The Hypocrisy Weblog

According to Swedish IT-news site IDG.se, movie company Universal Pictures is
about to launch a download service for movies in Sweden. This is apparently the second of it’s kind in the world and no details are known so far, so it remains to be seen if it will be a serious option to use for consumers and a competitor to the Peer to Peer networks that offer free downloads for a small risk and little effort for the end consumer.

Boing Boing picked up on the story of Canadian Internet Service Provider Shaw blocking iTunes store and / or their podcasts due to the content coming from multiple sources.

Over the past month Rogers (ISP) in Canada has put some software on their networks that prevents activity for BitTorrents, P2P, IRC, and also along with that is a rule that if you are trying to download a large media file from more then 1 server it will be dropped. When you download a Podcast from iTunes it downloads that file from multiple servers in the background (I confirmed this by watching my cable modem logs). As soon as it tries to use more than 2 different servers for the download, it just stops. That’s the reason why Podcast downloads stop at random places – it’s the point where a 2nd server is involved in the download. The same issue causes timeouts and cut-offs in the iTunes music store.Here is the problem – when anyone calls Rogers about the problem they say it is either a router, firewall or Apple problem and they shrug you off.

Hundreds or thousands of people in Canada can no longer get Podcasts or purchase music from the iTunes Music store. This is BAD. Please, Apple, contact Rogers and sort it out. So many people have called Rogers with no luck.

The question I ask myself is why an Internet Service Provider should be capping bandwidth or limiting net-services in any way?! For security issues I do not mind certain restrictions, such as blocking port 25 for outgoing email to reduce spam coming from the network, and/ or blocking the ports135 to 139 in order to reduce common worm-threats – but there should always be some kind of user agreement where the advanced user should be able to sign a paper and taking all responsibility for unlocking these ports.

What your Internet Service Provider should do is to deliver you an unfiltered Internet-connection, if you choose to have this. With no traffic limitations or other restrictions. What you do with your Internet connection should be your business and responsibility, no-one else should be able to dictate what sites you surf to, what content you choose to download and so on. What should be applicable is the laws of the country you reside in, not the arbitrariness of your Internet Service Provider.

So, if you are a customer of Shaw or any other Internet Service Provider that is limiting your Internet-access, vote with your feet and with your wallet: switch to a provider that will provide you with un-filtered access. Sooner or later, your old provider will be forced to change their policy.

Slashdot writes:

“Steve Soderberg’s latest film will be released in a manner that directly challenges the traditional Hollywood distribution chain. Soderberg’s been influenced by Mark Cuban, the dot-com billionaire who owns the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks, and Todd Wagner, another dot-commer whose ideas about the movie business are radical departures. Wagner’s financing this one. The movie, Bubble, is the first of six that Soderberg will film in HD video; all will be released simultaneously in theaters, as HDNet movies, and on DVDs.” From the article: “As independents, Soderbergh and Wagner are willing to talk openly about subjects that are being hotly debated behind closed doors elsewhere in Hollywood. When Disney chief Robert Iger recently brought up the concept of shortening the window between theatrical release and DVD, he was fiercely criticised by the National Association of Theatre Owners.”

Steve Soderberg is doing what should’ve been done a long time ago: release a film in multiple distribution-chains at once and see how these compare with each other. This is especially wise of a director such as Steve Soderberg who makes movies that are slightly different from those of Steven Spielberg and Ridley Scott (i.e. is films that don’t have a mastodont budget and are aimed at a mass-audience). I doubt that this experiment or even the discussion will be repeated again by any of the above filmmakers, but it’s most certainly healthy that it has been done by such a big fish as Soderberg.

Well done.