Here’s Why the Comcast–Time Warner Merger Is Bad - Susan Crawford on 1995 @Home comparison

Here’s Why the Comcast–Time Warner Merger Is Bad | MIT Technology Review:

"TCI, Comcast, and Cox locked arms and agreed to jointly own and fund the @Home network—but TCI had the majority stake. And the group agreed to give @Home the exclusive right to market cable-modem Internet access to their subscribers for five years.

This plan was initially successful: by 2000, @Home had four million subscribers, and 13 other cable companies had joined in the exclusive plan.

But Comcast and Cox didn’t trust TCI. Why? Because, as the majority owner of @Home, TCI had the ability to cause @Home to favor TCI-owned or -affiliated content providers over content providers owned by Cox or Comcast.

And so the shareholders in @Home created the “.Com Committee,” designed to ensure equal treatment and equal access to the @Home network for all content.

The three companies also agreed that no video streams of longer than 10 minutes would be allowed over the @Home network, so as to protect their interests in traditional long-form video pay-TV programming." 'via Blog this'