It’s hard to find good news revolving around television and media these days, aside from Blockbuster finally dying a highly deserved death. Cable bills are getting higher than ever, every week you have cable and content providers duking it out over costs with the consumer paying the price and worse of all, we might be losing the internet as we know it.
Luckily it’s not all doom and gloom thanks to the introduction of the Consumer Choice in Online Video Act, proving there are some still fighting the good fight in the halls of Congress. Now this is a wobbly proposition in light of recent events, but it’s nice to know that some good can still come out of DC.
The proposal comes from Senate commerce chair, Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) and calls for a boost to digital video services with limits to existing cable provider abilities to hinder content delivery. From The LA Times:
“My legislation aims to enable the ultimate a la carte — to give consumers the ability to watch the programming they want to watch, when they want to watch it, how they want to watch it, and pay only for what they actually watch,” he said in a statement unveiling the bill.
That’s like music to my ears. Fire up the incinerator and send some of these channels to Hell where they belong!
Rockefeller’s bill would attempt to limit the ability of the cable companies to engage in activity that would hinder online video distributors, limit broadband providers from degrading internet connections to online video services and most importantly, give consumers the power to clearly understand charges on their bill and choose what they are paying for monthly.
Is this perfect? Not by a long shot. And the chances of it passing are slim with Sen. Rockefeller retiring in 2014 and limited support from across the aisle. But it does bring the conversation into a grander scale and offers up a solution to the vice grip we currently see on the cable industry.
Now let’s all meet back in twenty more years to discuss the iron tight grip that Netflix is holding on our media content delivery and propose ways to stop it so we can finally get episodes of “Wings” beamed directly into our skulls. I love that adorable foreigner Antonio!