Free trade agreements would be great if any of them actually existed. Instead most "free trade" agreements are about letting big corporations do whatever they want and screwing over everyone else.
So many people want Twitter to crack down harder on trolls, bigots, death-threat-senders, and other undesirables, but what can they do that wouldn't create collateral damage or end up being abused by the very people it's supposed to work against?
Whether it's this, shutting down campaign finance reform, or any number of other things, multiple Supreme Court justices have repeatedly shown their willingness to bend the Constitution to say whatever they want, in complete dereliction of their duty and notwithstanding the clear facts of the matter, threatening the separation of powers and the survival of the Republic.
This is exactly what American companies have wanted all along. They want the use of patents as trade barriers to become standard around the world so that everyone sees it as normal and they can litigate the little guy out of business, then they negotiate "free trade agreements" that further tip the playing field towards big companies and ensure stuff like this inevitably works out in their favor. This is the world they've wanted to build all along, where everything is decided by ridiculous lawsuits between big corporations and no one else can even hope to challenge them and win. They're building a world where the corporation reigns supreme, and giving power to competing corporations is just the cost of getting there.
Because the people subverting the rule of law don't actually care about the good of the country, and everyone else has no clue what it is and either trust that they ARE looking out for the good of the country or at least that there's no hope to get people who will look out for it any better.
Part of the problem is that it's not. The new problem is that in previous eras, people would generally be subscribing to all the channels and would just have to know where to look to get the channel showing the show/movie desired. The consumer would just have to pay extra if the content wasn't on basic cable.
Now, they're being asked to subscribe to and pay for each one separately. Not a bad thing if you're happy with the content on one or two services, a very bad thing if they're spread over many more.
"This is what we told you would happen if the cable bundle was broken up." -legacy content and cable companies
I find it interesting that this post is flagged as the "first word" yet basically every response to it, disagreeing with it, is flagged as insightful. Normally a first word/last word comment would also be flagged as funny or insightful, not the comments disagreeing with it. Not making any accusations, just curious, because having it flagged as the first word would seem to imply that it's the most important comment for someone to see, but the Techdirt hive mind doesn't seem to actually agree.
It would do so, however, by taking a big step down the road to decentralizing linear television, potentially giving the content providers primacy instead of the cable company, even as the cable company remains who you pay for service: http://www.morganwick.com/2016/01/the-cable-industrys-fight-to-define-what-the-video-revolution-is-r eally-about/ That would start people thinking about why TV isn't a la carte, and potentially lead to more companies thinking about going over-the-top and breaking up the cable bundle. Of course, the FCC's proposal may preclude exactly the sort of "innovative interfaces" that would lead to this, since it requires preserving the outdated notion of a "channel lineup", but it's not quite clear.
I mean, if you're going to spend a million dollars, spend it on technology that counts how many people are in each line and automatically sends people to whichever line is shorter.
The problem with simply letting the legacy pay TV system collapse is that it adversely affects other industries' ability to adapt to the post-pay TV world. I'm not talking about cable programmers who probably should be left to sink or swim on their own merits. The cable programming business model is such that the broadcast industry in the US feels that it is dependent on retransmission consent fees from the cable companies to compete with cable programmers, which leaves them disdainful of their own nominal medium because they don't want anyone consuming their wares without paying for them, certainly not if they are paying for cable networks like ESPN. Broadcast SHOULD be more important to an Internet-centric video world than cable because of its theoretical ability to reach mobile devices, but so long as broadcasters are dependent on retransmission consent they're disinclined to even optimize their coverage areas as they are, let alone to actually reach mobile devices in actuality, and so long as they don't do that people will continue to think of them as an outdated technology with no role to play going forward, in part by conflating all of linear television with the depredations of the cable bundle, and they'll be disinclined to forcefully correct them. So now we have the incentive auction that will effectively lock in everything wrong with broadcast television today and potentially cripple it in all new ways as broadcasters abandon the medium for a quick buck when the value of staying in the industry is undervalued, all for the sake of giving wireless companies spectrum they supposedly need in part to deliver video that broadcasting could potentially deliver more efficiently and better. And I don't know what the solution is other than the FCC imposing their own a la carte system, even if only on the most expensive channels.
So, if I don't want to sign a contract and just want to try out Comcast's gigabit service before deciding whether to go with Google Fiber, I'll be hit with nasty usage caps that will make my decision a certainty.
Hey Comcast, no matter how bad you may paint Google Fiber to be, they're still not the most hated company in America.
He only supported Title II and ditched his initial pro-paid-prioritization proposal after Obama stepped in and after a million comments supporting it swamped the FCC. He started acting like a Title II true believer so he wouldn't be too blatant a charlatan and to get the Title II supporters off his back and thinking he's a great guy after all. But he still made sure to leave two gaping holes to completely undermine those rules, he's "taking on" the cable companies on set-top boxes which he's statutorially mandated to do and which the free market will take care of anyway instead of taking on more important anti-competitive conduct, and he's rushing through an incentive auction that will destroy broadcasting right when it should be becoming the most relevant it's been in decades, thus ensuring people are reliant on cable for all their entertainment needs and possibly preventing net neutrality from ever being viable long-term.
How was jury nullification supposed to work, considering how easy it is for the powers that be to prevent people from knowing about it and punishing those who do (see Daniel's comment)? Or is this just another case where the Founding Fathers failed to take into account the many ways checks and balances get eroded?
On the post: Clinton Friend, Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe, Now Pretends Hillary Never Supported TPP
Re: TPP
On the post: You'll Never Guess Which Portmanteau Everyone Is Suddenly Trying To Trademark
On the post: Twitter Deletes SCOTUSblog Twitter Account Briefly Thinking Its Running Of The Trolls Meant It Was Hacked
On the post: Supreme Court Knocks A Little More Off The 4th Amendment; Gives Cops Another Way To Salvage Illegal Searches
Time to impeach a whole bunch of justices
On the post: Beijing Regulators Block Sales Of iPhones, Claiming The Design Is Too Close To Chinese Company's Phone
On the post: TPP's Corporate Sovereignty Chapter A 'Threat To Democracy And Regulation'
Re: Why is this so hard?
On the post: Cable Industry Proclaims More Competition 'Hurts Consumers' & 'Damages Economic Efficiency'
Re: "This is bad and you're not allowed to do it... until a few years have passed."
On the post: As Netflix Locks Down Exclusive Disney Rights, The New Walled Gardens Emerge
Re: Re:
"This is what we told you would happen if the cable bundle was broken up." -legacy content and cable companies
On the post: Silicon Valley Billionaire Peter Thiel Accused Of Financing Hulk Hogan's Ridiculous Lawsuits Against Gawker
Re:
On the post: Local Fox Affiliate's Reaction To Brutal Police Beating Is A Dereliction Of Its Duty
Re:
On the post: Homeland Security Wants To Subpoena Us Over A Clearly Hyperbolic Techdirt Comment
Re:
On the post: Why The Growing Unpredictability Of China's Censorship Is A Feature, Not A Bug
90% of the time that's probably the case.
On the post: Congress Has No Idea How The FCC's Cable Box Reform Plan Works, Conyers, Goodlatte Compare Effort To 'Popcorn Time'
Re:
On the post: USTR Finally Recognizes That The Internet Matters... And That Censorship, Site Blocking & Link Taxes Are Barriers
Tldr?
On the post: FOIA Documents Expose Details On TSA's $47,000 Coin Flipping App
Re: Why do they even need an app?
On the post: Canadian Government Fails To Force Cheaper TV Options, Blames Consumers For Not Trying Harder
On the post: Comcast Battles Google Fiber In Atlanta -- With Threat Of Usage Caps Unless You Sign 3-Year Contract
Hey Comcast, no matter how bad you may paint Google Fiber to be, they're still not the most hated company in America.
On the post: YouTube Flips, Now Thinks T-Mobile's Abuse Of Net Neutrality Is Ok, Following A Few Small Changes
On the post: From Dingo To Net Neutrality Hero: FCC Boss On Why Everybody Had Him Wrong
Wheeler never stopped being a dingo
On the post: Feds Ask For 5 Years In Jail For Matthew Keys Giving Up Tribune Account Password; Still Don't Care About Actual Hacker
Re: Re: Re: Jury Nullifcation
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