“Yet it seems it's going to take a compounding series of these studies to get the point across” No it’s not. You are once again falling for the all-too-common notion that all we need is to throw more facts onto the pile to overcome existing forces despite how rarely that pans out. If all we needed were facts the fight over piracy would have ended long ago. What’s needed is mobilizing citizens with those facts and figuring out how to overcome the legacy media industries with them, because getting people that have internalized those facts into positions of power at legacy media companies is a far taller order.
That Justice didn’t do a good job of making the case against the merger is because they only went after it in the first place because Trump hates CNN. Any merger not involving TimeWarner or Comcast/NBCUniversal, especially Disney/Fox, Justice wouldn’t go after at all.
The problem is, cable channels also collect revenue from ads, and also make money by charging cable companies to carry their channels. When cable first came along, the fact broadcast stations were available for free to everyone, and thus their programs and ads reached a broader audience, made up for this, but as cable achieved ubiquity, suddenly cable channels were collecting similar amounts in ad revenue and the extra money they were making from cable companies was more than enough to overcome what was by now only a marginally smaller potential audience than broadcasting for anyone wanting to reach large audiences, especially sports. So broadcasters felt they had to charge their own retransmission fees to compete.
Retransmission consent is a band-aid for a system that, under current law, simply is not economically viable without it, one with the result that, unless there’s a massive cord-cutting movement (significantly bigger than what has thus far occurred) that restores a concrete audience advantage for broadcast, it disincentivizes broadcasters from encouraging people to watch their programming on what’s supposedly their primary distribution mechanism without paying a cable company. The whole economics of the television industry is so upside down that during the Aereo fight, the major broadcasters threatened to abandon their own nominal medium entirely if Aereo won in court and distribute popular programming only to cable subscribers. In other words, not only are they only still broadcasting as long as it’s not worth the PR hit to stop, they have no incentive to actually improve their signal or make it more useful by e.g. allowing smartphones to pluck their signal out of the air directly. Retransmission consent simply gives broadcasters a perverse incentive to abandon their own nominal medium while doing nothing to fix the broken system that makes it necessary to begin with - and to make matters worse, it’s allowed cable companies to put a good chunk of the blame for high cable bills on broadcasters. But so far, no one seems to have a better idea for how to save the village than by destroying it.
The key is that Blizzard could unilaterally shut it down. A good game for esports is one that can be installed and played locally, over a local network, without asking the publisher for permission. Unfortunately too many games these days ask to be “always online” even when there’s no good reason.
“What! We can’t have you simply finding your own entertainment over dumb pipes! We need to shut down net neutrality so you get to experience the entertainment we want you to!”
I am so glad you gave a description of HeismanWatch because as I read the article I was wondering why the hell the Heisman Trophy Trust wasn't thanking them for creating works of art (timepieces) that could be given to Heisman Trophy winners as an additional accolade.
That would be an extra benefit and an NCAA violation. The last thing the Heisman Trust wants is to have the NCAA looking down on it for getting its winners actual tangible benefits.
Anyone found to be propagating fake news, such as the notion that Our Lord and Savior Donald Trump is in bed with the Russians or is anything other than the greatest and best president in the history of history, shall lose their license or never be issued one to begin with.
Verizon clearly doesn't even care what anyone else thinks "unlimited" means. Witness their ads for their family share plans boasting "everyone gets the unlimited they need!" evidently hoping you won't realize if their plans were truly without limits, there shouldn't be any differences between them.
Well, the Post is still owned by Rupert Murdoch, and people on Reddit were quick to point out that Wired is owned by some of the same people as Charter.
This is the problem with the system of checks and balances the Founders established and why it matters that they didn't envision the formation of parties. When Congress and the President are of the same party, Congress will happily vote away its powers to the President, but the President can veto any attempt to walk it back, and a party that has two-thirds control of both houses of Congress probably controls the White House too. It's why we need to rethink the Constitution for what we've learned about political science in the intervening 200+ years, but are woefully ill-equipped to do so.
You keep repeating the same sentence over and over without answering *why* and *how* it answers his questions. You're not dissuading him from the notion that you think simply getting the government out will magically cause competition to flourish, and you don't seem to be engaging with him trying to tell you that maybe, just maybe, it's not that simple, that without any government presence new entrants will still find it very difficult to compete with established players, or even, if the monopolies are outright broken up so everyone has a choice, that this sort of field is a natural monopoly that eventually coalesces into a single company controlling all the infrastructure without any government meddling whatsoever.
I didn't catch the name of the representative at the end, so when I saw references to "Rep. Poe" in the comments I took it as a fill-in name. It's still oddly appropriate.
So, whenever I see a news outlet being praised by the left for telling the truth about Trump, they do so with pretty blatantly editorialized statements like "Trump said this, which isn't true" or "Trump said that, without evidence". Yet with stuff like this, where some pretty basic understanding of the facts undermines what Trump says, there's no mention of those facts anywhere. It should be pretty simple for news outlets to lay out those facts without coming across as editorializing. It seems like news outlets are paying lip service to standing up to Trump but not taking even the most basic steps to actually stand up for the truth. In other words, we're doomed.
No see, you're hypnotized into relying on government as the solution to every problem when government always makes things worse in the long run. If we got rid of ALL regulation, everything would be hunky dory! /s
It'd be nice if we didn't have to get *everyone* riled up to get good results, just the people who specifically pay attention to each issue all the time, like Techdirt readers for tech-related issues... but of course that's probably too utopian.
I think a lot of people would decide that actually having to filter out abusers themselves, or looking for a pre-made filter that will work for same, is too much work and will wonder why Twitter can't do it themselves.
On the post: NZ Study Yet Again Concludes That Piracy Is A Function Of Price And Ease Of Access
“Yet it seems it's going to take a compounding series of these studies to get the point across” No it’s not. You are once again falling for the all-too-common notion that all we need is to throw more facts onto the pile to overcome existing forces despite how rarely that pans out. If all we needed were facts the fight over piracy would have ended long ago. What’s needed is mobilizing citizens with those facts and figuring out how to overcome the legacy media industries with them, because getting people that have internalized those facts into positions of power at legacy media companies is a far taller order.
On the post: Judge Ruling In AT&T Merger Again Highlights Broken Antitrust Enforcement, Court Myopia
That Justice didn’t do a good job of making the case against the merger is because they only went after it in the first place because Trump hates CNN. Any merger not involving TimeWarner or Comcast/NBCUniversal, especially Disney/Fox, Justice wouldn’t go after at all.
On the post: EU Moves Forward With Agreement To Fundamentally Change The Internet From Open To Closed
Re: Re: The EU is losing all legitimacy and credibility as a Dem
And they wonder why countries like Britain are trying to get out...
On the post: Former FCC Official Attempts To Create An Aereo That The Supreme Court Won't Kill
Re: Re:
The problem is, cable channels also collect revenue from ads, and also make money by charging cable companies to carry their channels. When cable first came along, the fact broadcast stations were available for free to everyone, and thus their programs and ads reached a broader audience, made up for this, but as cable achieved ubiquity, suddenly cable channels were collecting similar amounts in ad revenue and the extra money they were making from cable companies was more than enough to overcome what was by now only a marginally smaller potential audience than broadcasting for anyone wanting to reach large audiences, especially sports. So broadcasters felt they had to charge their own retransmission fees to compete.
Retransmission consent is a band-aid for a system that, under current law, simply is not economically viable without it, one with the result that, unless there’s a massive cord-cutting movement (significantly bigger than what has thus far occurred) that restores a concrete audience advantage for broadcast, it disincentivizes broadcasters from encouraging people to watch their programming on what’s supposedly their primary distribution mechanism without paying a cable company. The whole economics of the television industry is so upside down that during the Aereo fight, the major broadcasters threatened to abandon their own nominal medium entirely if Aereo won in court and distribute popular programming only to cable subscribers. In other words, not only are they only still broadcasting as long as it’s not worth the PR hit to stop, they have no incentive to actually improve their signal or make it more useful by e.g. allowing smartphones to pluck their signal out of the air directly. Retransmission consent simply gives broadcasters a perverse incentive to abandon their own nominal medium while doing nothing to fix the broken system that makes it necessary to begin with - and to make matters worse, it’s allowed cable companies to put a good chunk of the blame for high cable bills on broadcasters. But so far, no one seems to have a better idea for how to save the village than by destroying it.
On the post: Vizio Admits Modern TV Sets Are Cheaper Because They're Spying On You
Re: Re:
On the post: Creators Of Dance Moves Suing Creators Of Fortnite Over Copyright Infringement That Can't Possibly Have Happened
On the post: Blizzard's Sudden Shuttering Of Heroes Of The Storm Demonstrates Why eSports Needs Its Next Evolutionary Step
On the post: If You're Surprised By Verizon's AOL, Yahoo Face Plant, You Don't Know Verizon
Re: Dear Verizon...
On the post: Heisman Trophy People Sue HeismanWatch For Using Images Of The Trophy And Stating Its Name
Re: The art of confusion
That would be an extra benefit and an NCAA violation. The last thing the Heisman Trust wants is to have the NCAA looking down on it for getting its winners actual tangible benefits.
On the post: Heisman Trophy People Sue HeismanWatch For Using Images Of The Trophy And Stating Its Name
Re: Journalism
On the post: Verizon Throttled The 'Unlimited' Data Plan Of A Fire Dept. Battling Wildfires
Verizon clearly doesn't even care what anyone else thinks "unlimited" means. Witness their ads for their family share plans boasting "everyone gets the unlimited they need!" evidently hoping you won't realize if their plans were truly without limits, there shouldn't be any differences between them.
On the post: Tech Journalists Keep Completely Missing The Point Of Cord Cutting
Re: Fools or tools
On the post: Congress Leaks Draft Bill To Move Copyright Office Out Of The Library Of Congress
Re:
On the post: Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
Re: Format
On the post: Utterly Tone Deaf To Cord Cutting, Cable Contract Feuds And Blackouts Skyrocket
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: government-backed monopolies
On the post: Families Of Orlando Shooting Victims Sue Twitter, Facebook, And Google For 'Supporting Terrorism'
On the post: Trump Takes Undeserved Credit For Softbank Investment & Job Promises, As Company Sells Him On A T-Mobile Sprint Merger
On the post: What Net Neutrality? While The FCC Naps, AT&T Now Exempting DirecTV Content From Wireless Usage Caps
Re: Re: Bad plan to start with
On the post: What Net Neutrality? While The FCC Naps, AT&T Now Exempting DirecTV Content From Wireless Usage Caps
Re: Bad plan to start with
On the post: A Possible Solution To Twitter's Difficult Problem Of Abusive Behavior: Let People Speak, Don't Force Everyone To Listen
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