Oh no! Newsmax is being dumped by multiple major cable companies too! Why can’t right wing fake news outlets make money? I thought you guys claimed to be great at business….but apparently only when someone else pays the bills?

Your video, The First Honest Cable Company | Net Neutrality, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Now try figuring out how cable company bills are up to 40% higher than advertised...

The world wide web is under attack
They're taking it away but we're pulling it back
The world wide web is under attack
They're taking it away but we're pulling it back

So the FCC won't let me be
They want to stack the deck for the ISPs
but we've got a couple of tricks up our sleeves
It's far too important to leave to police
it could lead to the streets
a breach of the peace
and even decrease our freedom of speech
there's never been a bigger reason to read up
and see what's agreed 'cause of greed for the green and deceit
The greener the leaf, the sweeter the tree
the quicker they'll chop it down and leave nothing but tree stumps; debris
the damage is done, no refund received
see, the thing about net neutrality
is unless you get huge salaries
? the paramedic won't rescue casualties
' til they've seen to the rich next dude's allergies
they'll prioritise cash over content
wanna send one bit? That's one cent
What nonsense, man it's scaring me
a planet of plenty's selling scarcity
Innovation paved the way
Now invaders are paying to take it away
but they ain't gonna make it today
! Letting that happen's a major mistake
If Lessig was rapping he'd tell you the same
LETTING THAT HAPPEN'S A MAJOR MISTAKE
Tim Berners Lee baked us a cake
and they've taken the cherry.. AND THE CAKE
discrimination is happening today
to blacks and to gays and to packets of data
though ethically they're exactly the same
so Oi, we're not gonna stand 4 it m8

U WOT?
THE FOK U SAYIN BRUV?
U WOT M8??????
! THE FOK U SAYIN BRUV
U WOT?
FAK OFF U ARSEHOLE!

The world wide web is under attack
They're taking it away but we're pulling it back
The world wide web is under attack
They're taking it away but we're pulling it back

I'm from the place John Oliver came from
but no matter where you live you should be singing the same song
at long last, I'm putting Comcast on blast
'cause they never learn their lesson like they're in the wrong class
well I'm the professor and I'm setting you with one task
Get them knocked back like a shot glass
Straight in front of me's a cable company
The way they're behaving's unbelievable
Comcast is in league with the devil
and it's pissing me off, I'm not even American
! Take a peek, see from the evidence
Netflix had to pay a fee to get better links
it's a shakedown, communication breakdown
There's a bully in the playground
I had enough of that at school, won't lay down
lay a finger on me, you'll be laid out
You'll be laid out
You'll be laid ou
You'll be laid out
You'll be laid out
lay a finger on me, you'll be laid out

The world wide web is under attack
They're taking it away but we're pulling it back
The world wide web is under attack
They're taking it away but we're pulling it back

Taking it back, we're taking it back
We're taking it, we're taking back

Ummm... I'm confused. Does Trancecoach and others like him think that Netflix doesn't pay to access the Internet? That Google, Amazon, Netflix and the like all have a free access pass to the Internet? Or when they say "In other words, people who stream video should pay for it, and not the people who don't." are they talking about end users and not the companies paying millions to access the Internet already? Or are they confused on other aspects?

Perhaps some aspects of this video confused them...

Right now if a person pays $45 a month for 15Mps they should expect all that content delivered to them at 15Mps. The way the ISPs want to rig it, is they want to go to Netflix/YouTube/Google/Amazon and other services and make them pay extra to get to that 15Mps. If Netflix doesn't pay then the ISP slows that content down to 10Mps, even though the end user is paying for 15Mps access. They aren't coming to the end user, yet, and having them pay extra for streaming access as shown in this video, though I'm sure they'll triple dip that too eventually. (Another problem I have with the video, beyond suggesting they'll just charge the end user extra, is that Netflix and others are willing partners in this scam, when Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Netflix and all the others have been the biggest ones to support Net Neutrality and are fighting against the cable companies, while the video seems to suggest they'll handing the money over willingly.)

And if they mean the end user... then a person not streaming and only needing access to basic text and web stuff can get the basic 3Mbps option for only $30 or 2Mps option for $15. Streaming users do pay extra already. They pay for the extra bandwidth... if all you do is browse Facebook and tweet and the like and are using the 15Mbps or higher plans than you are an idiot. The end users do pay. As do the content companies like Netflix and YouTube/Google, Amazon and the rest...to the tune of millions a year. Yes, the content itself is far more expensive. For Netflix streaming a movie is cheaper than sending the DVD, postage is semi-cheap, but the people cost a lot. Still, they pay to access the Internet just like everyone else. Nobody is getting a free ride. This is just the ISPs trying to double, and potentially triple dip fees, and Net Neutrality seeks to stop them from double and potentially triple dipping. Bad enough we have to put up with banks double dipping ATM fees...

Big companies like Google, Netflix, Amazon and the like can potentially pay the fees if they have to. The question then becomes can sites like videosift pay whatever ComcastWarner, Verizon, AT&T want? I know my little blog couldn't pay extra... not that my site's users would need more than the 3Mps plan, if that, to access most of the content... save of course when I embed a YouTube video I made.

TLDR: The end user already pays extra if they stream above and beyond what an end user who doesn't stream pays. Also Netfilx, Amazon, Google and the like all pay millions to access the Internet, they don't get their access for free. What the ISPs want to do is tell Netflix, if they want to reach that customer who's paying $40 for 15Mps access at the full speed that consumer is already paying for, then Netflix has to pay that consumer's ISP in ADDITION to the costs they are already paying. If they don't pay, then the consumer is given that content at a slower speed than what they are paying their ISP to get it at. The ISPs are trying to double dip, and someday may triple dip. Net Neutrality would stop the ISPs from doing that.

Free market doesn't come into it. The internet itself is not a free market invention. It is essentially a public service that we allow contractors (the ISPs) to maintain in the same way that building companies maintain roads.

The internet itself (i.e. the physical network and the IP layer) grew out of DARPANet; a US government-funded defence initiative and the world wide web (the HTTP layer, HTML, etc) came from CERN; an EU multi-state research project.

The point is that the infrastructure itself was not created by the cable companies, they merely built on it. And they have no more right to decide to charge for different data than a road maintenance company does to charge different freight companies different rates.

*related=http://videosift.com/video/The-First-Honest-Cable-Company

The First Honest Cable Company has been added as a related post - related requested by mxxcon.

*dead but there's alternative directly from the source
http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/yueh39/bummed-out-by-the-cable-company

Congratulations! Your video, South Park On Cable Companies, has reached the #1 spot in the current Top 15 New Videos listing. This is a very difficult thing to accomplish but you managed to pull it off. For your contribution you have been awarded 2 Power Points.

This achievement has earned you your "Golden One" Level 1 Badge!

You can actually complain to the actual broadcasters. Its likely more effective than complaining to the cable companies, seeing as they actually have some say. Or you could complain to congressman and ask for bills forcing ala carte service. that would be effective.

If you haven't had cable service in three years than yeah a lot has changed. In my area, Comcast went all digital to reduce bandwidth used by their television service on their lines (which happily resulted in them doubling the speed on most of their internet packages as a result). Now if your bill is late (like 30 or 40 days late, not right away) of you decide to quit their service its off the same day. You just get an activation page on internet and the cable says "one moment please".

All you say is true, but I am not able to complain to individual channels or their overlord conglomerates. Why would they care what I say? The only people I can take my issue to is the cable provider. If the cable provider lost 50% of its subscribers due to annoying bundling, maybe the upstream folks would notice. Then they could articulate the problem, since they would lose money, too. I think it is pretty much the only choice we have.

We have 2 Internet+TV providers in town here. One is the traditional cable service the other is the old telephone company that added TV. I got rid of cable TV about a 3 years ago and increased my internet speed. Every time the cable company called to offer TV, I would always ask if I could select my own channels, they said no, and I asked them to call me back when they can. They always said bundling was upstream and I understood it, but it still doesn't excuse the practice.

I certainly am happy with Netflix right now.

Each time cable had to be turned off or adjusted, it always involved someone coming out to the alley. I would always have free cable for 5 to 90 days, depending, but that is probably back in the analog cable days and not if we are talking about the new digital cable boxes. Depends what tech you are using.

Channel lineups are negotiated by the providers not the cable companies and your rates are largely the providers fault as well (blame espn...alot). Also a cable company can stop service the same day you ask them too since the service is authorized electronically, not dependent on a cable being connected. But no its cool, keep blaming the cable companies, and watch as "Internet tv" options end up charging you just as much and forcing you to buy packages the same way to watch content that was provided to the cable companies two nights earlier.

I think there's three main points here:

(1) The availability of shows online legally and illegally is what has encouraged people to invest in deeper storylines that build over time rather than episode to episode sitcom with little continuity. The pilot model and short term nature of these shows comes from a different era where there wasn't that same availability to catch up on a show you missed. As a result, people were reluctant to get overly involved in a storyline, nowadays it's the opposite.

(2) I think cable companies are always going to struggle to embrace video on demand because their advertising agreements as a major source of revenue (compared to subscriptions for Netflix) require them to stretch out the broadcast of the show. I'd wager that as an ad sponsor, the value of being able to reinforce a brand weekly as a opposed to dozens of times over short several day binge weekend is much larger.

(3) US TV tends to be based on very short term contracts and consequently short term narratives and story arcs. This becomes particularly evident where shows that never expected to make it to their 4th or 5th season see characters acting irrational and appearing to exhibit multiple personality disorder as writers try to inject drama into underdeveloped characters. You can see the lack of long term planning, and the writing looks like it's been done episode to episode, with the result being a mess. I'd say that this was a big issue with Lost and Heroes (subjectively speaking).

Comparatively, I would argue the success of something like Game of Thrones is partly attributed to a ready-made long term narrative from the source material which avoids these usual issues. In the case of House of Cards, they not only had the UK version to base it on and the additional flexibility that Netflix provided and I'm sure these were major contributing factors to the strength of the show.

Congratulations! Your video, The First Honest Cable Company, has reached the #1 spot in the current Top 15 New Videos listing. This is a very difficult thing to accomplish but you managed to pull it off. For your contribution you have been awarded 2 Power Points.

This achievement has earned you your "Golden One" Level 3 Badge!