Just got stopped in my tracks by this passage in Plans for ‘TV Everywhere’ Bog Down in Tangled Pacts, in The Wall Street Journal:
Nearly three years after Time Warner Inc. and Comcast Corp. kicked off a drive to make cable programming available online for cable subscribers, the idea of TV Everywhere remains mired in technical holdups, slow deal-making and disputes over who will control TV customers in the future.
Say what? Control?
Excuse me, but no. Cable doesn’t control us now, and won’t control us in the future, either. As long as Cable keeps trying to choke us, we’ll keep cutting the cords.
Not surprisingly, Cable calls Internet-based distribution of content “over the top,” or OTT. Up here, over the top of cable’s clutches, is the everywhere we call the world.
Whether or not cable and phone companies succeed in building out the fully licensed world (that is, sucking everywhere down under the lids of their closed systems), we will remain free. We can live without you if we have to. Always could, always will.
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