Should Broadband Providers Offer Content?
from the going-the-wrong-direction dept
Apparently, the talk of a recent broadband conference was on how broadband providers needed to focus on charging for "premium" content to expand their business, which seems to miss the point (once again) of broadband services. The content that draws people is already out there, and bundling it with an internet connection only serves to add one more mouth to feed out of a small pie - and doesn't help anyone make much money. When broadband providers look at providing content, they immediately fall back into the "broadcast" mindset, where users are passive consumers of content that is pushed to them. That's not what people use the internet for. They use it for interactive services (such as email, web surfing, VoIP and file sharing), where they get to choose the content and what they do with it. At the conference, they even had people saying that SBC's latest deal with CinemaNow (to offer downloadable movies) was a huge step forward. This is the same CinemaNow that hasn't received much traction at all and has been reviewed (repeatedly) as being a terrible waste of money. The article quotes CinemaNow's competitor MovieLink as putting the blame for their failures on the broadband providers. They claim that the two movie services "offer up plenty of content," even though reviewers of the service have complained about their "pathetically thin selection." Ignoring that, however, the quote from MovieLink's CEO pins the blame on broadband providers for not making it easier for users to move movies from their PC to their television using wireless connectivity. Of course, both MovieLink and CinemaNow use heavy-handed copy protection that probably has a lot more to do with the difficulty than the broadband service providers and their support of WiFi. Instead of focusing on ways to turn broadband connections into another TV (we already have those), they should be focused on the services (not content) that people want.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
