GOP votes for Big Content and Continued Canning of Crap
A wise man once said something to the effect that 90 percent of x was crap, but ten percent of x was pure gold. The meaning is clear: if you want the gold you have spend a lot of time wading through crap. Another wise man said something like ‘Life is short so don’t act as if you have a hundred years to live’. (In an age where average life expectancy was 40…)
The way content works from cable companies is through package deals. You typically pay your cable TV company a set amount for a tier of channels in a package. So even though you might never watch America’s Next Top Model or anything else that might appear on CW you are paying a few cents per month for the content if you buy a package with that channel (oh, you didn’t know that you pay for channels with commercials in them? Tsk tsk.)
So if you like Discovery, and the only way to get it is packaged in that tier with CW* then you are stuck paying for craptastic stuff that you will never ever watch. The same holds true for the individual channels themselves: if you love Mythbusters for its empiric approach to eveything, you probably hate “Ghostlab” and the fact that you are supporting crap if you buy Discovery channel.
That old model is breaking down now, but the ancient battle of big content with their packaged crap vs connoisseurs who just want the gold continues… remember all of those old 33 1/3 speed LP’s you bought that only had one good song? Remember when you were a kid and you convinced your mom to buy that box of crappy cereal because it had a coupon that would get you the baking soda diving frogman if you collected enough?
Nowadays the barriers are being broken down by Netflix, Hulu, CBS, Apple, Google, and Amazon - now you can buy or get your streaming shows without buying the whole huge can of crap surrounding them. It’s a natural that the Big Packaged Content outlets would fight this tooth and nail, and it’s also a natural that the GOP would side with the huge buckets of crap canning industry…
The House passed an amendment Thursday that would bar the Federal Communications Commission from using any funding to implement the network-neutrality order it approved in December.
The amendment, approved on a 244-181 vote, was offered by Energy and Commerce Communications and Technology Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., to legislation that would fund government agencies for the rest of fiscal year 2011.
Walden and other critics of the FCC’s net-neutrality order argue it will stifle innovation and investment in broadband. The order aims to bar broadband providers from discriminating against Internet content, services, or applications.
“If left unchallenged, this claim of authority would allow the FCC to regulate any matter it discussed in the national broadband plan,” Walden said.
*disclaimer: I’m using CW as an example only, I’m a CW watching fiend - The Arrow, The Originals, The Flash are all setting new bars in SF - Fantasy based dramatic/heroic serials.