FTC, DoJ Should Investigate TV Everywhere

[Commentary] TV Anywhere is just a bunch of broadband Internet service providers, who also happen to be cable operators, coming together with the handful of other vertically integrated content companies like Viacom and DIRECTV/Liberty Media to create a common standard so that everyone who has already paid for this content can now also get it online. Ultimately, as long as you subscribe to any cable or satellite system, you will get access to the programming through any Internet provider. How could this possibly be anti-competitive? While everyone is fixated about cable operators trying to keep customers from "cutting the chord," and noting how this ties in with the efforts to impose metered pricing and capacity caps, the anticompetitive impact goes way, waaaayyy beyond locking subscribers into obscenely profitable video bundles. TV Everywhere works to (a) prevent the emergence of "virtual cable" competitors such as Netflix, and (b) protect the current cable programming network business model (as explained by Mark Cuban). It also jeopardizes innovation and further fragments Internet content, as demonstrated by the Hulu/Boxee.tv dust-up back in February.