The Rotten Word

I’d like to set the record straight regarding Boxee’s access to Hulu. Boxee uses a web browser to access Hulu’s content – just like Firefox or Internet Explorer. Boxee users click on a link to Hulu’s website and the video within that page plays. We don’t “take” the video. We don’t copy it. We don’t put ads on top of it. The video and the ads play like they do on other browsers or on Hulu Desktop. And it certainly is legal to do so.

Boxee is an incredible little application, available on Mac, Windows, and Linux systems. It aggregates streaming content providers from all over the web in one convenient, shiny interface. You can access everything from YouTube to CNN Video to music streaming services like Last.fm.

The quote above is from Boxee CEO and co-founder Avner Ronen, in response to testimony Comcast and NBC executives gave before Congress recently as they try to push their merger deal through the modern-day antitrust minefield.

Boxee has been battling the executives over at Hulu–where I consume the overwhelming majority of television programs I view–about Hulu’s refusal to allow its content to be included in Boxee’s interface. Presumably, Hulu wants the page visits that they wouldn’t get if people were sucking their content out of their site and into Boxee.

As NBC’s Zucker told Congress, Hulu has distribution deals with several outlets that use its content, and probably pay a pretty licensing fee to do so.

A November 2009 Techdirt article talked about how annoyed Hulu has been that people are using the code it provides to embed their videos in other web sites to, well, embed their video in other web sites.

But these “serial embedders,” who just put all of Hulu’s content on their own web page and reap the ad revenue that Hulu should have had, are the real problem. “Specialized browsers”–like Boxee–as Techdirt’s Michael Masnick points out in the article, access the video from Hulu’s web site, and thus don’t engage in all the nasty revenue stealing that serial embedders do. In fact, Boxee is looking at a subscription model of its own, partly with an eye toward paying content provider for premium access to their libraries.

That’s why the Boxee folks argue that, since 1) they’re accessing Hulu via a browser interface instead of just embedding video on their own site; 2) Boxee serves no ads anywhere in its interface, ever; 3) Hulu’s ads are embedded within the videos and thus not lost when Boxee includes their content; and 4) they’re looking at paid content delivery models–just like Hulu–there’s no reasonable basis for prohibiting Boxee from including Hulu in their offerings.

It sounds to me–and I’m by no means an expert on the details–that Hulu just wants all the money it can get, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. After all, they want to avoid charging viewers for as long as they can, and that’s why they’re setting up distribution deals where they can, and to turn a profit that they’re not quite turning on ad sales alone. And, since Hulu’s models is arguably the future of television, for better or worse, it’s important that Congress and, really, the world, looks closely at their successes and failures.

Not to mention the fact that if and when their merger with Comcast goes through, the cable giant will own a huge physical content delivery infrastructure as well as NBC’s content creation arm and Hulu’s internet content delivery system.

That kind of consolidation, while it may not violate any laws or portend any ill intent on Comcast’s part (benefit-of-the-doubt alert…), warrants substantive conversation about the consumption models that will be available to consumers. It therefore, in this humble blogger’s opinion, behooves us all to pay close attention in the coming months.

Hopefully, we’ll see some of the negotiations to which NBC claimed they are open in their testimony–which, by the way, Boxee refutes, implying that they’ve been given the cold shoulder before–and those negotiations will lead to a system that works for both parties. Even if it costs consumers some money, the convenience of anywhere, anytime web delivery of television content seems infinitely more valuable than a television anchored to one or two licensed cable connections in your home.

A good primary source for information on this issue as the merger progresses through regulatory hurdles is C-SPAN’s Archives. You can drill down to Comcast coverage using their Cable Television tag.