Broadband Reports breaks a story that I (sort of) got wind of last week: Time Warner is testing a broadband usage-based system in at least one cable system. The cable operator is mounting a test effort to charge customers who consume a lot of bandwidth more for their extra use of the pipeline.
However, the primary goal of a consumption-based system isn't to generate new revenue streams. It is to implement a pricing-based way of managing the network, particularly given that efforts on the part of cable companies to "throttle" applications or to otherwise implement traffic prioritization have already caused stinging backlash among consumers and in Washington.
Although some folks think a broadband usage meter would be decidely anti-consumer, in fact it's the opposite, economists say. The most efficient way to solve any bandwidth bottleneck is through pricing and not through awkward mechanisms such as traffic throttling.
Indeed, I mentioned this metered bandwidth rumor yesterday to Wharton's Gerry Faulhaber (who will serve as a moderator at The Internet Video Policy Symposium) and he drew the parallel between this kind of metered system and the 2003 imposition of $8 tolls placed on cars that drive into the center of London. Two months following the implementation of the toll, traffic into the heart of London dropped 20%, relieving congestion on the city's overburdened thoroughfares.
But, political and technical realities may make metered broadband usage a greater idea in theory than in practice. First, consumers are accustomed to flat-rate, all-you-can-eat broadband service pricing and any deviation from this well-accepted concept is likely to spark suspicions of why broadband providers would change pricing models.
It doesn't help that emerging third-party Internet video services, such as Hulu, the joint venture by NBC-U and News Corp., or even Google-owned YouTube, would be the first Internet services to feel the pain of metered billing. Given that cable and phone companies are the leading multichannel TV video service providers as well as the top broadband service providers, it's almost certain that web-based video service rivals would see anti-competitive intent in metered usage.
Moreover, it's not easy to measure bandwidth consumption. Unlike increments of time, which mobile voice providers use as the basis for their metered usage billing plans, bandwidth is messy and subjective and it's hard to pinpoint exact levels of usage.
Time Warner will presumably get answers to the measurement question in its test-bed(s). Whether consumers, competitors and regulators will accept metered plans won't be as easy to answer.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 5:59 PM | Print | Comments (2)Scientology has long been identified with top Hollywood stars, but a kerfluffle involving a presumably purloined video of leading Scientology advocate Tom Cruise even more closely aligns the two communities. A ten-minute video of the actor and Hollywood powerbroker has been circulating the Internet over the past three days and the notoriously litigious Church of Scientology has been playing a game of Internet whack-a-mole by issuing take-down notices all over the place.
Scientology is invoking its copyright in the video, which presumably was prepared for internal purposes only and seems to be some kind of recruiting pitch. Many web sites have posted a You Tube version of the video, but attempts to play the embedded video on most of these sites are fruitless. No sooner does someone post it to You Tube than Scientology issues a take-down notice.
As of this morning, however, Nick Denton's Gawker still has the video. Denton stored a copy of it, removing his dependence on YouTube and other sites fearful of Scientology's lawyers, and refuses to take it down. "It's newsworthy; and we will not be removing it," Denton writes.
As Salon's Farhad Manjoo notes, in its effort to snuff out a "pirated" video, Scientology is facing the very same issue that Hollywood must manage when it comes to the Internet: the inability to control content.
The disputes mainly involve the unauthorized distribution of the Church's intellectual property, which makes the fight not really very different from the battle that other forces in the entertainment industry have waged against the Web. And in the same way that the record labels are losing their war against the Internet, so too is Scientology. This video's out there, and it's going to stay out there.
As Manjoo also notes, Scientology has long engaged in legal battles to keep text content off the Internet, but this is the first time that I could find where the group has attempted to contain video content on the web. One big question is why Scientology is trying to stop people from seeing what is so obviously a marketing video.
If you've watched the video, you will understand better. Cruise, although trying to sell the virtues of Scientology, sounds, shall we say, a little bit off-center. It's not so much the mockable statements he makes, which have been well documented elsewhere ("We are the authorities on getting people off drugs. We are the authorities on the mind. We are the authorities on improving conditions. We can rehabilitate criminals.")
It's not that he's jumping up and down and talking in crazy ways, although there are points where the way Cruise laughs makes me very uncomfortable. It's that you literally can't understand what he's talking about. He flits from concept to concept, from reference to reference and in the end it's hard to understand what's so great about Scientology.
The video is particularly damning given the timing of the appearance, coinciding as it does with the publication of Andrew Morton's unauthorized biography of Cruise, which paints the actor as a pin-eyed zealot who goes to nutty extremes to support Scientology. So, unlike Hollywood, which contends it loses revenues from unauthorized video distribution, Scientology is merely losing face with the Cruise video.
Update: True to form, Scientology's lawyers have sent a take-down notice to Gawker, which won't comply, saying that Gawker's publication of the video is "fair use." Scientology stretches the bounds of credulity when it suggests that Gawker's publication of the video is a violation of several criminal statutes under California law, including receiving stolen property and interstate transportation of stolen goods.
Update: Well, Denton and Gawker are really stepping into doo-doo today. Not only are they fighting off Scientologists, but Denton may get booted off of Facebook. It seems that Denton posted some unflattering screenshots of American Lawyer founder Steve Brill's daughter, which he copied off of Facebook, which is a violation of the site's terms of use.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 10:27 AM | Print | Comments (0)
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