ESPN360 Ushers In Cable-ization Of The Internet

Imagine a world where you want to watch videos on, say, Hulu.com, but you are unable to because Hulu has an exclusive deal with TimeWarner. If you want Hulu, and a premium package of websites that includes the New York Times, Yahoo, and iTunes, you can only find them on TimeWarner.

All of the above is hypothetical, but the seeds of that world have already been planted thanks to an exclusive content deal ESPN360.com has with certain internet providers. The reverse of what net neutrality advocates feared is perhaps even more unsettling and more likely—it’s the cable-ization of the Internet.

ESPN’s arrangement isn’t new; it rolled out quietly a couple of years ago under a lot of radars, benefiting no doubt from all the Net Neutrality noise emanating from the provider side. Peer-to-peer throttling, grandstanding on Capitol Hill, ISP executive plans to charge Yahoo a premium to load faster than Google, et cetera et cetera et cetera. Perhaps that was just the tip of the proverbial iceberg; perhaps it was misdirection; perhaps it was providers trying to get the jump on content sites before content sites got the jump on them.

Business is all about leverage, after all.

Sports fans wanting to see ESPN360 content but subscribe to the wrong service provider are greeted with this message:

ESPN executive described the situation as “just the point of view” the company has that speed won’t dictate the marketplace, but rather content. According to a Verizon spokesperson quoted in that same Wired article, Verizon’s cool with it. They’re licensing Disney content, too, which owns ESPN.

And yes, you read that above message correctly. At least part of your government is participating as well.

Remember that New Years Eve scuffle between Viacom and Time Warner Cable when all Viacom channels—Nickelodeon, MTV, VH1, Comedy Central—went blank for a few hours while the two companies worked out their financial difficulties? Won’t it be fun when MSN goes dark across all Comcast-connected computers?

Those of us who watched the Net Neutrality debate closely felt all this maneuvering had something to with the TV/Web convergence. (That’s

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