Do We Need To Lose The Open Podcast Ecosystem To Make Podcasting Better?

from the i-sure-hope-not... dept

Podcasting has been a rare recent example of a new offering built on open protocols and standards (mainly RSS and MP3), that wasn't entirely co-opted by one giant corporate entity (even if some have tried). However, there have been some worrying signs of where the podcasting market is moving. For a few years now, we've been warning that the world would lose a lot if podcasts move from open standards and protocols to more proprietary solutions -- and yet Spotify, for one, has been moving heavily in that direction over the past few years.

And, as Chris Messina pointed out recently, it appears that both Spotify and Apple are looking to move past RSS in how they push podcasts -- though he's unsure if it means that podcasts are dying -- or about to go through a renaissance.

It starts with Anchor.fm, the "easy" podcast creation service that Spotify bought a few years ago. The company's co-founder, Michael Mignanon, wrote a blog post recently in which he talks up how important RSS and openness are... before talking about the limitations of RSS for podcasting, and explaining why it's time to go beyond that:

Since RSS only enables a flat audio file to be distributed to consumption platforms, creators gain limited and often inaccurate insight into how the audio is consumed, such as where it is being consumed, how much of the audio is being heard or enjoyed (or not), and whether or not the audio is even being heard at all (and not just automatically “downloaded”). This has broad, widespread implications on the creative process, not only on the ability for creators to improve their work, but also on how creators might be able to monetize their work.

The diversity of opportunities for monetization is also limited. The standard of RSS and the lack of insights about performance make it difficult for creators to find realistic paths to securing advertisers for their podcasts. Given that potential advertisers have difficulty understanding whether a podcast is successful (because of the limited insights referenced above) or suitable for their sponsorship (in terms of reach, brand safety, and alignment of values), this means creators suffer through a lack of potential advertising, despite strong demand by advertisers for the medium. Additionally, given the nature of the RSS standard’s focus on distribution, it’s difficult for creators to monetize using methods beyond advertising, such as through secure podcast subscriptions or direct, fan-supported models that are easy to deploy and use.

These "limits" to podcasts distributed via RSS are... fair criticisms. But they also seem like things that could be fixed by continuing to support modifications to RSS itself, rather than moving over to a proprietary solution. However, Mignano's bigger complaint about RSS is basically... that it's too open, and the limit in being able to lock people out of podcasts (i.e., to create limited paywalled podcasts that only flow through specific services) is a problem:

But maybe the biggest limitation of RSS is actually a product of the openness that has enabled the medium to grow in the first place. While creators increase the opportunity for their podcasts to be consumed on a variety of platforms by publishing a podcast to an open RSS feed, in doing so, creators also give up control over which platforms might distribute their content. This includes platforms whose incentives, goals, business models, and ethics may be at odds with the creators’. Additionally, creators sacrifice any choice or input over how the content is displayed, consumed, organized, and monetized (including whether or not the creator gets to participate in the monetization of the content at all).

Put another way, publishing via RSS does not enable much choice for the creator. Instead, it’s a simple on/off switch to indicate whether or not a podcast can be ingested by any platform, including those which creators might not choose if they had such an ability.

That's putting a shiny coat of paint on the importance of openness in podcasting, and pretending that it's "bad" for creators that anyone can get a podcast through any app or service. But that's like saying it's "bad" for website creators that any browser can view their webpages, and it's a shame that we can't cut a deal with, say, Google so that web pages are only viewable in Chrome. That's... against openness. And, yes, it may create more kinds of business models in the form of new data silos and lockups, but it's very much a backsliding position against openness, and in favor of fragmentation, paywalls, and limits.

Mignano says that Anchor/Spotify will continue to support RSS and giving creators the choice to use it, but also pushing beyond RSS:

In the coming months and years, we’ll be working to further enable choice for creators, including giving them the power to choose not only how someone wants to create or monetize audio, but also where specific content is able to be consumed, ensuring creators have an opportunity to decide if they are aligned with the platforms distributing their content.

To me, this is not surprising, but a sad statement on closing off the openness of podcasting and the internet, and looking to lock it up in proprietary silos. Again, there should be ways to look to expand and extend RSS to do more of the things that Mignano talks about, including experiments with monetization and better analytics. Going straight proprietary maybe both the easier path, and the obvious one for a giant company... but that doesn't mean it's good for the internet or podcasting in general.

Of course, that's only one story related to this. The other one is Apple moving in a similar direction, adding the ability for podcasts to put up paywalls via Apple's podcast system (in which Apple will keep a whopping 30% of any subscription revenue). Whether by accident or not, Apple did help popularize podcasts -- and did keep it mostly open, even when there had been other opportunities to lock up the ecosystem. It had been a good thing that Apple did not go down that path in the past. However, now it looks like it's exploring that very thing.

I understand the business and economic logic of these companies doing this, but I worry about what it really means for the future of podcasting and the wonders and benefits of an open internet.

Filed Under: closed, monetization, open, podcasts, rss, silos
Companies: apple, spotify

We Shouldn't Call Michelle Obama's (And Joe Rogan's) Proprietary Exclusive Audio From Spotify A 'Podcast' Any More

from the spotify-exclusive-audio dept

In early 2019, after Spotify announced the purchase of podcast studio Gimlet Media, we worried that it signaled an end to the open world of podcasting. Part of what made podcasting so special is that, like the early parts of the internet, it was wide open. Anyone could make their own podcast, and just host it somewhere with an RSS feed and then anyone could listen to it via any podcast app or service they wanted. But Spotify is a mostly closed platform.

Our fears solidified a lot two months ago when Joe Rogan moved to Spotify (under a rumored $200 million deal), such that his insanely popular podcast will only be heard via Spotify going forward. As we said then, the world loses a lot when podcasts go into private silos (even if the podcasts are available for free). We start moving away from an open system that anyone can use, and which democratizes the creation and distribution of content, to much more of a traditional gatekeeper-run broadcast model. And that's unfortunate, even if it's understandable.

And now we have Michelle Obama announcing "The Michelle Obama Podcast," which is exclusive to Spotify. Frankly, we should not call it a podcast any more when it's not actually available for anyone to listen to on their own podcast apps. This is Spotify exclusive audio. That's not a podcast.

I understand why we got here and why everyone involved did this. For Spotify, it will boost usage (as will the Rogan deal) of their app and once people start using it to listen to those exclusive podcasts, a lot of people will probably shift over and do all their podcast listening via Spotify as well. And I'm sure that, as with Rogan, Spotify is paying a lot to Michelle Obama to do this. And, of course, I'm sure the production value will be great.

But, still, it's worth noting that this move to silo'd, locked up content is disappointing and a shame, as it's yet another nail in the coffin for the promise of the truly open internet.

Open systems allow for more participation, more inclusiveness. Closed systems, by their very nature, create gatekeepers and exclusivity. That may be good in the short term for certain business interests, but it's bad in the long term for the public and speech interests. Spotify may very well be successful with this strategy, but the least we can do is stop confusing the closed, exclusive, gatekeepered system with the open, inclusive ecosystem.

Filed Under: closed, joe rogan, michelle obama, open, podcasts
Companies: spotify

We Lose A Lot When Podcasts Go Closed Instead Of Open

from the bad-digital-citizenship dept

Just last week, Ben Thompson's excellent Stratechery site had a great post describing the important differences between open and free, specifically with regards to podcasts. The occasion was his decision to launch a paid-for, but still "open" podcast. And he explains how there are important differences (in particular) between "open and for-pay" vs. "closed and free." Open and for-pay means that it's not locked down, and can work on a variety of different setups and open platforms. The payment is part of the business model, but the openness gives the end-users more control and freedom. In the software world, you might talk about this as "free as in speech" rather than "free as in beer." The "free, but closed" model is one where you can get the products for free -- but they're locked in a proprietary system. Facebook is an example of free, but closed, for example.

Thompson was talking in particular about his own podcast (open, but paid) as compared to Spotify's podcast strategy (free, but closed). Last year, when Spotify purchased a bunch of podcast companies, we worried that it foretold the end of the open world of podcasting. You can get a Spotify account for free, but unlike most podcast apps, you can't get any podcast you want via Spotify. Spotify has to agree to host it, and as a podcast you have to "apply" (indeed, Techdirt's own podcast was initially rejected by Spotify, though has since been let in). That's a "closed, but free" setup. Most podcasts are both open and free -- published as open MP3 files, using an open RSS feed that any regular podcast app can grab.

Spotify, so far, hadn't done much to close off the podcasts that it had purchased, but perhaps that's changing. Earlier this week it was announced that one of (if not) the most popular podcasts in the world, Joe Rogan's, would now be moving exclusively to Spotify. News reports have said that Spotify paid over $100 million to get Rogan's podcast on board, while some have put the number closer to $200 million.

While it's totally understandable why Rogan would take that deal (who wouldn't?), it does remain a sad day for the concept of an open internet. When we lock up content into silos, we all lose out. The entire concept of podcasts came from the open nature of the internet -- combining MP3s and RSS to make it all work seamlessly and enabling anyone to just start broadcasting. The entire ecosystem came out of that, and putting it into silos and locking it up so that only one platform can control it is unfortunate. I'm sure it will get many people to move to Spotify's podcasting platform, though, and that means those that do offer open podcasting apps (most others) will suffer, because most people aren't going to want to use two different podcast apps.

Even if the initial economics make sense, it still should be seen as a sad day for the open internet that enabled podcasting to exist in the first place.

Filed Under: ben thompson, closed, joe rogan, open, podcasts
Companies: spotify

Germany's CDU, Angela Merkel's Party Of Fuddy-Duddies, Decides To Join The Cool Kids: Backs Open Standards, Open Source, Open Data, Open APIs -- Open Everything

from the it's-groovy,-man dept

The Christian Democratic Union (CDU) of Germany is Angela Merkel's party. She led it for 18 years before resigning last year as leader, but remaining as Chancellor of Germany until 2021. It is a party that has often held the reins of power in Germany, but has seen a steady decline in membership over the last 30 years. From a peak of nearly 800,000 in 1990, it is now down to around half that. According to figures on Wikipedia, in 2012, the members' average age was 59 years, and 6% of the Christian Democrats were under 30 years old. In other words, it is German's party of old fuddy-duddies. Against that historical background, the following passage from its "Digital Charter", agreed during its recent party conference, is noteworthy (original in German pdf):

The open and jointly developed standards of the Internet and open interfaces are the principles from which we advance the digitisation of Germany. It is only through openness that competition can be created; only through openness can new players in competition challenge the top dogs. This is why the following will apply to all (public) digitisation projects in Germany in the future: the awarding of contracts and funding will be subject to compliance with the principles of open source and open standards. Software financed by public funds should serve all citizens. In addition, free and open APIs should facilitate access for independent developments.

That's an impressive hit-rate for the "opens": openness, open interfaces, open source, open standards. Also thrown in for good measure is the idea that publicly-funded code should be available to everyone -- presumably as open source. Elsewhere in the document, the Digital Charter speaks approvingly of open data and open educational resources (OER), and promises to create an "open public repository" of re-usable digital components. On the downside, the document also includes the usual platitudes about blockchains, AI, 5G and "smart cities", as well as rolling out tired buzzwords such as "agility", "sandboxing" and "decentralization".

Nonetheless, the emphasis on openness in all its forms is striking and thoroughgoing. The Digital Charter may not commit the party to doing anything concrete very soon. But it's a clear and welcome sign that openness has entered the mainstream to such an extent that even the fuddy-duddies get it.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter, Diaspora, or Mastodon.

Filed Under: angela merkel, cdu, germany, open, open interfaces, open source, open standards

What3words Is A Clever Way Of Communicating Position Very Simply, But Do We Really Want To Create A Monopoly For Location Look-ups?

from the word-in-your-ear dept

The BBC News site has one of those heart-warming stories that crop up periodically, about how clever new technology averted a potentially dangerous situation. In this case, it describes how a group of people lost in a forest in England were located by rescue services. The happy ending was thanks to the use of the What3words (W3W) app they managed to download following a suggestion from the police when they phoned for help. W3W's creators have divided the world up into 57 trillion virtual squares, each measuring 3m by 3m (10ft by 10ft), and then assigned each of those squares a unique "address" formed by three randomly-assigned words, such as "mile.crazy.shade". The idea is that it's easier to communicate three words generated by the What3words app from your position, than to read out your exact GPS longitude and latitude as a string of numbers. It's certainly a clever approach, but there are number of problems, many of which were discussed in a fascinating post by Terence Eden from earlier this year. The most serious one is that the system is not open:

The algorithm used to generate the words is proprietary. You are not allowed to see it. You cannot find out your location without asking W3W for permission.

If you want permission, you have to agree to some pretty long terms and conditions. And understand their privacy policy. Oh, and an API agreement. And then make sure you don't infringe their patents.

You cannot store locations. You have to let them analyse the locations you look up. Want to use more than 10,000 addresses? Contact them for prices!

It is the antithesis of open.

Another issue is the fact that the physical locations of addresses are changing in some parts of the world:

Perhaps you think this is an edge case? It isn't. Australia is drifting so fast that GPS can't keep up.

How does W3W deal with this? Their grid is static, so any tectonic activity means your W3W changes.

Each language has its own list of words, and there's no simple way to convert between them for a given location. Moreover, there is no continuity in the naming between adjacent squares, so you can't work out what nearby W3W addresses are. Fortunately, there are some open alternatives to W3W, many of them listed on a page put together by the well-known OpenStreetMap (OSM) group. OSM also points out the main danger if W3W is widely used -- Mongolia has already adopted it as an official addressing system for the country:

What3words is fairly simple from a software point of view, and is really more about attempting establish a standard for location look-ups. It will only succeed through the network effect of persuading many people to adopt and share locations. If it does succeed, then it also succeeds in "locking in" users into the system which they have exclusive monopoly over.

Given that problem, it seems questionable that, according to the BBC story, the UK police are urging "everyone to download a smartphone app they say has already saved several lives". Since when has it been the police's job to do the marketing for companies? Moreover, in many emergencies W3W may not be needed. Eden mentions a situation described given by a W3W press release:

Person dials the emergency services
Person doesn't know their location
Emergency services sends the person a link
Person clicks on link, opens web page
Web page geolocates user and displays their W3W location
Person reads out their W3W phrase to the emergency services

Here's the thing... If the person's phone has a data connection -- the web page can just send the geolocation directly back to the emergency services! No need to get a human to read it out, then another human to listen and type it in to a different system.

There is literally no need for W3W in this scenario. If you have a data connection, you can send your precise location without an intermediary.

That seems to have been the case for the people who were lost in the forest: since they were able to download the W3W app, as suggested by the police, a Web page could have sent their geolocation to the emergency services directly. Maybe that boring technical detail is something the BBC should have mentioned in its story, along with all the heart-warming stuff.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter, Diaspora, or Mastodon.

Filed Under: closed, database, location data, open, police
Companies: what3words

EU Moves Forward With Agreement To Fundamentally Change The Internet From Open To Closed

from the closing-down-the-internet dept

Despite the fact that even the staunchest supporters of Article 13 were asking for it to be dropped from the final version of the EU Copyright Directive, that didn't happen. In the final trilogue negotiations between the EU Council, the EU Commission and the EU Parliament, it appears that the agreed upon "compromise" is basically as bad as we feared. It will fundamentally change the entire nature of the internet. And not in a good way. As we recently discussed, the only way this makes sense is if the goal is to have the law be so bad that big internet companies feel forced to pay their way out of it.

And it appears that's what we've got. MEP Julia Reda's summary of the final deal highlights many of the problems with both Articles 11 and 13. Here's the mess with Article 13:

Commercial sites and apps where users can post material must make “best efforts” to preemptively buy licences for anything that users may possibly upload – that is: all copyrighted content in the world. An impossible feat.

In addition, all but very few sites (those both tiny and very new) will need to do everything in their power to prevent anything from ever going online that may be an unauthorised copy of a work that a rightsholder has pointed out to the platform. They will have no choice but to deploy upload filters, which are by their nature both expensive and error-prone.

Should a court ever find their licensing or filtering efforts not fierce enough, sites are directly liable for infringements as if they had committed them themselves. This massive threat will lead platforms to over-comply with these rules to stay on the safe side, further worsening the impact on our freedom of speech.

And with Article 11:

The final version of this extra copyright for news sites closely resembles the version that already failed in Germany – only this time not limited to search engines and news aggregators, meaning it will do damage to a lot more websites.

• Reproducing more than “single words or very short extracts” of news stories will require a licence. That will likely cover many of the snippets commonly shown alongside links today in order to give you an idea of what they lead to. We will have to wait and see how courts interpret what “very short” means in practice – until then, hyperlinking (with snippets) will be mired in legal uncertainty.
• No exceptions are made even for services run by individuals, small companies or non-profits, which probably includes any monetised blogs or websites.

If this becomes law, I'm not sure Techdirt can continue publishing in the EU. At the very least, it will require us to spend a large sum of money on lawyers to determine what our liability risk is -- to the point that it might just not be worth it at all. Article 13 makes a commenting system untenable, as we simply cannot setup a filter that will block people from uploading copyright-covered content. Article 11 potentially makes our posts untenable, since we frequently quote other news sites in order to comment on them (as we do above).

This is, of course, the desire of those supporting both bills. It is not just to close the (made up, mythical) "value gap." It is to fundamentally change the internet away from an open system of communications -- one that anyone can use to bypass traditional gatekeepers, to a closed "broadcast" system, in which key legacy gatekeepers control access to the public, via a complicated set of licenses that strip all of the benefits and profits from the system.

Not only will this do great harm to the general public's ability to communicate freely over the internet, it will do massive harm to artists and creators -- especially more independent ones, who will be effectively blocked from using these platforms to connect directly with their fans. Rather they will be required to go through "licensed" intermediaries, who will demand a huge cut of any money. In other words, it's a return to the pre-internet days, where if you wanted to become a professional creator, your only options were to sign away all your rights to giant conglomerate record labels/studios/publishers.

It is incredible -- and incredibly disappointing -- that the EU is moving towards bringing back such a world, but that is what the latest agreement means.

There is still a chance to stop this from becoming law, though it will take a lot of effort. As Reda explains:

We can still stop this law

The Parliament and Council negotiators who agreed on the final text now return to their institutions seeking approval of the result. If it passes both votes unchanged, it becomes EU law, which member states are forced to implement into national law.

In both bodies, there is resistance.

The Parliament’s process starts with the approval by the Legal Affairs Committee – which is likely to be given on Monday, February 18.

Next, at a date to be announced, the EU member state governments will vote in the Council. The law can be stopped here either by 13 member state governments or by any number of governments who together represent 35% of the EU population (calculator). Last time, 8 countries representing 27% of the population were opposed. Either a large country like Germany or several small ones would need to change their minds: This is the less likely way to stop it.

Our best bet: The final vote in the plenary of the European Parliament, when all 751 MEPs, directly elected to represent the people, have a vote. This will take place either between March 25 and 28, on April 4 or between April 15 and 18. We’ve already demonstrated last July that a majority against a bad copyright proposal is achievable.

The plenary can vote to kill the bill – or to make changes, like removing Articles 11 and 13. In the latter case, it’s up to the Council to decide whether to accept these changes (the Directive then becomes law without these articles) or to shelve the project until after the EU elections in May, which will reshuffle all the cards.

If you're an EU citizen, this next bit is important. Now is the time to start speaking up:

This is where you come in

The final Parliament vote will happen mere weeks before the EU elections. Most MEPs – and certainly all parties – are going to be seeking reelection. Articles 11 and 13 will be defeated if enough voters make these issues relevant to the campaigns. (Here’s how to vote in the EU elections – change the language to one of your country’s official ones for specific information)

It is up to you to make clear to your representatives: Their vote on whether to break the internet with Articles 11 and 13 will make or break your vote in the EU elections. Be insistent – but please always stay polite.

• Look up your representatives’ voting behavior at SaveYourInternet.eu
• Call or visit your MEPs’ offices (in Brussels, Strasbourg or their local constituency)
• Visit campaign and party events and bring up the topic
• Sign the record-breaking petition and spread the word, if you haven’t yet

Together, we can still stop this law.

Filed Under: article 11, article 13, closed, copyright, eu, eu copyright directive, intermediary liability, open

The Getty Museum's Lessons Learned From Opening Up Content

from the stuff-to-think-about dept

Three years ago, we wrote about the Getty Museum's wise decision to fully support open content (it's important to note that this is the Getty Museum, and not the unrelated stock photo company, Getty Images, a known copyright troll). We were excited to see the museum embracing open access, and taking a principled moral stand on the issue:

Why open content? Why now? The Getty was founded on the conviction that understanding art makes the world a better place, and sharing our digital resources is the natural extension of that belief. This move is also an educational imperative. Artists, students, teachers, writers, and countless others rely on artwork images to learn, tell stories, exchange ideas, and feed their own creativity. In its discussion of open content, the most recent Horizon Report, Museum Edition stated that "it is now the mark -- and social responsibility -- of world-class institutions to develop and share free cultural and educational resources."

This is why we were similarly excited about the NY Public Library embracing the public domain, while disappointed in institutions like the UK's National Portrait Gallery try to lock up content behind questionable copyright claims. Making art and culture more widely available is an important moral imperative.

So it's interesting to see an update from The Getty about how its efforts to embrace openness are going. So far, so good, but they've discovered that actually implementing openness runs into some challenges that are interesting to discuss. But, first the good news:

since 2013 the Getty has released over 100,000 more images through the Open Content Program, and we are increasingly using open licenses for Getty-developed content including selected digital publications, Research Institute archival finding aids, Getty Museum online collection data, Getty Conservation Institute teaching and learning resources, and even the very blog you are reading right now. Throughout, our priority in developing openly licensed resources has been to make the Getty’s work as widely available and usable as possible, while retaining the right to attribution.

The article includes two specific case studies which highlight how tricky this can be and the case of freeing up access to Pietro Mellini's Inventory in Verse, from 1681 is an interesting example. At first glance, it seems like it should be easy. It's from 1681. The work is in the public domain. They also note that the original is in their collection so they don't need anyone else's permission in terms of digitizing it (and they agree that the digitization is in the public domain as well). The essays and translations that go with it were all done by Getty or Getty contractors so it holds whatever copyright there might be. And yet... there were still issues, in that some of the related images were from third party sources, and that created some concerns:

The only sticking points were the handful of images from third-party sources, for which permission had been sought and granted before the decision was made to make Mellini open access. In other words, the original permissions requests were simply for a digital publication, without any mention of CC-BY licensing, and thus contractual considerations prevented us from openly licensing the material.

So even in trying to provide wider access to a public domain work, there were issues around related information that had been licensed under different terms.

As the Getty notes, this is why it's kind of important for more museums (and others) to embrace a kind of "open first" principle -- so that they're taking care of these issues from the start, rather than having to back into them later.

it’s much easier to build an openly licensed project from the ground up than it is to make a project open after the fact. When open access is a project goal from the outset, it helps guide decision-making, especially with respect to contracts with collaborators and consultants, and the sourcing of images and code.

There's some other good stuff in there as well, including the fun of trying to open source software that involves modules from different sources with different kinds of open source licenses, but it's good to see this kind of knowledge sharing even on how to be better about knowledge (and culture) sharing...

Filed Under: copyright, creative commons, licensing, museums, open, public domain, sharing
Companies: getty museum

How The EU Might Keep Internet Access Open To The Public

from the net-neutrality-redux dept

Earlier this summer, the Body of European Regulators of Electronic Communications (BEREC) took in around a half million public comments on its draft guidelines for member states on implementing end user protections for fixed and mobile Internet connections.  The largest telecoms in Europe are lobbying hard for weakened interpretations of the so-called “net neutrality” Regulation passed late last year, which also covers data roaming and the EU Digital Single Market.

A few weeks ago, the largest telecom ISPs issued a 5G Manifesto in which they threatened not to invest in 5G wireless networks unless BEREC waters down its guidelines for enforcement of open Internet access.

Fortunately for American consumers, startup entrepreneurs and small businesses, the FCC was not swayed by similar ISP threats about how common carrier law would kill network investment here. And so even with U.S. open Internet law now firmly in place after a recent court decision, Verizon has announced significant continued investment in 5G networks and field testing in multiple locations.

But carriers in Europe, that don’t face competition from cable broadband providers like American phone company ISPs do, enjoy even stronger market dominance that allows them to intimidate regulators attempting to defend end user rights. The current generation of online startups needs to be able to count on the same open Internet connectivity that the most popular global platforms enjoyed in their infancy a decade or two ago. Only now it’s a battle against corporate lobbyists to get it.

In recognition of this opposition, over one hundred founders of European tech companies and startups along with their international investors and trade groups signed an open letter to underscore the critical importance of BEREC’s upcoming action to innovation and job-creating growth in the digital economy. They made it clear that if telecom ISPs are able to manipulate and subsidize data plan costs for users of established big name platforms, they will put up new barriers to online market entry. Earlier up front capital will be required in a “pay to play” environment, and those entrepreneurs who can’t pay up will find it much harder to be discovered online, scale up and compete for business. No such price of admission ever held back American tech startups, although many of their investors had grown very uneasy prior to the FCC’s decisive action in early 2015.

While BEREC has displayed a comprehensive understanding of real new threats to open Internet access, several loopholes in the draft guidelines must be closed if Europeans expect effective safeguards to protect their Internet access service from commercial interference. Specifically ISPs should not be allowed to use the “specialized services” exception to circumvent the ban on charging online content and application providers for priority transmission on the public Internet.

Secondly, given provisions in the Regulation prohibiting discriminatory commercial practices, BEREC should ban zero rating schemes that favor certain online platforms by exempting them from data caps. Zero rating is as harmful to startups and other competing platforms as technical network discrimination. Zero rating of an ISP’s own content is particularly anticompetitive. Finally network traffic management should be application-agnostic whenever possible. ISPs should not favor some classes of traffic and delay others, such as encrypted content, except under unusual circumstances.

Open Internet access law supports a digital innovation economy in which all online content is equally accessible regardless of the identity of one’s ISP or its business deals with online platforms. In the US, all zero rating is not banned, but the FCC is actively investigating sponsored data and zero rating plans for compliance with its open Internet order. In response to the EU Regulation, the Netherlands already has banned zero rating.

All ISPs have a natural economic incentive to partner with or acquire popular content providers in order to maximize monetization of their network facilities. As a practical matter, only the big ones like Comcast (NBC, Netflix) and Verizon (Aol, Yahoo!) can pull it off, but they can really change the game for others.

Sweden uniquely is less concerned about commercial interference with Internet access because the Swedish government itself built and owns the enviable universal fiber optic Internet access network there. Use of that infrastructure is licensed to dozens of competing IT providers, and Stockholm is beginning to resemble a Scandinavian Silicon Valley.

Elsewhere in Europe though, ISPs are in business to provide sufficient capacity to transmit the data traffic of all their customers without “fast lanes” for some and interruptions and buffering for everybody else.  Startups in Amsterdam, Berlin, Barcelona, Bratislava, Cyprus, Dublin, Lisbon, Ljubljana, Paris, Riga and Vienna are among their customers. So far the Dutch are in the lead in terms of proactively implementing the Regulation’s open Internet access provisions, which took effect this past spring.

While BEREC properly focuses on shielding consumers from the downsides of ISP commercial discrimination, it should also tailor its guidelines for the sake of Europe’s tech startups looking to attract investment funding and access global markets online. Other policymakers around the world will be watching whatever the EU decides at the end of August about enforcement of Internet access rights.

Cathy Sloan is a telecom and Internet industry lawyer and consultant

Filed Under: broadband, eu, europe, internet, net neutrality, open, open internet, telcos

Factually Challenged Op-ed Insists Google Greed Is Behind FCC's Desire For More Set Top Box Competition

from the Google-ate-my-homework dept

We've noted how the FCC recently voted to bring some much-needed competition to the cable set top box market. Thanks to limited competition consumers still pay $231 annually for what's often garbage hardware -- hardware used to lock consumers inside the increasingly out-dated cable walled garden. As a fact sheet circulated by the agency (pdf) makes clear, the effort will simply involve cable companies delivering their content to third-party hardware using any generally accepted technology and the copy protection of their choice.

But we've also been noting how the cable industry is waging an all out public relations war against the idea. For the moment that war is being brought to bear most notably in the editorial sections of websites and newspapers all over the country, where a rotating crop of individuals -- most hiding their connection to cable industry cash -- have professed that the FCC's plan is everything from an attack on minorities to an invitation to piracy Armageddon. But the most common refrain continues to be that this is all just some kind of villainous plot by Google to freeload off the cable industry.

Why Google? Cable and phone company executives utterly loathe the search giant. Not only because of Google's history supporting net neutrality (though that's wavered in years since) and a general envy of the company's ad revenues (you ain't gonna ride my pipes for free!), but because Google Fiber is now disrupting the broadband space. As such, fighting a pro-consumer, pro-competitive initiative while somehow maligning Google is a perfect day over in cable land, even if the logic supporting these attacks makes absolutely no god-damned sense.

Take this new editorial over at the New York Times as just one such example. It breathlessly proclaims the FCC's plan will somehow "hand our TVs over to Google" and allow Google to "continue its questionable conduct" on other fronts in the TV sector:

"The F.C.C.’s proposal would give Google free access to the raw TV programming data it needs to power its search engine for TV. In effect, Google could use the data to become the modern version of the program guide, connecting users to the TV shows and movies that Google’s search algorithms determine are relevant.

It’s a simple concept: Turn on the TV, search for what you want to watch, scan the results, and then click on a link to start watching your favorite show or sporting event. But Google is missing a key ingredient for its search-centric TV. It lacks access to providers’ proprietary programming information — what shows are available when. Google cannot show a full list of TV programs in its search results without first entering into licensing agreements with cable companies to obtain that data."

That's nonsense. The goal of the FCC's plan is to open up the cable set top box for everybody -- not just Google. And does anybody seriously believe that the one key thing that has frustrated Google engineers is that it can't ascertain what time programs air? No, what frustrates Google -- and every other company with a foot in the streaming box ecosystem -- is the cable industry's vice-like stranglehold over pay TV hardware.

Again, it wouldn't just be Google that received programming data -- it would be every and any company that wants to jump into the suddenly competitive set top box space. And it's not like the cable industry still isn't going to be paid an arm and a leg by consumers to watch TV -- that programming is just going to be delivered by better, faster, cheaper hardware -- with DRM and most everything else still intact. Cable's opposition is, and always has been, about protecting the $21 billion in captive set top rental revenue the cable industry enjoys annually. All other justifications for the industry's opposition are entirely decorative.

And while the reform effort would help any company wanting to build a set top box, Google's missteps are specifically highlighted in painstaking detail over and over again by author Jonathan Kanter, who has spent a large portion of his career not-so-coincidentally helping Microsoft dodge antitrust inquiries at Cadwalader Wickersham & Taft, a law firm also frequently employed by the telecom sector. As such, some of Google's missteps appear to have been somewhat hallucinated by Kanter. Like this claim that Google's MO is to introduce a free product, then "close off competition" through discrimination and exclusion:

"Google is said to have followed the same playbook for years: introducing a free product into a competitive space, subsidizing that product with advertising revenue, and then closing off competition through discriminatory and exclusionary practices."

Uh, citation needed? When has Google ever actually done that last bit? If there's an industry that engages in "discriminatory and exclusionary practices" it's the cable industry the FCC's rules are targeting. You'll note though at no point does Kanter really explain why the FCC's taking action in the first place. Why did the chicken cross the road? Uh, Google! Kanter then trots out a number of just plain wrong history lessons to try and cement what was an already shaky point:

"In April 2015, for instance, the European Commission filed formal charges against Google, saying it rigged search results to favor its own content. Similarly, a Federal Trade Commission staff memo from 2012 revealed that Google regularly favors itself even over better alternatives.

Right, but Kanter ignores that the FTC also found that Google's experimentation was driven in large part to provide a better customer experience, not anti-competitive villainy. Other criticism of Google throughout the editorial is similarly incomplete or conflated:

"Google also seems to favor sites that rely on ads rather than subscription fees, a practice that has cut into news outlets’ profit margins. These kinds of practices starve content providers of revenue and chill investment in content creation.

Except that as a search engine Google can't magically see behind paywalls (and users often don't want to visit those sites anyway), so giving non-paywalled, ad-driven content a priority kind of makes sense. Again though, all of this finger pointing at Google is designed to shift the conversation away from the reason the FCC decided to take action in the first place: the cable industry and its own robust history of anti-competitive behavior, something Kanter just daintily floats over without mentioning it's the reason we're having this conversation in the first place.

No, Kanter's key refrain is that the FCC's plan is all about letting Google take the cable industry's hard-earned work and pass it off as its own. As such, he argues, Google should be heavily regulated before such villainous ambitions can take root:

"If the F.C.C. provides Google with the data it needs to build its search-based set-top, it should take significant steps to prevent Google from continuing its questionable conduct. At a minimum, the F.C.C. should require Google to commit to search neutrality, transparency, adherence to privacy standards and restrictions on anticompetitive bundling."

So wait, just so we're clear, your ingenious solution for the cable industry's aggressive walled garden anti-competitive stranglehold over set top box hardware is -- to regulate Google? And for years we've pointed out that the idea of "search neutrality" is bullshit. Throughout the net neutrality debate it was the cry of a telecom sector and its various policy tendrils, all pretending to be willfully oblivious to why physical, last mile services without competition (broadband) aren't regulated exactly the same as Internet services that users can choose not to use.

And buried under the Op-ed's conflations and bizarre omissions, that's just the thing the editorial intentionally misses -- quite painfully. Increasing set top box competition means that consumers would have a choice of set top boxes. As such, they could choose one that doesn't rely on Google technology if this is really such a concern for them. Of course it isn't -- the great Google set top antitrust albatross is a giant red herring being pushed by cable operators via an endless number of similar editorials. All of them carry the same message: don't open up the stagnant cable set top box market to competition or Google will run away with your daughter and pee on your azaleas.

Again it's a bunch of nonsense intended to misdirect the public from a central truth of the set top box debate: the cable industry is absolutely terrified of losing a central pillar in its quest to ensure cable remains a closed, walled garden ecosystem. Opening the set top box market to competition not only kills $21 billion in captive annual revenues, it suddenly opens the door to cheaper, better, more open hardware platforms -- built by companies with no qualms about pushing traditional cable customers toward alternative streaming options.

Filed Under: antitrust, competition, fcc, innovation, jonathan kanter, oped, open, set top boxes
Companies: google

Congress Has No Idea How The FCC's Cable Box Reform Plan Works, Conyers, Goodlatte Compare Effort To 'Popcorn Time'

from the not-very-good-at-my-job dept

As we've been discussing, the FCC is cooking up a plan to bring much-needed competition to the cable set top box market. As a fact sheet being circulated by the agency (pdf) notes, the FCC hopes to force cable operators to offer their existing cable lineups to third party hardware -- without the need of a pesky CableCARD. This would obviously disrupt the $21 billion in annual, captive set top rental fees enjoyed by the industry, and the competitive set top box market that emerges would likely drive more users than ever to alternative streaming options.

As such, the cable industry has been having a monumental hissy fit. This has ranged from threatening lawsuits to publishing an absolute ocean of misleading editorials in news outets nationwide, claiming the FCC's plan would destroy consumer privacy, increase piracy, hurt programming diversity, and make little children cry.

Not too surprisingly, the cable and entertainment industry has now gotten some members of Congress to contribute to the hysteria. Note that the FCC's proposal makes it abundantly clear that under the proposal, a cable provider can "determine the content protection systems it deems sufficient to prevent theft and misuse, and will not impede the introduction of new content protection systems." Yet in a letter sent to the FCC this week, Representatives Bob Goodlatte and John Conyers say creators have "shared concerns" that the FCC's plan will lead us down the road to rampant piracy. You know, like Popcorn Time:

"As Members of the House Judiciary Committee, which oversees our nation's copyright laws, we recognize the harm the American economy caused by the theft of copyrighted works. Creators have shared concerns that under the FCC's proposed rule, future set-top boxes or their replacements could purposely be designed to distribute pirated content obtained from sources that primarily offer stolen content. For example. apps such as Popcorn Time that focus on providing access to piratical content have tried to match the form and ease of use of legitimate apps to mark the theft of copyrighted content. Creators are legitimately worried about the prospect that future set top boxes, or their functional equivalents, could incorporate apps such as Popcorn Time or its functionality, or otherwise lead to the unauthorized distribution of copyrighted works."

From the letter it's pretty clear the Representatives -- and the "creators" expressing their worry -- don't actually understand what the FCC is trying to do. Conyers and Goodlatte throw Popcorn Time into the mix seemingly at random, given the FCC's proposal has absolutely nothing to do with the app.

For better or worse, under the FCC's proposal nothing about copy protection will actually change. Users will still pay the cable industry for service, those users will just be able to access that same programming on hardware from the likes of TiVO, Google, Amazon, whose hardware will already be in most consumer homes. And while these devices are more open than cable boxes, it's bizarre to suggest this shift results in some kind of piracy free for all. In fact, having more open set top boxes not ensconced by the cable industry's walled garden approach will present consumers with access to more legitimate streaming content sources than ever before. That's what the cable industry is actually worried about.

The piracy bogeyman was also recently trotted out in an editorial by "The Walking Dead" Producer Gale Anne Hurd, who tried to argue that making the set top box market more open and competitive would only drive users to pirated content because hey -- a more open device might actually include a browser and access to the actual Internet. That's again missing the forest for the trees on an absolutely mammoth scale, ignoring that open platforms and an exponential explosion in access to streaming services means more ways to access her content legitimately than ever before.

Again, it's not clear if the people yelling about piracy just don't understand how this all works and are just being "informed" by the wrong people, or if they're intentionally aiding the cable industry and mis-characterizing what the FCC is planning (probably a combination of both). But make no mistake: the TV industry's opposition to set top box reform has nothing to do with being worried about piracy, diversity, security, or the welfare of puppies -- and everything to do with protecting a stagnant industry from market evolution and lost revenue.

Filed Under: bob goodlatte, competition, copyright, fcc, innovation, john conyers, open, piracy, set top boxes, stb