Finally, A MLB Team Gets A Deal For In-Market Online Streaming

from the water-stone-etc. dept

Major League Baseball has long contended that fans should watch games in the manner in which it chooses, rather than how the fans themselves want to. This is the thinking behind its local blackout policies, first intended to "protect" ticket sales by not allowing the TV broadcast of games that weren't sold out, and lately, intended to "protect" local TV broadcasts by making it impossible for fans to watch their local team online. It takes the blackouts so seriously that it's even patented a way to black out local users from online streams, an absurd show of pride in something that basically just frustrates fans and customers. But there may be some cracks appearing in the local online blackouts, as the New York Yankees, Cablevision and MLB have reached a deal for in-market streaming of games. At first glance, the negotiations sound pretty convoluted, especially considering the Yankees own a stake in YES, the local TV rightsholder. But not surprisingly, the result -- that people in the Yankees' local market can only buy the online subscription if they're Cablevision subscribers that get the YES network in their cable package -- seems like it's par for the course for MLB, which has a penchant for trying to lock down everything baseball-related online.

The amount of baseball that's broadcast on TV has boomed over the past couple of decades, having escaped the thinking that making the game harder for fans to follow on TV was somehow actually good for it. Now, the same thing is playing out online, where MLB seems hellbent on frustrating fans who want to see all of their teams' games online. What makes online different than TV, in that putting up these walls in front of the game's most dedicated fans is somehow a good thing?

Filed Under: baseball, markets, streaming
Companies: cablevision, mlb.com, yankees

Obama Administration Sides With Technology Over Hollywood In Cablevision Case

from the finally! dept

It's no secret that those of us who have been in favor of pushing back against the worst abuses of intellectual property law have been disappointed by the Obama administration -- which brought in a number of entertainment industry lawyers and seemed to side with IP holders over the public at almost every turn... until now. We've talked about the importance of the lawsuit over Cablevision's remote DVR system, and whether it represented copyright infringement. The appeals court had ruled that just because the DVR was hosted at Cablevision's datacenter instead of in a house it wasn't infringement. This makes perfect sense. Yet the entertainment industry has been claiming that allowing Cablevision to host DVRs on its own premise is infringement and Cablevision has to pay extra for the right to offer the same exact TiVo-type service that anyone can use in their home. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court asked the new Solicitor General to weigh in. At the time, we noted that this could be a good thing, since one of the last things Solicitor General Elena Kagan did before leaving Harvard to join the administration was recruit Larry Lessig to Harvard.

And, indeed, it appears that Kagan has not succumbed to entertainment industry's tortured logic on this issue and has recommended that the Supreme Court not take the case, saying that the appeals court ruling reasonably resolved the issues in the case. Either way, it's nice to see that the administration hasn't been totally taken over by those who believe in twisting copyright law to protect obsolete business models.

Filed Under: cloud computing, copyright, elena kagan, obama administration, remote dvr
Companies: cablevision

Is Cablevision Caving On Remote DVR?

from the hopefully-not... dept

One of the more important copyright lawsuit decisions was last years appeals court ruling in the Cablevision remote DVR case, which we discussed at length at the time. Cablevision built a remote DVR system. It was almost exactly like a TiVo, except that the device sat in a Cablevision datacenter, rather than next to your television. Functionally, it was no different. It really was just the length of the wire and where the box sat. Now, using a DVR in your home to record TV is perfectly legal. But the TV networks hate that, even though DVRs may actually have helped the TV industry by making it easier for people to watch their favorite shows (no one ever said they were good at figuring out the big picture). So they sued Cablevision, claiming that because the box sat on Cablevision's property, it was no longer legal and now it was copyright infringement.

The networks love to set up absolutely ridiculous explanations like saying that Cablevision is like the person who sets up a gun to go off when a door opens, so it's not the person who opens the door who commits the murder, but the person who set it up. Except... that makes no sense. Murder is illegal. Recording a TV show for personal use is not. A more accurate analogy would be like setting up a pillow to fall on someone when you open the door. That's not illegal for either the person who opened the door, or the person who set it up... because the action (falling pillow/recording a show for personal use) is perfectly legal. But the networks want to ignore this, and tried to twist copyright law by saying that because Cablevision's remote DVR creates a buffer version for a fraction of a second, it's making a copy, and thus violating copyright law. Seriously.

While a district court bought the argument, the appeals court (thankfully) pointed out how ridiculous this interpretation of the law was, and said the device is legal. The networks are now appealing to the Supreme Court, and the court has asked the Obama administration for input. I know there's been massive lobbying from a lot of different parties trying to get the administration up to speed on the detailed issues, and hopefully the important points get across. While this may seem like a trivial issue, it could impact nearly every online service, that suddenly becomes liable for making a "buffer" copy on its own servers based on something you do on your computer. Lots of "cloud" computing services could suddenly face massive copyright liabilities.

Still... while we wait for the Supreme Court to go one way or the other with this, it appears that Cablevision has been negotiating a compromise on the device, which (as Broadband Reports notes) probably means making things a lot worse for consumers (funny how that works). Once again, we'd have a scenario where content companies are killing off innovation because they're unable to adapt themselves -- and that's a really sad outcome. However, it might also lead to an end of the lawsuit, which could leave the appeals court ruling standing (which would be a good thing, rather than risk a Supreme Court overturn).

Filed Under: cloud computing, copyright, dvr, remote dvr
Companies: cablevision

Long Island Continues To Be The Place To Be For Broadband

from the amazing dept

I left Long Island for Silicon Valley years ago, partly on the assumption that the cooler things were happening here. Yet, when it comes to broadband, that doesn't seem to be the case. I have had rather notorious problems getting broadband at home here over the years, despite living in the heart of Silicon Valley. Where I used to live (until a year and a half ago) I had one single broadband provider who provided absolutely terrible service. Where I am now, I do have two choices, but neither choice is compelling, and my speeds top out about about 1 Mbps. So... consider me a bit jealous of my parents back on Long Island who now have the opportunity to be among the first US homes to have 100 Mbps connections with no caps or meters.

A few years back, we noted how the battle between Cablevision and Verizon on Long Island had turned nasty, involving all sorts of underhanded tricks on both sides, but noted that the end result might actually be good for competitors, as it was one of the rare situations where the two competitors were actually investing in technology to top each other. So, while Verizon is offering FiOS connections, Cablevision is now rolling out those 100 Mbps using DOCSIS 3.0. The fight is still a bit nasty, with Verizon calling Cablevision's announcement nothing more than a parlor trick, but that's misleading itself. Cablevision has, no matter how you look at it, significantly increased the bandwidth available to home users.

Unfortunately, in most other areas (such as right here in the heart of Silicon Valley) it seems the focus is on seeing who can avoid being the "least worst" provider, rather than on pushing the boundaries forward. In a normal market, this would be a huge opportunity for a third provider to come into the market and offer much better service, but thanks to the structure of the broadband market, and quite a bit of regulatory capture, most folks are limited to just two choices. If only they'd start competing on quality like the two choices on Long Island...

Filed Under: broadband, competition, long island
Companies: cablevision, verizon

Time Warner Says People Want Metered Billing; Cablevision Says People Hate It

from the which-do-you-think-is-right? dept

As Time Warner Cable continues to roll out metered billing/capped broadband to more locations, the company's COO is apparently defending the practice by claiming that it's actually what customers want. That argument is easily demolished by Broadband Reports at the link... but it's great to contrast it with another story, also over at Broadband Reports, where Cablevision notes that metered billing confuses and annoys customers:

"We don’t want to give consumers more to think about. We think [broadband] is a pretty powerful drug and we want people to consume more of it."

While Cablevision has had its fair share of questionable practices over the years, one thing you have to admit, is that it's always been much better than a lot of other cable companies on these sorts of issues -- and often goes against what the other big cable companies do. Unlike Time Warner Cable, which caved to Hollywood about running a remote DVR service, Cablevision stood up for its rights and won (so far). The company also has gone against the grain in suggesting a la carte cable channels isn't such a bad idea. Plus, the company offered one of the first truly high speed broadband offerings, and then combined it with cheap or free additional services that helped build marketshare, rather than following the other cable companies in trying to offer every new service at a high price. And, now, it seems like it's taking the customer-centric approach to metered broadband as well (unlike Time Warner Cable, which just claims it is).

Filed Under: capped broadband, metered billing
Companies: cablevision, time warner cable

Newsday Decides To Charge For Online News...

from the good-luck-with-that dept

I grew up reading Newsday, a newspaper covering some of New York City and its suburbs. In fact, when I was 11 years old, that was my first job: delivering Newsday to neighborhood homes. When various newspapers first started to go online, I tried to visit Newsday pretty often, but it put up an annoying registration wall early on, and I found plenty of other, better sources of news. The quality of reporting in Newsday already paled in comparison to many other newspapers, so it just wasn't worth the hassle -- even once it removed the registration wall. I almost never visit the website any more -- though, occasionally I check the sports pages there. Last year, Cablevision bought Newsday, and today, along with announcing it was writing down a huge chunk of that purchase, said that it's going to start charging for access to Newsday online, making it that much less likely that anyone will care enough to visit Newsday's website. The major area news is much better covered by the other newspapers, and various "hyperlocal" websites are popping up all over the place to cover the local specifics. Deciding to charge for Newsday online is basically a death sentence for the paper.

By the way, if you want more evidence of how badly Newsday is at handling the relevant news: at the time I'm writing this, you can't find news of this pretty big change on Newsday's site at all. Instead, I'm relying on a Reuters report. That tells you pretty much all you need to know about Newsday's ability to keep its website relevant. Why pay for worse news when others give you a better product for free?

Filed Under: business models, newspaper, paywall
Companies: cablevision, newsday

Supreme Court Asks Administration For Its Thoughts On Cablevision Remote DVR And Copyright

from the but...-which-administration? dept

There was a tremendously important copyright ruling in August of last year, concerning whether or not it was copyright infringement for Cablevision to run a remote DVR for its subscribers. The whole lawsuit (and the resulting decision) shows just how screwed up copyright law has become, and how every new generation of technologies requires twisting and patching copyright laws to have them make any sense at all (this is a problem, not a feature). In this case, everyone agrees that a DVR in your own home to time shift programs is perfectly legal. Cablevision is offering the same thing, but instead of the DVR being in your home, it's hosted in a Cablevision central location somewhere. However, pretty much everything else is the same.

Not so, say the TV networks and film studios, who claim that since the devices are on Cablevision's premises, now it's suddenly a copyright violation -- even if the person at home is the one pushing the button. It defies common sense to think that the identical action (clicking a button on a remote to record or watch an earlier recorded program) with an identical result (you can watch the program at your leisure) should differ in terms of its legality based on whether or not the box holding the content is in your living room or in Cablevision's warehouse. Yet, that's exactly how the studios and networks have read copyright law -- and a lower court originally agreed. The appeals court overturned the ruling, but even reading the decision, you get the feeling that they were twisting and turning to figure out a way to have copyright law actually make sense in this scenario.

The key question, which could impact numerous other innovative content services, concerns whether or not the "fleeting" copy that's made by Cablevision in the process of delivering the content to the end user is, in fact, an unauthorized copy. The appeals court said no (correctly from a common sense standpoint), but it had to tap dance around what the law and previous cases said to reach that decision. Not surprisingly, the networks and studios have appealed to the Supreme Court, and what happens next could be quite important in determining what's legal for plenty of other online services in the future.

While the Supreme Court has not yet decided whether or not it will hear the case, it has requested input from the Solicitor General on whether or not the SG believes that Cablevision is infringing on copyrights. When I read the LA Times piece, I wasn't sure which administration they meant, but Wired makes it clear it's the incoming one, and notes the conflict since the movie studios are represented by the same firm that Tom Perrelli came from. Perrelli, of course, is an Obama nominee for the justice department (and a former lawyer for the entertainment industry). Of course, it's not clear he'd have anything to do with the brief, as it would be for the Solicitor General -- and Obama has picked Harvard Law dean Elena Kagan, who among other things has been involved with Harvard's Berkman Center, and was instrumental in recruiting Larry Lessig back to Harvard from Stanford just a few months ago. Either way, while the case seems to focus on a fairly mundane aspect of copyright law, the eventual result could be quite important.

Filed Under: copyright, dvr, remote dvr
Companies: cablevision

Cable Companies Figuring Out Their Wireless Strategies: Add Value To The Core Offering

from the seems-smart dept

While the cable companies have long had trouble coming up with a good wireless strategy (including numerous false starts) it looks like some may be figuring this out, in setting up business models where the wireless acts as a free value-add that keeps customers tied to their core, profitable businesses. For example, the article discusses Cablevision:

As such, Moffett likes Cablevision's WiFi strategy because it serves as a value-added service for its customers, and it's cheap to roll out. Moreover, Cablevision is pitted against Verizon in New York, and Verizon can't match the free WiFi offering.

"Their model is to pay for the WiFi network by, well, giving it away," Moffett said. "The $300 million of capital spending required to build it, and the modest operating costs to run it, can be paid for with just a small uplift in market share--either gained or retained--in their wired broadband service. At an ARPU of $35 per month and 80 percent contribution margins for wired broadband, it would take only 160,000 incremental subscribers--just 3.6 percent share of their cable footprint--to earn a 10 percent return on investment."

This is interesting for a few reasons. First, it shows yet another case where a company realizes that even if the initial costs are huge, if the marginal costs are low, and the "free" product better ties customers to a scarce product, it can make sense to give the other product away. So, yes, once again, there can be a good ROI on a "free" product -- even one that costs $300 million to roll out.

Of course, what may be even more noteworthy is the comment about how "Verizon can't match the free WiFi offering." That's quite amusing, because, five years ago, Verizon started implementing a plan to... offer free WiFi to Verizon DSL customers in NY. And, the plan wasn't even that expensive, because it made use of all the Verizon telephone booths that were already installed. In fact, the plan was seen as a pretty big success, responsible for reducing customer churn in such a way that more than paid for the service (exactly as the analyst is predicting will happen with Cablevision's offering). Yet, the bigwigs at Verizon still decided to kill the program, because, for reasons that still escape us, some execs were worried that it would compete with Verizon Wireless' EV-DO cellular wireless offering. Wonder if they regret that decision now?

Filed Under: cable, wireless
Companies: cablevision, verizon

Copyright Alliance Begs Supreme Court To Make Remote DVRs Illegal

from the we-prefer-our-screwed-up-copyright-laws dept

You may recall that the Copyright Alliance is a group that is basically the personal vehicle of Patrick Ross, a copyright maximalist, who has been known to twist copyright law to ridiculous extremes on a regular basis. He's the guy who has claimed that fair use harms innovation, that government-backed monopolies in copyright represent a free market and any attempt to actually free up the market and remove government backed monopolies would be unnecessary regulation that would result in market failure. Ross also sent all of the presidential candidates one of the most ridiculous surveys ever on their views on copyright, that was written in an extremely leading "and when did you stop beating your wife" style.

With such extreme and twisted views, it's no surprise that Ross has lined up a bunch of big entertainment companies to back him as he goes around trying to convince politicians that day is night and up is down when it comes to copyright -- but now he's moved on to trying to convince the Supreme Court as well. As you may recall, back in August there was an extremely important Appeals Court ruling that noted that Cablevision's remote DVR setup did not infringe on copyrights. The ruling pointed out the rather obvious troubles that would occur if we interpreted copyright laws the way copyright holders wanted to. It's clear that DVRs, like TiVo, are perfectly legal in the home. Time shifting shows has been found, quite clearly, to be legal. Cablevision's remote DVR is effectively the same exact thing. The only difference is that the DVR is stored at Cablevision data center, rather than at someone's home. The ruling, quite clearly, demonstrated how twisted copyright law has become, as it is patched up each time some new technology comes along.

The importance of this ruling cannot be understated, however, as it will enable many important online services that will be tremendously useful. Needless to say, copyright maximalists in the entertainment industry don't like that. They prefer the way things used to be, and want the law to force the market never to change. So, before the Supreme Court has even decided whether or not to hear the appeal on the case, Ross's Copyright Alliance has already begged the Supreme Court to overturn the ruling -- the first time the Alliance has become involved in any lawsuit. The amicus brief itself, basically uses Ross's typical logic: copyright is good, therefore, making companies pay multiple times for different types of licenses to use content in more ways must be even better!

Hopefully, the court recognizes the logical fallacies in the filing. Preventing this service will not help anyone. The entertainment industry that Ross claims to represent thinks that this will get companies like Cablevision to pay them yet again for content it already licensed. But, the reality is that they'll just move on. People will instead keep buying TiVos or home DVRs, and the potential for truly new and unique services that make the entertainment company's content even more valuable will be greatly diminished. Ross and the content companies falsely believe that the old model is the best, and that content should be paid for again and again, every time it's accessed. Basic economics tells you that this is wrong, and that protectionist policies -- such as what Ross champions -- only shrinks markets and hurts just about everyone.

Filed Under: copyright, copyright alliance, patrick ross, remote dvrs, supreme court
Companies: cablevision

Cablevision Remote DVR Doesn't Infringe; Decision Shows How New Tech Twists Copyright

from the copyright-law-is-a-mess dept

As TiVo and other DVRs became increasingly popular, various cable companies realized it probably made sense to offer similar features themselves. While some started selling home DVRs, a few realized that perhaps they could short-circuit around this by offering a remote, centrally-managed DVR instead. Time Warner was one of the first to announce such a project -- but almost immediately, the other half of Time Warner (the content guys) freaked out, and Time Warner's eventual offering was neutered of any really useful feature.

Basically, the various broadcasters are still freaked out about the idea of time shifting and commercial skipping -- even though both are perfectly legal. However, that won't stop them from doing whatever possible to stop such innovations from coming to market. So, two years ago, when Cablevision also decided to create its own remote DVR solution, various TV networks sued to stop it. Even though the actual offering was almost entirely identical to a perfectly legal TiVo, a district court ruled that Cablevision's remote DVR system infringed copyrights. This, by the way, highlighted how the entertainment industry lied when it insisted it would never use copyright law to stop a new consumer electronics offering from coming to market.

The good news, today, however, is that an appeals court has reversed the decision and sent it back to the lower court -- effectively pointing out that if using a DVR at home is legal, it's difficult to see how using a DVR that is based at your cable provider is any less legal. However, if you read the full ruling, you'll get a sense of just how ridiculous copyright law has become today, and how it is not at all equipped to handle modern technology: As you read through that decision, you'll certainly see the points that Rasmus Fleischer highlighted earlier this year, when he pointed out how silly it was to distinguish between where something is stored, and whether it's accessed locally or remotely. However, copyright law is simply not set up at all to handle this simple fact, and tries to make silly distinctions between where copies are made, how stuff is transmitted and what counts as a performance and what doesn't. That leads to all sorts of twisted logic, which resulted in the initial ruling -- and the order overturning it and sending it back to the lower court (while the right decision) is equally twisted in spots. Basically, if there's anything to get out of this ruling, it's that copyright law is simply not equipped to handle the internet.

Filed Under: copyright, copyright law, dvr, new technologies, remote dvr
Companies: cablevision