{"id":8219,"date":"2020-08-24T09:17:50","date_gmt":"2020-08-24T15:17:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=8219"},"modified":"2020-08-24T09:17:51","modified_gmt":"2020-08-24T15:17:51","slug":"streaming-is-laying-bare-how-big-isps-big-tech-and-big-media-work-together-against-users","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=8219","title":{"rendered":"Streaming Is Laying Bare How Big ISPs, Big Tech, and Big Media Work Together Against Users"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.eff.org\/deeplinks\/2020\/06\/streaming-laying-bare-how-big-isps-big-tech-and-big-media-work-together-against\">Katherine Trendacosta<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>For the record, HBO Max is a streaming service from AT&amp;T, which owns Warner Bros. and, of course, HBO. HBO Go, by contrast, is the app for people who subscribe to HBO through a cable or satellite provider. And HBO Now is a digital-only subscription version of HBO. HBO Max is, somehow, not HBO. It\u2019s a new streaming service, like Disney+, offering both the back catalogs of HBO and Warner Bros. and new exclusives. The name, which emphasizes HBO and doesn\u2019t alert people that this is a service where they can watch Friends, has been a marketing problem.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote><p>But the marketing problem, while hilarious, is not where the biggest concerns lie. The real problem is with AT&amp;T offering HBO Max for free to customers with certain plans, not counting it against data caps for its mobile customers, and launching without support for certain TV devices.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote><p>Let\u2019s go through what\u2019s happening here piece by torturous piece. First: HBO Max is free if you are a subscriber to certain AT&amp;T plans\u2014high-speed home Internet, unlimited wireless plans, and premier DirectTV plans, to name a few. But Americans pay more for worse Internet than their peers in Europe and South Korea. With high-speed home Internet, most Americans have two or fewer choices. The most meaningful choice an AT&amp;T home Internet subscriber in the U.S. makes is between expensive low-speed service or very expensive &#8220;high-speed&#8221; service.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Katherine Trendacosta: For the record, HBO Max is a streaming service from AT&amp;T, which owns Warner Bros. and, of course, HBO. HBO Go, by contrast, is the app for people who subscribe to HBO through a cable or satellite provider. And HBO Now is a digital-only subscription version of HBO. HBO Max is, somehow, not [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8219"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8219"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8219\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8220,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8219\/revisions\/8220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}