Rob Pegoraro has a column up about the latest in the very long line of back and forth attempts of companies making browsers for television sets to get around silly blocks from Hulu. Despite the fact that these systems are really just browsers legitimately connecting to a webpage, Hulu's corporate parents freaked out and ordered them blocked for no good reason. Of course, the workaround is easy: just spoof the type of browser, so that Hulu doesn't know that it's a browser on a TV. However, Hulu keeps trying to block these, which leads Pegoraro to ask a good question at the end:
But when does Hulu get tired of playing this silly game? How do Hulu's own developers feel about working to ensure that their site stays broken for the "wrong" users? Do they not have one of the most degrading coding jobs in America? And to what end--so short-sighted suits can find new ways to annoy their customers?
While it may seem like a random question, it could actually be a big deal. When Hulu first came out, one of the points that people made was that it really was put together by folks who understood the power of the internet. That is, they were "internet people" rather than "Hollywood people," which is what allowed the service to work well for many (definitely better than most expected). But, with the corporate bosses continually trying to limit what the site can do, you'd have to imagine that the developers working at the company must be getting annoyed. What kind of developer wants to focus on limiting what users can do with technology, rather than allowing something great? At some point, Hulu is destined to lose its best developers who just get sick of spending all their time breaking their product, rather than building something cool, useful and innovative.
The TV industry has been totally downplaying the idea that people would ever "cut the cord" when it comes to TV. While it may be true that it's a very small minority of users today, it would seem that those in the TV industry might want to look over to their friends in the telco industry. They used to scoff at the idea of cord cutters as well... and now 25% of all households have dumped their landlines entirely. And, among younger folks, it's getting increasingly difficult to find a landline at all. Things change. What was unthinkable not so long ago can become reality pretty quickly.
For a couple years now, the MPAA has been asking the FCC to break your TV/DVR, and let them effectively put a type of DRM (by enabling "Selectable Output Control" or SOC) on video content, such that you will not be able to access the content via third party devices, such as your DVR or your Slingbox. Effectively, they want to break the ability of your equipment to work. You wouldn't be able to legally record the movie that was playing on your TV. The MPAA's argument here makes absolutely no sense at all -- and when they're called on it, the doubletalk comes out.
The MPAA's argument is that if it could block people from recording movies, they could release the movies on things like PPV before they release them on DVD, adding yet another window to the long list of windows that Hollywood uses. It's still not clear how more windows helps anyone but Hollywood, but they keep claiming this is some sort of consumer benefit. The thing is, their argument makes absolutely no sense at all when you look at the details. First of all, there was nothing whatsoever stopping them from releasing movies on PPV prior to the DVD release. Nothing. You don't need DRM to do it. In fact, some major studios already do this without breaking your TV in the process.
Of course, the MPAA's response is that it would never release movies this way without SOC, because then people would copy them and... um... piracy... oh mygod... Hollywood is dying. Or something like that. But that makes no sense. First, as noted, some studios already release movies this way. They don't need SOC. Second, the whole claim that this will lead to more unauthorized file sharing is a total red herring -- because all of the movies they're talking about were already in theaters -- and once a movie is in the theaters, it's already available widely on file sharing networks. There is no increase possible, because the content would already be widely available. On top of that, of course, as the GAO just noted, the MPAA's ridiculous claims of losses from "piracy" are totally bogus.
Given all that, it seemed ridiculous to think that the FCC would give in... but late last year the reports were that the FCC had already decided to give in to Hollywood, and today the FCC made it official (pdf):
The FCC's reasoning is bizarrely troubling and blatantly wrong. First, it claims that the studios "are unlikely to offer the service absent the ability to activate SOC." But... as noted, some studios already do offer such a service. On top of that, why is it the FCC's job to give the MPAA yet another window? Windows are anti-consumer, not pro-consumer. But, the FCC claims it's good for the consumers, and the MPAA's victory announcement makes the same ridiculous claim:
"This action is an important victory for consumers who will now have far greater access to see recent high definition movies in their homes..."
That logic is backwards. Basically, Hollywood is saying that it held the public hostage until the FCC let it break your TVs, and because the FCC caved in and Hollywood will release the movies it easily could have released before, consumers win. When someone is taken hostage and the family pays up, that's not a "win" for the family. As Public Knowledge points out, this appears to be the FCC doing this just as a favor to Hollywood.
Of course, in typical Genachowski FCC fashion, this ruling tries to walk that line between each side, in that it didn't grant the MPAA's full waiver, but tries to limit it, by saying it can only be used on films before the DVDs are released or for 90 days on a particular film (whichever comes first). The FCC will also "revisit" the issue in two years -- even under threats from the MPAA that if the FCC could revisit this issue, that uncertainty would lead the studios to scamper away, run and hide and not offer this service out of fear that the FCC would take away their right to break your TV. The FCC thought that was silly. It's not clear why the FCC didn't believe the MPAA's threat not to invest if the ruling could be reviewed, but do believe the threat not to release movies on TV earlier without this ruling... but that's the way this particular FCC seems to function.
In the meantime, now that the FCC has opened this door, expect more efforts to expand it much wider. Already -- before it had even been approved -- there was talk among politicians that it should be expanded to cover sporting events as well -- because, you know, we can't have people DVR'ing a sporting event any more.
The really ridiculous thing about all of this is that it's taking away functionality from the vast majority of law-abiding TV viewers who bought their TVs and DVRs expecting -- reasonably and accurately -- that they'd be able to record whatever is on TV, because of an amorphous and unproven "threat" of "piracy" which is based on bogus numbers and totally irrelevant given that the movies in question will already be widely available on file sharing networks.
TV broadcasters have long struggled with how to deal with DVRs and how they allow users to skip over commercials. Perhaps the favored approach has been to come up with technological responses to try and prevent people from fast-forwarding; fewer companies have figured out that advertising is content, and needs to be treated as such. Viewers need to be given a reason to watch ads, whether it's simply entertainment or because the content offers some other value. Another idea that's being tested:
not stopping the show during ad breaks. On one show on CNN, when the ads start, the studio cameras keep rolling, showing "behind-the-scenes" footage in a small box in the corner. The belief is that if there's still some bit of "program content" going, it will be enough to keep people from flipping channels or skipping ahead, even if it is just paper shuffling and makeup being touched up. It's an interesting proposition, but once viewers realize they're not missing anything of value, won't they switch away or fast-forward? And if the program content actually is valuable, won't people just not pay attention to the ads? The problem here seems to be that this is just an effort to recreate a captive audience. But without offering anything of value to the viewer -- whether it's the ads themselves or this "program content" -- they're not going to stick around and suck up the ads.
Nearly every single year of the past half-decade or so has been touted as "the year of Mobile TV", the year in which the long-heralded service would finally break through and get widespread adoption. It didn't happen in 2008, it didn't happen in 2009, and while the upcoming World Cup is supposed to be a tipping point, we're not holding our breath. What mobile TV backers don't seem to realize is that regardless of whatever new technology they come up with, people just really aren't very interested in mobile TV -- particularly when it's built on a linear, channel-based programming model that's largely fallen out of favor for standard TV viewing. But that doesn't stop the announcements, the latest being that a number of broadcasters are banding together to develop a new national mobile TV service using spectrum they control.
Some observers see this as little more than an attempt by broadcasters to head off the FCC, which wants to seize unused broadcast spectrum and refarm it for use by mobile broadband services -- just like the FCC did with analog broadcast spectrum. So the broadcasters want to launch a service "to provide content to mobile devices, including live and on-demand video, local and national news from print and electronic sources, as well as sports and entertainment programming" -- wait, doesn't that sound like the mobile web? But they want to use a variation of the ATSC digital broadcast technology to set up their own closed system, and also go out of their way to say that the network can be used to deliver public-safety information during emergencies. But they still don't explain just how they think they'll build any interest in these services. Maybe getting that government handout based on spurious public-safety claims is their only hope.
Hulu, at the behest of its corporate masters, continues to shoot itself in the foot and make it an increasingly less useful platform. Last year, Hulu got a lot of attention for blocking Boxee, a specialized browser to show internet video on a computer-connected television. Hulu was apologetic about it, but admitted that it was pressured to do this by its owners (though, NBC boss Jeff Zucker appears to have lied to Congress about NBC's role in this). However, it didn't stop there. Hulu, it seems, is hellbent on trying to block any browser it doesn't like from showing its content. It's blocked the PS3's browser and mobile browsers as well.
The latest is that it wasted almost no time before blocking the new Kylo browser from Hillcrest labs that, like Boxee, was designed to better format the content for television.
This is typical short-sighted thinking from the likes of NBC bosses who are bizarrely afraid that people might watch authorized television shows on their television. Of course, the real fear is that if people start doing this, the cable and satellite companies might start losing business, meaning that they'll pay a lot less to NBC to carry their shows. This is such typical thinking from NBC execs, who seem to go out of their way to pretend that they can hold people back from doing what they want, because it doesn't agree with NBC's increasingly obsolete business model. So instead of letting people watch authorized content, with very high paying advertising, they're instead driving people to get the content through unauthorized means. It's bizarre that anyone could think this is a smart idea -- but, then again, we're talking about NBC management here. They think that downloading movies is hurting the American corn farmer... so logic has never really been a strong suit.
New York-based Cablevision has been one of the more innovative cable providers out there over the years. It's been mostly ahead of the competition in broadband speeds, and pioneered some interesting bundled offerings well before many other providers. It also fought and won its case to offer a remote DVR where other providers caved. That's not to say Cablevision doesn't have its own issues (and it certainly appears to have no clue how to run a newspaper). But, on the whole, when it comes to the actual technology side, you have to give Cablevision credit for really trying out new things and giving customers increased value.
One of its latest offerings is a pretty smart idea -- letting subscribers move internet content to their TVs remotely. Now, lots of tech savvy folks have set up systems to do this themselves, but this actually sounds like it makes it quite easy for users to do without having to setup any hardware or run any wires or anything, as it's all done over the internet. You send whatever you want to a Cablevision service, and then you can just turn on your TV to a specific channel, and you'll have access to the content. If it works, it sounds pretty cool.
But... are there problems looming? Apparently, you'll be able to send internet video as one of the types of content, and Broadband Reports found out that this includes content from sites like Hulu. Now, you may remember that Hulu has been pressured by its content partners/owners to keep its content (most of which originated on TV) off of TVs. There's simply no good reason for this, but it looks like Cablevision is now enabling that functionality as well -- even as Hulu has worked to block TV access from a variety of different devices and services. Seeing as NBC appears to be the major voice behind many of Hulu's blocks, and NBC is in the process of being acquired by Comcast (assuming regulatory approval), that could make for an interesting battle between Comcast and Cablevision down the road...
Leading up to the New Year, I was inundated with submissions about the supposed "battle" between Time Warner Cable and Fox over fees. The quick background is that Fox wanted to get a cut ($1/subscriber) from Time Warner Cable and TWC claimed it wanted to fight it. Neither side was being particularly honest about what was going on, with TWC launching a hilarious website asking consumers to "vote" on whether it should "roll over" or "get tough" and if you voted for it to roll over, it told you that you were wrong, and asked you if you wanted to change your vote. I didn't write about the whole thing because it was an exact replica of what happened a year ago in a similar dispute -- and, just like in that dispute, the parties settled up just in time to keep Fox from being deleted from TWC's lineup. Of course, at the same moment, TWC also raised its rates. Of course, this was exactly what everyone expected all along, and TWC knew exactly what it was doing. Now it can blame the rate increase on News Corp., even though it had planned to do that all along. Other similar disputes will likely be settled in short order as well.
Of course, I find it amusing that the at the same time that content providers are arguing for service providers to pay them to carry their content on TV, those same service providers are suggesting that content providers should pay in the other direction on the internet. All the "net neutrality" battles are about the very same TV providers using their broadband divisions to claim that content providers should pay the broadband providers more to "carry" their services to users. It's just two sides of the same coin.
Still, the more interesting battle may be shaping up elsewhere. Some consumer groups are asking the Justice Department to investigate cable companies for their "TV Everywhere" effort, which they claim is almost certainly an antitrust violation of collusion to keep certain content from going on the internet. Not surprisingly, the cable industry and their lobbyists have hit back hard, claiming that the whole thing is ridiculous.
To be honest, I think it's a bit early to worry about collusion here. From everything we've seen so far, the cable industry is doing a pretty good job screwing up TV Everywhere on their own, so it's not like it's a huge problem yet. They're trying to turn the internet into cable TV with extra ads. Like the recording industry's many attempts to create their own online efforts, it looks like they're hamstrung by their own legacy view of the world. That isn't to say that there may not be an issue eventually, but it does seem a bit early to be ringing the alarm bells.
There's no doubt at all that the cable companies view "TV Everywhere" as an attempt to keep people from ditching their cable TV accounts and going internet-only. But if those efforts are stymied by terrible execution and implementation it won't do much good. People are already learning how they can watch TV over the internet (without a cable or satellite subscription) and if the cable companies really succeed in blocking TV content from going online in other ways, people will simply route around those blocks and get the content in an unauthorized manner. We've seen this game before, and it doesn't end well for the companies pretending to be gatekeepers. But that doesn't mean the Justice Department should be wasting money investigating them just yet.
Either way, both of these stories suggest a prime battleground for the next year: as the old TV businesses come to grips with the internet (finally). Just like other parts of the entertainment industry, it will be messy and annoying -- and incumbent players are going to make a lot of really stupid mistakes. But, in the end, we should start to get some pretty cool stuff out of it -- though, most likely not directly from the incumbent players, but from the upstarts and innovators on the margins.
For quite some time we've been covering how the MPAA has been pushing to get the FCC to allow them to use "Selectable Output Control" (SOC) to stop you from being able to record certain movies. In theory, the Hollywood studios claim that this will let them put movies out on video-on-demand offerings earlier than they do now. In actuality, there's nothing stopping them from putting these VoD offerings out now (and some do already). The studios' claim that this is needed to stop "piracy" of these movies also makes little sense, since even the studios admit that all of their movies are quickly available through unauthorized means around the time they're released in the theaters (i.e., well before they would be available on TV).
The real issue, of course, is that Hollywood wants more control over your TV and what you can do with it. But when people suggest this, the MPAA and the studios scoff and say that's ridiculous. They just want this one tiny exemption and nothing else. Except, that's not true at all. Remember that recent Congressional hearing about live streaming and sporting events? Well, the folks at Public Knowledge noticed that one of the speakers there was already noting how the FCC exemption on SOC could be useful in stopping "piracy" of sports broadcasting -- which of course is totally outside the realm of what the MPAA is asking for. But, of course, once the FCC allows someone to break your DVR or other consumer electronics device, it's not hard to see everyone else asking for their own "exception" as well... How about rather than breaking the devices that everyone purchased for a reason, the content providers stop freaking out about technology, and start learning how to use it to their advantage?
I'm wondering if there's more to this, because it seems rather "un-Google-like." The makers of a set top box that can display internet content are complaining that Google is blocking them from displaying YouTube content, unless they agree to "partner" and commit to buying lots of ads (the amount is in dispute). If this sounds quite a bit like the ongoing battle between Hulu and Boxee, you might be right. However, in that case, at least you could sort of understand the (misguided) thinking behind it, since Hulu is owned by the colossally short-sighted content companies. But what's Google's excuse? If all these set top boxes are really doing is accessing free internet content and formatting it better for a TV, why stop it? They're really no different than accessing content via a computer and a browser -- it's just that the "computer" is a set top box and the "browser" is formatted for a television. That shouldn't require a special agreement, or any sort of ad buy commitment. Update: Received a confused and angry email from YouTube PR linking us to the very Wired article we linked to and demanding we add their PR statement (which is already in the Wired article). However, it does not actually answer the questions raised or change the point of this post. The fact that YouTube restricts set tops from accessing the content still does not make sense.
