Boxee Routes Around Hulu Ban

from the this-ought-to-be-fun dept

We were among those surprised and confused by content providers trying to prevent Boxee from accessing Hulu content. If you don't know, Boxee is basically an interface for watching video content from the internet on your TV. You hook up a computer to your television and effectively use Boxee as a more TV friendly browser. As part of the list of internet content you could view, Hulu was a popular option, but Hulu's content partners protested -- perhaps because they're negotiating with cable companies on exclusive internet rights. But, there seemed to be absolutely no legal reason to stop Boxee from offering the content. After all, Boxee was just a browser for the content, like Firefox or IE or Safari.

Well, now it looks like Boxee is trying to push the matter a bit. It hasn't re-enabled access to Hulu exactly, but it has launched an RSS reader that will handle video, including Hulu's own RSS feeds. It's not a perfect solution, but effectively Boxee is pointing out to Hulu and its content partners, that they've made the content available for consuming, and all Boxee users are doing is consuming it as offered. It will certainly be interesting to see how Hulu responds...

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Is It Impossible For Hulu To Survive?

from the too-many-competing-interests dept

We've pointed out in the past that you don't compete against piracy by being lame, and you have to give Hulu at least some kudus for doing its best early on not to be lame (despite plenty of expectations to the contrary). However, every time we've mentioned Hulu around here, we've noticed an awful lot of pissed off comments from users, who complain about too many advertisements or the ridiculous location restrictions (or music restrictions) that Hulu has to put on content at the request of content owners. And, now, with the removal of Hulu content from Boxee, some are beginning to question whether or not Hulu is driving people back to unauthorized options for TV content.

The real question, however, may be whether or not it was ever possible for Hulu to really succeed. This isn't to knock the team at Hulu, who have actually gone beyond most expectations in delivering what they could, with a definite focus on usability and making the service as reasonable and useful as possible. But, with so many competing interests tugging them in every direction, it's nearly impossible for the company to actually satisfy the content providers and viewers at the same time. We've seen it over and over again -- with content providers having totally unrealistic expectations of what sort of limitations need to be placed on their content -- not realizing that whether they like it or not, there are other options out there. Hulu did a pretty good job "competing" with those free options, but as content providers get more and more assertive with their demands for limitations, it seems likely that the company is going to find it more and more difficult to compete against better, more engaging and less annoying (if illegal) competing sites. You don't compete against free by being lame. Hulu seems to recognize that -- but Hulu's content providers still haven't gotten the message.

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Hollywood Shoots Itself In The Foot... Again; Removes Content From Boxee

from the there's-stupid-and-then-there's-hollywood dept

I've been hearing such wonderful things about Boxee lately that I had actually been meaning to test it out in the next few weeks. It makes it quite easy to view internet content over your television -- helping to bridge that "final gap" between the internet and your television. Boxee has done a nice job integrating a variety of different legal online video services so you can watch them all via your TV. Obviously, one of the big ones was Hulu, which provides video streams of some of the most popular shows on television. There are some dumb limitations associated with Hulu -- including geographic restrictions and music licensing restrictions -- but for those who can use Hulu it actually works quite well (surprising for an offering set up by NBC Universal and News Corp.). The folks at Hulu have actually been pretty upfront in explaining the limitations and their own frustrations in dealing with some of the very content providers who funded them in knocking down some of the more idiotic restrictions.

However, now it appears those content providers have shot themselves in the foot again. Christopher Froehlich alerts us to the news that Hulu's content providers have demanded that Boxee stop streaming Hulu content and Boxee is going to comply. Hulu has a post on their own blog, where they certainly sound quite apologetic about the whole thing:

The maddening part of writing this blog entry is that we realize that there is no immediate win here for users. Please know that we take very seriously our role of representing users such that we are able to provide more and more content in more and more ways over time. We embrace this activity in ways that respect content owners' -- and even the entire industry's -- challenges to create great content that users love. Yes, it's a complex matter. A tough mission, and a never-ending one, but one we are passionately committed to.

For those Boxee users reading this post, we understand and appreciate that you're likely to tell us that we're nuts. Please know that we do share the same interests and won't stop innovating in support of the bigger mission.

Kudos to Hulu and its CEO for at least explaining the issue in a human, rather than corporate-PR-speak way. And, yes, it's the content providers who are nuts, rather than Hulu. After all, wasn't the point of putting the content on Hulu to get more people to watch the content? Why would they possibly try to make it more difficult for people to watch. Oh, wait, we forgot. NBC Universal thinks it's a good thing to make their content hard to watch.

But, to be honest, it's difficult to see how there's even a claim at all by the content providers at all. They put the content on Hulu so that anyone watching the content via the internet on a computer within the geographic restrictions should be fine. Boxee is just an application on a computer. It's functionally identical to watching the content on your computer screen. The only real difference is that the "screen" is a television instead of a monitor. But the mechanism is identical. It's difficult to see how the content providers can claim any right whatsoever to say that you can watch the content that they purposely put online only on a specific type of screen. I can understand Hulu not wanting to upset its content providers. And I can understand Boxee not wanting to upset Hulu... but I can't see how those content providers have any legal right to make this request at all.

Hell, I imagine users of Boxee (depending on their setup) can simply use the computer they already have hooked up to their TV to surf directly over to Hulu. The interface might not be as nice, but they'll still get to see the content. In those cases, it's not even about the screen -- but the browser. It's perfectly legal for me to hook up my laptop to a TV, surf over to Hulu in Firefox and watch a show. All Boxee does is put that into a different browser -- a better browser for TV. Since when does any content provider get to say that it's okay to watch the content they put online in one browser, but not another? In the end, what good at all does it do to ban Hulu on Boxee other than piss people off?

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Scott McNealy Has Apparently Never Heard Of AOL Time Warner

from the bad-advice dept

At a conference last week, former Sun CEO Scott McNealy offered some unsolicited advice to telecommunications companies: "look into acquiring Internet destination sites that are heavily trafficked." The idea, apparently, is that Internet applications are where all the money is, and so telecom companies that merely transmit bits for their customers risk getting "marginalized." I don't really understand what he means by that, or why it would be a bad thing. As the market for Internet-based applications gets larger and more competitive, a connection to the Internet is going to become more and more valuable. "Marginalized" or not, telecom companies will be able to make a tidy profit charging for Internet access, especially given that there's still relatively limited competition in the broadband market. The way for broadband firms to increase their profits is to focus on providing faster and more reliable Internet connections, so their customers are willing to pay more for access to all the goodies the Internet has to offer.

Diversifying into application or content markets would divert the telcos' focus away from this core competence. Hybrid network/content companies don't exactly have a great track record. The most spectacular example is probably AOL Time Warner, which, um, didn't work out too well. And the examples McNealy cites don't really work either. He mentions eBay's Skype acquisition, but Skype is an application, not a network provider. Google's participation in the spectrum auction is a better example, but Google has made it pretty clear that its goal isn't to direct customers towards its own sites so much as to ensure that the existing telecom companies don't interfere with customers' access to Google properties. And in any event, Google hasn't even won the auction yet, to say nothing of actually building the network. If it does build its own network, it may turn out to be as big of a disaster as AOL Time Warner was. Telcos should stick to what they know best, and leave website development to companies like Google and Yahoo!

Timothy Lee is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Timothy Lee and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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