It's Christmastime! Take a break from the talking points...

The lights are up, the tree is trimmed and the smell of cinnamon and spice is in the air...

At least in the shopping malls.

It's holiday time again and whether you're still procrastinating on putting up the tree or your house looks like a Better Homes and Gardens holiday shoot the sights and sounds of the holidays are inescapable.

For me nothing says Christmas like the sound of my favorite carols playing in the background while taking a break with a cherished holiday classic.

To that end, TV Guide offers up its compendium of Holiday specials neatly organized by airdate, time and network.  Of course the list is dominated by ABC Family and the Hallmark channel who continue the tradition of nonstop holiday themed content.

Of course there's always on demand and Netflix has its own holiday offerings like "A very Murray Christmas" starring Bull Murray and "Santa's Apprentice."

This year marks the 50th anniversary of "a Charlie Brown Christmas" and to celebrate the event ABC has rolled out a special including popular musical acts and interviews with the creators of the animated feature.  If you're a devout "Peanuts" fan it's a must see event.  If not you can safely tune in an hour later to catch the animated special presented in its original length which including commercials runs about 40 minutes. 

You've already missed the first showing on Monday (11/30) but ABC is showing it again on Christmas Eve at 9PM. 

Of course all that assumes you're not already watching It's a Wonderful life on NBC at 8PM or A Christmas Story on TBS at the same time...

So settle in, enjoy the season and take a little time out from mini-malls and Amazon.com. 

I wish you the Happiest of whatever holidays you celebrate.

What the FCC's ruling means to you

So for the past year the battle has raged between the proponents of a free and open Internet and corporate interest.

It seems everyone had an opinion from podcasters to John Oliver and most of them rose in opposition to the flimsy pleas of poverty from the likes of multibillion dollar corporations with names like Time Warner and Comcast.

To listen to the ISP's you'd think that Net Neutrality or at least Netflix would be the death of them.  "They use 30% of the bandwidth!"  and "Somebody's got to pay for this"  All the time failing to mention the thousands of miles of "Dark Fiber" sitting unused for decades.   

And what of the promises not kept?  When AT&T threatened to curtail its services if the FCC changed its rules, the company seems to have conveniently forgotten its own obligations.  Time and time again they promise 100% broadband coverage if only they were allowed to gobble up another competitor or get another tax break.  They rarely deliver.  When it comes to ISP's you need to have a conversion chart to figure out what they mean by 100%

But that's all in the past now and and Wednesday's FCC's ruling makes a free and open Internet all but guaranteed, right? 

After all, the FCC has changed its rules and barring a successful legal challenge (unlikely as the changes follow court recommendations from their last go-around) ISP's are now just like your local power or water company.

Maybe...

Of course there'll be the requisite court battles waged by the ISP's where every "I" will be checked for the appropriate dot and every "T" scrutinized for the correct cross.  But in the end, it will happen.

But to you and me, it really doesn't matter.

The argument has been all about Internet Fast lanes with current rules allowing the "theoretical" throttling of services who can't "pay to play."  Treating ISP's like any other public utility puts an end to such a prioritization of services.  

Of course there's merit in that but for the average consumer it's the argument of an idealist.  Yes corporate interests should always take a back seat but if you're really expecting more competition and lower prices for your Internet services I'm afraid you're going to be disappointed.

Here's why...

ISP's are either regional monopolies or down-level customers of services from those monopolies.  That means no matter what, they still hold all the marbles ( or fibers ).  If Google comes to your town that's great but if AT&T, Verizon or Comcast have a lock on the right of way Google's out of luck.  

You need look no further than other regional utility providers currently under Title 2 for an example.   In many parts of the country your choice of a power company is dictated entirely by your geography.  Meaning the only competition consumers enjoy comes from a moving truck.  It also means that with little oversight, rates can be set on a whim.

It's true that there are no fast lanes in water and power utilities but there's also little to no competition.  Where you are dictates your service and your bill.

The same can now be said of ISP's with many areas only having one or two providers who more often than not have completely different offerings ultimately negating any equivalency.  Worse, due to the broken promises of coverage from companies like AT&T and Verizon, millions of customers are still lacking the barest minimum of broadband capability (now 25Mbps.)

So in the end, Netflix may come to you as quickly as Hulu but that's about the extent of the FCC's ruling.  You're still at the mercy of geography and you won't have much recourse when they jack up your Internet bill.

This was a ruling based largely on a "potential" injustice not a current one.

The FCC may have allowed us a moral victory but we have a lot further to go before consumers see any real benefit to their own bottom line.

Commercials: Barometer of a society

Have you been watching TV lately?

I don't mean becoming one with your comfy couch binging on entire seasons of Game of Thrones.  No I'm talking about plain old TV, commercials and all.

In a world where just about everything is on Demand from your dinner to your favorite sitcom you probably haven't noticed the latest trends in advertising.  With the curated experience of services like Netflix and Amazon Instant video you'd be excused if you haven't seen a commercial in months.

The vast majority of viewers, however, aren't completely detached from the advertiser-driven TV experience.  That means there's still an audience to watch somebody's commercial.  

Regardless of how irrelevant they may be to you, commercials aren't created in a vacuum.  Whatever they're selling,  you can be sure somebody wants it.

Ok, so we're all used to ads from everything from cars we can't afford to phones we don't really need and food we really shouldn't be eating.  I don't care about those.  I'm more interested in the filler commercials.  The ones about things like prescription drugs and ambulance chasing attorneys.  The ones you see far more often.

In the past few years I've seen more commercials about one-off gambling casinos, lottery games, settlement funding and prescription drugs for every ill than anything else.  Even the ambulance chasers have upped their game from simple fender-bender litigation to multi-billion dollar payouts from big pharma.

That there are so many means the U.S. isn't as much about consumption anymore.  It's more about want.  We're underpaid, poorly fed and sick and we can't seem to find relief.

We can't count on much these days.  Careers are transient and so are people.  It seems the ground is ever shifting under our feet. 

They sell us the promise of stability, the righting of a wrong or just something to make us feel a little better about our situation.

Maybe that's the classic advertising formula, sell a belief instead of a product.

The trouble is, what they sell is a reflection of the world we live in.  A world where needs can only be met by indebtedness to monoliths that profit from continuing our suffering.

We want the lottery win, the big settlement, the freedom from worry and want.  That desire has become an industry in itself.

We are a country forever searching for the light at the end of the tunnel but the tunnel never ends.  The joke has long been that the light is an oncoming train.  That's wrong.  Were that the case at least there'd be some hope of an end but the light seems ever out of reach.

So am I making too much out of a bunch of stupid ads? 

I don't think so. 

If the "product" is security and freedom from want then it stands to reason that those are commodities we're sorely lacking.  I don't find it acceptable to be "sold" on a dream of self-sufficiency.  I shouldn't "need" a mason jar full of pills to live another day or settlement funding to catch up on my bills. 

Trading on fear is a dark negotiation. 

Not the mark of a healthy society.

Think about it...

Cord Cutting or A La' Carte, in the End it's All the Same

Article first published as Cord Cutting or A La' Carte, in the End it's All the Same on Technorati.

Last week Senator John McCain (R-AZ) took to the Senate floor with a proposal that seeks to lower your cable TV bill.   His proposal is to allow anyone who has cable or satellite television service to do something previously unheard of in the industry.  That is, only pay for what they want to watch.

A belief shared by McCain's colleague across the aisle, Senator Jay Rocefeller (D- VA)

"...rather than being able to pick smaller packages or choose the channels they want, consumers are still forced to purchase larger and larger packages of channels no matter how few they actually watch. This says to me that the market isn't working."

The Senate Commerce committee is scheduled to take up McCain's bill in a hearing on Tuesday (5-14.)

McCain's assertion is based on a solid premise.  Look at any cable or satellite TV provider and you find that all their programming is bundled into packages or tiers.  The only a la' carte options you have are for the so-called premium stations like HBO or Showtime which by themselves can cost an additional $10 a month or more and in some cases also come as part of a bundle.

Gone are the days of $20/mo basic cable.  A subscriber can easily find a bill of $50 or more per month with no premium channels.   Add HBO and a few HD channels and that bill is closer to $125.

In the end you ultimately end up subsidizing channels you don't watch.  That's because providers negotiate not with HBO or AMC but rather their parent companies like Viacom and Time Warner.  It's an all or nothing deal that can cause a disagreement over licensing fees on one channel to affect a dozen others.  That's why a tiff between a service like DirectTV and Viacom leaves subscribers with multiple blank channels instead of content. 

Cable industry lobbyists are against McCain's proposal claiming it's a "lose-lose" for both customers and providers as evidenced in an official statement from the National Cable and Telecommunications Association.

"As countless studies have demonstrated, subscription bundles offer a wider array of viewing options, increased programming diversity and better value than per channel options,"

Of course that assumes that the "wider array" is something you actually care to watch.  Even if you don't,  you're going to pay for it anyway and that's the logic of their claimed "win-win."

This is the rationale that's led to cord cutters who've turned primarily to online media sources like NetFlix and Hulu.  Unfortunately, legitimate online sources still can only offer a fraction of the content enjoyed by the traditional delivery model.  Unless you've got an HBO subscription, for example, you're not going to see "Game of Thrones" on the same day it airs unless you turn to illegitimate sources.

That's due to a reluctance of channel owners like Viacom to embrace online options that would lead to greater consumer choice but a less predictable revenue model.    It's flawed logic, however.

If you're a cord cutter it's probably not of any great consequence to you  about what happens to pay TV subscription rates but you're going to be affected all the same.   

With online bellwethers like YouTube launching paid channels it may seem like online TV options are poised to offer what traditional pay TV won't.    If the industry is forced into the a la' carte model, however, online TV will soon end up looking like it's broadcast predecessor.

You may be able to pick and choose from a few sources but likely run headlong into the same bundling schemes as traditional pay TV.  That's because the channels don't own the content, their parent company does and it's up to them to decide how it gets distributed. 

Add in the more targeted paid online options and soon you'll be paying as much if not more than if you'd never cut that cable.  Lest we forget data caps imposed by most Internet providers that could result in a nasty surprise in that bill if you enjoy HD content.

In short, the old guard of broadcast television has nothing to fear as one way or another we'll still end up paying more no matter how we choose to view their content.

It's about the content

In this age of digital media  the experts will tell you it's all about the content.  After almost two decades the novelty of the Internet has worn off and what was revolutionary is now the mundane.  Truth be told,  nobody promotes themselves as being online anymore, it's just expected that you are.   

And it seems everybody is.  From your grandmother to multinational corporations the Internet is awash in content.  It happened fast, so fast that traditional media can't keep up with the pace.  Content is no longer limited to a newspaper on your doorstep, a movie in a theater or a program on television.  A fact that the NBC Universals and Disney's of the world can't stand. 

In the 80's the advent of the VCR sent the Motion picture industry into a panic with then MPAA president Jack Valenti proclaiming, "Their (VCR manufacturers) only single mission, their primary mission is to copy coyrighted material that belongs to other people."

 The late 90's saw the music industry decrying the evils of digital music players.  Most notably the case of the RIAA versus DIamond Multimedia.  The RIAA asserted that the simple act of copying music to an MP3 player like the Diamond Rio even when restricted to personal use was a violation of copyright.  Fortunately the courts found it wasn't but the decision wasn't based on a rapidly outmoded copyright law but rather what comprised a recording device.

Succeeding years found both organizations  repeatedly claiming that new consumer friendly technologies threatened the fortunes of the entire entertainment industry. 

Of course history shows that it hasn't but not before decades of legislation had weakened consumer rights and made the whole concept of copyright law deliberately ambiguous. 

The result is an entertainment industry who views the public first as thieves and second as customers.  The concept of "Fair Use" frequently finds itself at odds with the entertainment industry who views any use not explicitly controlled by them as an infringement of copyright. 

For the uninitiated the doctrine of Fair Use is not so much a right (at least in the U.S.) as it is a defense when accused of copyright violation.  It's basically a four step criteria to measure whether use of copyrighted work is eligible for exemption from copyright law.  Generally the rule is that Fair Use applies to non-commercial or educational uses or commercial uses that can be shown to not diminish the original work.  There's more than enough room for interpretation, however, and that's frequently decided in favor of the copyright holder.

Which translates to a virtual flip of the coin any time your use of alleged copyrighted material strays into new territory. 

For example, upload a family holiday video to YouTube and you could find yourself on the receiving end of a copyright complaint if ol' Blue Eyes(Frank Sinatra) happens to be belting out  Silent Night in the background.  Even if you make the video private and accessible only to your family and not the general public you can still be considered in violation of copyright.

What's the definition of original content anyway?

 You may do a weekly video podcast but if anything in your video displays an element someone claims as copyrighted material you've suddenly lost your right to monetization under YouTube's rules at the least.   At the worst you can find your video removed and receive a "copyright strike." Too many of those and YouTube will close your account.

More than just an annoyance the entertainment industry has engaged in legal intimidation in an effort to protect an outdated content model.  Is there really a threat to a copyright holder's interest if someone uses a clip from their content in an entirely unrelated work?

What if you just want to make fun of copyrighted but publicly available content?  If so is it considered a parody or a satire?  Hint: One is covered by "Fair Use" the other isn't.   Most people don't even know there's  a difference but under copyright law there is. 

Even the alleged "New Media" succumbs to the pressure of the old guard.  When the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)was signed into law in 1998 savvy ISP's lobbied for some degree of immunity by way of the "safe harbor."

They saw a future rife with litigation for simply operating a medium and wanted no part of it.  Safe Harbor holds ISP's and later content hosting services like YouTube  harmless in any copyright infringement claim.  So long as they don't actively participate in the infringement they get a pass.  Unfortunately content creators who run afoul of the DMCA have no such protections and have to rely on Fair Use defenses.

Now a bewildered public is forced to learn about words like "transformative"," derivative" and "Fair Use." 

And to think that all you wanted to do was to share a holiday memory with grandma on YouTube.

These are questions we shouldn't have to answer in a creative society.  The history of mankind is built upon the creative output of those that came before.  Without the wheel, for instance, there would be no automobiles  and transportation on the whole would be a very different if not inefficient proposition.

So should someone have patented the concept of a cylindrical object for the purpose of rotating around an axis ?   Perhaps but it should never have been expected to exist in perpetuity.  If such a patent existed it's entirely possible, for example, that we'd be controlling the direction of our cars with levers instead of that familiar direction control device we know as a steering wheel. 

The holder of the patent (or copyright) could prevent any use not explicitly under their control which would include anything that resembled or made reference to the wheel product.

That sounds ridiculous but is exactly what is happening with copyright law now.  No reasonable person would deny anyone the right to profit from their efforts .  The problem arises when protection of those rights subverts the very innovation that copyright sought to protect. 

Even if you never run afoul of someone else's copyright you still suffer the consequences. 

Why, for example, in an age of almost instantaneous access to information do we still have artificial limits placed on how we consume media?  The entertainment industry would argue that there's a minimum period of time necessary to protect their revenue potential.

That argument ignores the revenue potential afforded by alternate modes of content delivery.  A friend of mine recently posed a question to me.  He said, " Why do I have to wait months for a new movie to be available somewhere other than a movie theater?"

You know, I have to agree.  He brought up the fact that many people have home theater systems that could offer an excellent viewing experience.  To me, I'd rather see a new movie in the theater and I'm sure I'm not alone.  Nonetheless, I shouldn't be denied the option.

Seeing a movie in a theater is a "premium" experience and I'm willing to pay more for it.  However,  I'm not willing to support a business model rooted in the middle of the last century to get it.  There was a time when the only way to see a  first run movie was at a theater.  That's hasn't been the case for a decade now.  It's not about the technology it's about revenue.

There are very few cases where a 50 year old business model is relevant to contemporary markets but the industry doesn't it see it that way.

In some cases new entertainment content will go straight to online sources like YouTube, direct to DVD or even services like NetFlix.  So with alternate delivery mechanisms available do we really need so many theaters?

Should we be limiting our entertainment options based on nothing more than propping up an industry that refuses to respond to a new market dynamic?

I'd rather have a few really great theaters offering a superior experience than a lesser one from a business model that's groaning under its own weight. 

Remember we're still  talking about restricting content here.  In some cases, your content if someone deems it a threat to their copyright.  We're also talking about restricting your choices.  The least of which is your opportunity to use content  any way you wish

I've never been a fan of change for its own sake but when it comes to copyrights I don't have to betray that rule because change desperately needs to happen.