HBO hasn’t exactly warmed to the broadband-driven Internet video revolution. Over the years they’ve been accused of poisoning copies of their TV shows available for download via BitTorrent, petitioned the FCC to make DVR recording of subscription video-on demand illegal, and even hinted at possibly suing Slingbox for allowing the re-transmission of their content.

Now as Netflix streaming gains in popularity, HBO Co-President Eric Kessler tells Bloomberg the company has no intention of letting Netflix gain access to HBO content:

“There is value in exclusivity,” Kessler said in an interview. Consumers “are willing to pay a premium for high quality, exclusive content,” he said. HBO’s stand prevents Los Gatos, California-based Netflix from gaining online access to titles from all of the major studios. Netflix members can see films from Walt Disney Co. and Sony Pictures Entertainment online through a deal between the subscription movie service and Liberty Media Corp.’s Starz channel, which has separate accords with both studios.

While that’s certainly HBO’s right, it’s possible they could stand to make more money collaborating with Netflix than competing with them. HBO’s of course protecting their new broadband-video service HBO Go. HBO Go is only available to customers whose ISP or cable provider have struck an arrangement with the company and right now, only Comcast and Verizon have.

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Blogger Dave Zatz directs our attention to the fact that Comcast and Blockbuster have teamed up for a venture called DVDs By Mail, which does exactly what its name suggests.

From the looks of things, this appears to be little more than a marketing effort created by Blockbuster aimed at temping Comcast’s 47.7 million customers with slightly reduced rates. The deal certainly falls in line with Blockbuster’s MO: here you have a company that’s teetering on bankruptcy in large part because they’ve failed to adapt to the broadband age, partnering with the nation’s biggest and fastest broadband ISP to use the U.S. Postal Service to deliver movies.

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As noted back in June, companies like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast started indicating they were actually looking for Congress to begin enacting telecom law “reform.” Why? These three companies have such immense influence over Congress, they’re the ones that are usually ghost writing new laws. Not surprisingly, Politico notes that AT&T, Comcast and Verizon outspent nearly every other major tech giant in lobbying during the second quarter, spending a combined 11.3 million.

What is that money buying? Bills like Sen. Jim DeMint’s (R-S.C.) “Freedom for Consumer Choice Act,” which essentially bogs the FCC down in red tape at AT&T’s behest (AT&T is DeMint’s third largest campaign contributor).

As a South Carolinian, this affects me in more ways than just a few. Fight it, if you can, vote accordingly.

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Bernie Arnason over at Telecompetitor makes the argument that with DOCSIS 3.0 relatively inexpensive to quickly deploy (75 million Americans should have it by the end of the year) and many telcos clinging to aging copper last mile connectivity, the cable industry should have it pretty good competitively over the next few years. Comcast added more broadband customers (608K) in the last two quarters than AT&T, Verizon, and Qwest combined (401K), and cable’s triple play continues to gobble up fleeing copper landline customers. Cable also dominates more than 90% of the VoIP market.

Cable’s traditional weak spot – upstream bandwidth, looks to get some help later this year as cable operators perfect upstream channel bonding. Comcast recently noted that they’re seeing 75 to 100 Mbps upstream in tests. While Verizon’s decision to spend $23 billion on FTTH to the home puts them in a decent position for now, there’s a huge swath of America served by telcos using aging copper infrastructure that many of these companies can’t afford to upgrade to fiber. DOCSIS 3.0 means telcos will up their game somehow:

It all adds up to this perfect competitive storm analogy I referred to early on. This storm compels the telcos who haven’t already done so to respond, primarily with FTTH. Good customer service, local presence, and a solid DSL product are very admirable and noble. But these storm clouds may demand much more.

Can Qwest seriously compete with DOCSIS 3.0 with no money for serious upgrades? Marketing that pretends last mile copper is FTTH can only go so far. When does AT&T decide to stop waiting on VDSL bonding and pony up the cash for the move to FTTH? 3-7 Mbps is the fastest speed offered by Verizon in roughly half of its broadband territories. Luckily for most carriers, they’ll be sheltered from the “perfect competitive storm” Arnason mentions by the simple fact that many of their markets don’t see decent competition. When you’re the only game in town (be it cable, telco, satellite or carrier pigeon), you get to charge whatever you’d like for last-generation service.

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Back in 2007, NBC lawyer Rick Cotton issued a statement to the FCC demanding they force ISPs to take action against piracy for the sake of the American corn farmer. According to Cotton, piracy was becoming such a menace it was keeping people out of theaters, in turn resulting in less popcorn sold. Cotton’s logic was back on display this week as the attorney spoke in Washington at a press roundtable outlining the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s intellectual property agenda. This time, Cotton equated the trading of copyrighted movies and TV shows to a “tidal wave” and “virus” while seemingly embracing ISP filters:

“The ISP community is coming to that recognition,” he said. “We need them to be authorized to take those measures. The specific techniques they use are the second part.” When asked about whether filtering web content would violate web users’ privacy, he said, “Does a virus filter violate privacy?”

With a Comcast acquisition of NBC in process, not too surprisingly consumer groups quickly slapped Cotton in a statement claiming his comments were “unconstitutional and anti-consumer,” while noting that trying to install filters that could detect fair use of a copyrighted file would be impossible. Public Knowledge also didn’t much like Cotton’s virus refernece:

“It is simply ridiculous on any number of levels to compare filtering for copyright to viruses. ISPs are technically able to tell what is a harmful virus and what is not, unlike the situation for copyright content, which may be used legally. Viruses are a danger to the ISPs network, and it is in their best interest to protect against them.”

Cotton subsequently denied to Multichannel News that he was even calling for ISP filters, and that neither Cotton nor the Chamber of Commerce’s Global Intellectual Property Center he chairs were “addressing the question of what technique specifically should be adopted” by ISPs. As most people know, filters are expensive, depend on hardware that can’t always identify content properly, raise privacy issues, and most users would find a way around them anyway.

Instead, what the entertainment industry and ISPs have hashed out in private is a model whereby P2P users are threatened with account disconnection. As has been the case for years, the entertainment industry’s intelligence gathering outfits identify users trading copyright files, then send a DMCA warning letter to the ISP, who then forwards that letter to the users. What’s changed lately is that ISPs have agreed to subsequently threaten those users with account termination, though as we’ve noted in some cases the ISPs appear to be bluffing – wanting to keep the entertainment industry off their back, but not lose paying customers.

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Last week Comcast unveiled their plans to rebrand their Internet, VoIP and TV services all under the “Xfinity” monicker. While Comcast was hoping to create a modern brand that could do battle with AT&T U-Verse and Verizon FiOS, the decision to misspell infinity with “extreme” and painfully cliche 90′s brand stylings wasn’t a particularly inspired or creative choice. The name change was giggled at by users and taunted by blogs. Now Time has taken the mocking one step further, placing it at number one on a list of the “top ten worst corporate name changes” (even worse than Syfy!) even though technically Comcast isn’t changing their name. “Xfinity is infinite potential,” Comcast executive David Watson cornily tells Time.

“Comcast hopes the new moniker will help customers forget the high prices and poor customer service for which it has been criticized in the past,” responds the magazine. Of course “U-Verse” really isn’t any better, but that hasn’t stopped AT&T from selling VDSL, IPTV and VoIP.

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According to the New York Times, Vivendi executives have agreed with General Electric in principle on a price to offload their 20% stake in NBC Universal, eliminating the final obstacle in Comcast’s planned acquisition of the media giant.

Recent leaks from inside the very leaky “secret” negotiations indicated that Vivendi wanted about $500-$900 million more than GE was willing to pay. The word now is that Vivendi is willing to part with their share for a cool $5.8 billion. As it stands, there’s a few loose ends to clear up, but the final deal should be officially announced by Thursday, according to chatty insiders.

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According to Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg, the telco isn’t worried about the threat Hulu poses to their freshly created TV empire, because Hulu will probably be dead in a year or two from now. “This is in for the next eight to twelve months and in two years it won’t matter because the world will have moved on,” the CEO was recently quoted as saying. He might not be wrong — Hulu very well could be headed for also-ran status once Comcast acquires NBC Universal, and does its best to ensure that Hulu doesn’t rock the TV revenue boat or bump up against the cable industry’s TV Everywhere initiative. That said, “cable guys” tend to have a degree of hubris in thinking that Internet video will never really harm them, despite the fact that when/if Hulu dies, there will be a stream of competitors (including piracy) waiting in the wings.

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Comcast will leave decisions about commercial placement for its version in the hands of programmers, according to Matt Strauss, the operator’s senior vice president of new media. “I don’t know what the right model ultimately is going to be,” he said. “Our job is to provide the infrastructure to allow the programmer to decide” how to place ads.

Of course should Comcast’s deal with NBC go through, they will effectively be broadcasters, which means they should probably have an idea of what kind of ad model they’d like to see the broadband video service employ — right? The entire idea of TV Everywhere was to keep customers from cutting the cord. However, if TV Everywhere is a clunky, unskippable ad-laden mess with limited selection and bickering content and delivery partners — the initiative could have the opposite effect of the one intended.

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