[ NNSquad ] Re: Internet Becomes Weapon in Fox-Cablevision Fight

[Barry Gold <BarryDGold@ca.rr.com>]

On 10/19/2010 6:40 PM, Lauren Weinstein wrote:
> Internet Becomes Weapon in Fox-Cablevision Fight
>
> http://bit.ly/aff1st  (New York Times)

I think this illustrates the futility of what Fox was trying to do.  It 
fails in two ways:

1. Anybody who is reasonably net-savvy will simply go through an 
anonymizing proxy, thereby defeating the fox.com and hulu.com block on 
Cablevision IP addresses.

2. In the process, they blocked access for some people who _were_ paying 
for Fox content, e.g., via satellite services.  That must have turned 
some faces red at Fox.  Or maybe not; from what I've seen, News Corp. is 
completely shameless.

  [ Beyond the policy issues, the apparent fact that (2) was not
    adequately considered *before* blocks were deployed, would seem
    to call into question the technical competence of the involved
    parties.  The lack of "appropriate" blocking granularity should
    have been completely obvious ahead of time.

       -- Lauren Weinstein
          NNSquad Moderator ]