Hi MikeM:
Sorry for the delay. Client in from NYC today. All day at the law offices. Anyway, in response to your inquiry . . .
My point of view-- they are indistinguishable from the SP. But you are making the fine argument that they are more than this. Because ISP either owns or have the distribution rights of compelling content.
No, this is not my exact argument. My thesis is that the SP, the owner of the pipes, offers to various commercial ventures ACCESS into the homes of consumers. Call this ACCESS the consumer portal. In other posts, I have referred to this portal as a gateway or on/off ramp to the Internet (or in my road analogy, the Interstate).
Owners of the pipes, such as SBC or T, seek to maximize the value of this ACCESS by offering it to as many commercial ventures as possible. Now ACCESS is more than just ACCESS to the Internet; it is ACCESS to almost anything, whether it be the Internet, a corporate LAN, the PSTN, or VPN. As I see it, the ISPs represent just one aspect of this ACCESS, & that obviously is ACCESS to the Internet, which through SVCs in the case of SBC's Pronto rollout is not going to proprietary upon that consumer. That consumer can subscribe to as many ISPs for a broadband connection as he/she is willing to pay, and as the SP provides ACCESS to.
So how is that ISP, going forward, going to lure the consumer to his service vs. another service? IMHO, the model we see is what we see on the cable platform today. Now I don't have cable modem access. So I don't truly know what goes on. I only know what I read. But it appears that these ISPs do more to control what you see when you FIRST connect to the Internet. You can call it a home page, or you can call it something else. But the bottom line is that these monopolistic ISPs are trying to control what you see much in the way Windows does when you boot up your PC.
In contrast, there is a plethora of ISPs out there providing ACCESS to the Internet over twisted pair that do not do this sort of thing. But, IMHO, going forward, this segment of the ISP market is going to go through consolidation. The larger, more successful ISP are going to offer other commercial enterprises ACCESS to consumers that they have contractually obtained from the SPs. In other words, beyond providing ACCESS to the Internet, ISP are RESELLERS of ACCESS via the Internet gateway that they control.
Do ISPs wish to put up billboards along their gateway in the future? I think so. Will subscribers tolerate it? I think so, and the reason I think so is that the larger ISPs, controlling ACCESS to large populations of consumers are going to attract content providers and attendant advertisers who wish to hawk their wares not only at the interface with the content, but also at the consumer gateway or portal. IMHO, a subscriber is going to choose utilize a particular ISPs portal not only for access, but for the availability of proprietary content. This is the game I see AOL-TWX taking, & it is going to set the standard, IMHO.
If I have half a dozen of ISPs to select from based upon my SP, assuming ACCESS fees are essentially the same I am going to select the ISP that offers proprietary content that is either free, or I am willing to pay a small surcharge, that I cannot ACCESS elsewhere but on this one ISP.
Now, does this vision sound much like the broadcast model we see today? Yes. What does DirecTV offer that cable can't? Well, it offers NFL's Season Ticket, for example. Has that been successful in luring customers away from cable? Yes. Can this model be applied on the Internet platform by ISPs? IMHO, yes.
I don't believe for a minute that what record.TV is doing will hold up in court.
I don't know exactly what recordtv does & doesn't do. But your hunch is correct. I'm sure that you are aware that when watching sport broadcasts you've heard the language that "any rebroadcast or re-transmission of this broadcast without the expressed written consent of ---- is strictly prohibited." What this means is that the license the broadcast network has obtained from the NBA, for example, is the license to broadcast the live transmission of the game. Therefore, any consumer who receives the broadcast via the network has only the right to use the content as provided by the license, and that is to view the broadcast, & perhaps record it, but only view that recording within the confines of his/her home. The consumer may not "re-broadcast" or "re-transmit" the live or recorded content without obtaining the right to do so directly from the NBA, as the license held by the broadcast network does not extend to beyond what is stated by the network. Any use by the consumer beyond the scope of the license granted the network is violative of the copyright the NBA has over the broadcast of its game. I would suspect that unless recordtv obtains its own license to bit-stream NBA content over the web from the NBA, it is violating the NBA's copyright in the broadcast of its game.
Hope this helps some. Gotta go. |
