Paul Sweeting of Gigaom wonders about the potential abuse of the Time Warner-Comcast plan for paid internet TV…
What happens when we get to Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes nirvana where any multichannel video subscriber whether to cable, satellite or telco TV can access any of the content they subscribe to from anywhere on the web, whether directly through an ISP, through a web portal like Hulu or on mobile platforms? Apart from the sheer complexity of such a system, making it work will require a degree of information-sharing among nominal competitors that practically begs for antitrust scrutiny.
Such a system would just be ripe for abuse, even if intentions were pure going in. And it would only get worse as the number of ways to access the content increased. Of course, you could always break up the vertical monopolies among programmers, distributors and service providers and the problem would be solved, but somehow I dont think thats what Bewkes and Cotton are talking about. Full Article…