Streaming Media Blog

Acacia has been doing this for years, they have a very big warchest filled with the money from previous extortions.

They simply bit off more than they could chew, you can bet that in the future they're not going to change their game much, they will just go after smaller companies again.

I really hope that this will set precedent in the sense that a future defendant will be able to point to this suit and link this party with their previous loss, unfortunately that is not how it normally works in the courtroom.

It's a pity that the lawyers didn't get reprimanded for bringing this case, that would have been better still. After all, if you can get the legal profession to think twice before bringing bogus lawsuits then Acacia et al will have do a lot of homework beforehand instead of hoping that the sheer pressure of a lawsuit will cause their opponents to capitulate, as has happened so frequently in the past.

Here's a link to a previous case they lost, it doesn't seem like that deterred them much:

http://www.eff.org/files/acacia-patent-invalidated.pdf

and a blog article about that:

http://blog.streamingmedia.com/the_business_of_online_vi/2009/09/good-day-for-the-industry-federal-court-invalidates-acacia-streaming-patents.html

Another party that should be in the docket here is the patent office, they should somehow be made liable for the cost of litigation stemming from the issuing of patents that should never have been granted in the first place.

Thanks a lot for your response (and to the others who responded as well, appreciate it!). What you're saying makes sense, but just to play devils advocate...

Disclaimer: The blog I'm about to post was linked from Comcast's blog. They claim he is independent, I know nothing about him.

"Netflix could use multiple providers to connect to ISPs and could also use third party CDNs like Akamai, EdgeCast and Limelight, who are already connected to ISPs, to deliver their traffic. In fact, this is how Netflix delivered 100% of their traffic for many, many years, using third-party CDNs. Netflix likes to make it sound like there is only one way to deliver videos on the Internet when in fact, there are multiple ways."[1]

It would seem to me that if Comcast is using all the bandwidth they've purchased from Level 3 than it's a simple reality for them that they'll need to increase that bandwidth or they'll see reduced service. I don't see why this is explicitly either side's problem. It seems like it would be great if they could figure out a mutually beneficial situation, but I guess I fail to see the moral hazard. If Comcast doesn't want to upgrade their network who cares? Barring, of course, the monopoly argument, I see no moral hazard here.

I also see no reason that this has anything to do with net neutrality. It seems like Netflix is simply so big they have to act more like an ISP than they used to.

[1]…

Facebook 'Pages' are a rough analogue to Twitter personas [1]. Anyone can create a 'Page' with an arbitrary name, and which can be followed, interacted with, and be used to make public posts.

But Facebook should figure out if they want the cake, or if they want to eat it, because they can't have it both ways. In the early days, public posts on Facebook were actually public, and viewable by anyone without needing to (or being begged to) log in to Facebook.

But they changed this behavior sometime in or after 2012 [2], and now nothing that is generated by personal profiles is ever fully-public, and only 'Pages' have the ability to produce content that's viewable-without-login. A good example of this latter is John Carmack's posts (of Oculus), which albeit publicly viewable in theory, present a nag-bar overlay asking the user to log into Facebook [3].

[1] https://www.facebook.com/help/104002523024878

[2] http://blog.streamingmedia.com/2012/10/public-facebook-pages-no-longer-viewable-unless-you-have-a-facebook-account.html

[3] https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=1818885715012604&id=100006735798590

Our family watches a lot of Netflix. My kids will watch several movies or shows throughout the day, my wife watches her shows, and we might throw a movie on in the evening after the kids have gone to bed. If the average size of a 2 hour movie on Netflix is 1.8GB (source: http://blog.streamingmedia.com/the_business_of_online_vi/2009/03/estimates-on-what-it-costs-netflixs-to-stream-movies.html) and if we watch on average move than 2.7 movies a day, then we will almost definitely hit our 150GB limit every month. Especially considering that we use the internet for a lot of other stuff too, like video chatting with out of town family members, work related file transfers, offsite backups, etc.

We don't use bittorrent, we don't download music illegally, but we will most definitely be dropping AT&T for a different service, as soon as we find one that won't cap our usage (since Comcast is the only cable provider available in our area).

This is crap.

I feel like every time internet speeds increase I find reasons why I'd want it to be a bit faster. Currently, 4k video adoption is likely being held back by bandwidth speeds: http://blog.streamingmedia.com/2015/01/4k-streaming-bandwidth-problem.html - Youtube recommends encoding 60fps 4k video at 53-68 Mbps, which is beyond many people's internet connections. The business potential of technology rarely arises until the mainstream customer can use it.

This study quantifies the gains from a fairly macro perspective: https://www.ericsson.com/news/1550083. 0.3% GDP growth for doubling internet speeds seems reasonable and is not unsubstantial. My guess is doubling internet speeds is cheaper than e.g. adding public transportation to even a small number of cities.

I don't understand why anyone cares about Netflix 4K. Their regular HD video bitrate maxes out at 3.9Kbps, apparently.[1] Their "Super HD" takes you up to 6mpbs. OTA television signals are at 18mbps.[2] And Blu-Ray can go up to 40mbps.[3] Increasing the number of pixels without increasing the bitrate doesn't really fit any more actual picture info into the stream.

1) http://blog.streamingmedia.com/2013/09/netflix-doubles-video-quality-making-6mbps-superhd-streams-available-everyone.html
2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Television_Systems_Committee_standards
3) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray_Disc#Bit_rate