streaming

Last month, consumers in Pennsylvania got a nasty surprise when they opened their bills for streaming-media services, such as Netflix, thanks to Keystone State lawmakers’ obsession with tax-and-spend policies.

With great fanfare, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Thomas Wheeler is calling for sweeping changes to the way cable television set-top boxes work. In an essay published Jan. 27 by Re/Code, Wheeler began by citing the high prices consumers pay for set-top box rentals and bemoaning the fact that alternatives are not easily available.

Chicago’s Netflix tax took effect on September 1st and already Chicagoans are seeing the ill effects. Nine plaintiffs have filed a lawsuit challenging Chicago’s authority to tax a streaming Internet service with the 9% surcharge it typically reserves to other forms of entertainment.

Imagine if one company out of the Fortune 500, #474 with ~$6b in revenues, and 2,000 employees, representing about .03% of U.S. GDP, and .06% of the population, comprised 36%of all the vehicle traffic going in one direction on our interstate highway system on any given day.

Hot on the heels of the announcement of a new streaming service from cable channel HBO (reported here last week), broadcast TV giant CBS has begun a standalone streaming service to deliver CBS programming.

As announced yesterday, Aereo, a streaming broadcast TV company, was found to be violating copyrights on programming it was providing, given that the almost live broadcasts it made available represented a public performance of the content and hence was illegal under copyright law. In plain speak, Aereo’s entire business model was to take that which didn’t belong to it and sell it. Try selling access to your neighbor’s guest room on AirBnB, or taking your neighbor’s otherwise unused car to use for your own Uber sideline, and see how things work out.