From: malQassiRmilaMtion@gmail.com   
      
   		       I Have Seen This Before   
      
         Copyright (C) 2020 E. William Horne. All Rights Reserved.   
      
   Here in the mountains of western North Carolina, there is no   
   over-the-air TV within range, and I'm retired and living on a fixed   
   income, so I don't choose to pay for TV via Cable.  My Internet   
   connection, however, is provided by the local Cable TV outfit. In   
   exchange for my monthly payments, they have been providing a somewhat   
   reliable and "fast enough" Internet connection since I moved here.   
      
   Now, it's being cheapened by a bad actor.   
      
   Having enjoyed an "open" pipe for a few years, I'm TO'd because   
   someone appears to have started copying Comcast. For the time I've   
   been here, my streaming box has worked normally: I have a Netflix   
   subscription and a Prime subscription, and those work OK. We also   
   watch the PBS news program, which my wife prefers, and Frontline, and   
   so I donate some money to the local PBS affiliate and we see shows   
   about things like the Darién Gap and the declining standard of living   
   that working class people in the rust belt are enduring.   
      
   We also watch the CBS streaming news service, called CBSN, that   
   provides streaming versions of The Sunday Morning and Face the Nation   
   programs, both of which we watch on Sunday mornings, since lately my   
   Quaker meeting isn't.   
      
   Today, the Sunday Morning program was barely watchable: the CBSN feed   
   was interrupted again and again by extra, unannounced commercials for   
   nationally-known commodity goods like McBurger and an insurance   
   company. In other words, someone, somewhere was clipping the show's   
   content to cram extra commercials into the feed.   
      
   I have seen this before: in Massachusetts, Comcast used to interfere   
   with connections going to "home" computers, which meant that my Linux   
   machine couldn't receive or send email on my behalf, and I couldn't   
   show the web site I wrote for my son's Boy Scout troop. Worse yet,   
   they would lie to my face and deny it when I complained, and remove the   
   restriction for two or three days, and then resume their interference.   
      
   I used to be a broadcasting engineer, and clipping was a big no-no   
   back then: I know that streaming media isn't subject to the same rules   
   as broadcast TV, but I don't think anyone in between CBSN and me is   
   entitled to substitute advertisements for one- and two-minute portions   
   of CBS's program.   
      
   Bill   
      
   P.S. I'm not sure if this qualifies as "telecom" material, but as I   
   wrote above, I've seen this before - and if this is anything like   
   Comcast used to be, then the next step will probably be a demand that   
   I pay for a new feed or account because I use a VPN to review and   
   publish the Telecom Digest.   
      
   --   
   Bill Horne   
   (Remove QRM from my email address to write to me directly)   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)