craigslist ads, or you may even end up using a service like carsoup.com. At the end of the day, you feel confident that the car you purchased was a sure win based on all that time and effort you put into compiling that information. If we allow ISPs to pick and choose which information is available to us there will be less information. Maybe Joe-Blow owner of your ISP has stock in cars.com, an obvious competitor to your first two choices for car information. If net neutrality is not upheld, why wouldn’t Joe-Blow cut service or at the very least, slow carsoup down just a bit for his users? In turn, I am sure he would see increased traffic and thus, profit from his site.
Joe-Blow exists and believe me, he IS making every effort to make this a reality in the United States.
Look No Further Than Television
The folks who stand to profit from data discrimination or “elective filtering of information by a service provider” will lead you to believe that something similar will never happen. I respectfully say to them: look at television. Cable providers are by definition – data discriminators, they choose which networks you see, and which ones you don’t. If you believe for a second that all of their decisions are based on solely consumer demand then you are sadly mistaken.
Since the uprisings in the middle-east this last year, Al Jazeera English has reported a 2000% increase in traffic on their english based site, which contains a live stream of their programming. Of that massive 2000% increase, 60% are said to be viewers from the United States. Al Jazeera English is available to 130 million homes in over 100 countries and in every major European market, but, amazingly, has not been picked up by ANY major provider in the United States. Luckily, the folks who want to watch Al Jazeera here in the states can find it from the website, but what if Al Jazeera could not afford to put that stream up? I would be willing to bet that nobody in the United States would be watching it, that’s for sure.
Data discrimination has been practiced by the traditional broadcast industry for years, do we want them to control the internet as well? After all I would be shocked to learn that your ISP is anyone other than your cable television provider. Allowing our ISPs to perform data discrimination in any way at all, is a step in the wrong direction. We need to make our stand here or fear loosing every true source of information that exists in our country.
For more information, check out freepress.net “a national, nonpartisan, nonprofit organization working to reform the media”
