Interesting!
The Commissioner raises a number of issues I was not aware of, and to be fair
I'm not certain are accurate. His concerns about theft of service and "free
two-way streets" are certainly worthy of further discussion. As they say, the
devil is always in the details...
I am particularly concerned by his assessment that the MVPD proceeding could be
used to regulate OTT services as MVPDs, services that do not offer traditional
MVPD bundles. I, perhaps mistakenly, assumed the NPRM was just considering
extending the program access rule to new MVPDs. Apparently O'Rielly believes
that the FCC may try to force extend the access rules from live linear networks
to "programs." Or force Netflix to sell its original content to the legacy
MVPDs.
I guess anything is possible in The hallowed halls of Washington regulators...
Bert wrote:
The bottom line remains the same, though. I agree with O'Reilly that the FCC
can simply do nothing. The mandatory proprietary STBs are disappearing on
their own.