This
has been the legal scandal that has gripped the nation for the last month or
so. It has spawned two CNN specials, and has been the hot topic on sports radio
non-stop. This is the story of Donald Sterling. Sterling is the, soon to be
former, owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, an NBA franchise. Donald Sterling
found himself embroiled in controversy when someone leaked tapes of
conversations, he had with his girlfriend, V. Stiviano, to TMZ where he made
racist comments about African Americans in general, and Magic Johnson
specifically. That he made these comments were bad enough. The fact that this
leaked during one of the greatest first rounds in NBA playoff history was just
horrific timing. The backlash from these comments has been coming non-stop,
with the biggest being a potential strike not only by members of the Clippers,
but from players league wide. They refuse to play for a man they consider a
bigot, and they refuse to play in a league that would allow such bigotry. To
quell this potential player uprising and continued media backlash, Adam Silver,
the NBA’s commissioner, banned Donald Sterling for life from the NBA, fined him
the league maximum of $2.5 million, and promised to get Sterling to relinquish
his ownership and sell the Clippers.
This
is a story about Netflix vs Verizon, but it’s also about much more than that. Net
neutrality stands to perhaps change the way we consume the Internet altogether.
In this case Netflix has consistently blamed Verizon for deliberately slowing
down streaming towards their customers. Verizon claims that it’s Netflix’s
responsibility to ensure quality streaming and customer service. But as I
mentioned earlier this argument all centers around the FCC’s ruling on net
neutrality. Netflix is a big proponent and supporter of net neutrality. Verizon
is very much against that concept. Net neutrality is the idea/concept that all
content and usage of the Internet should be treated alike. Those that oppose
this concept, like Verizon, say that they should be able to charge by usage.
In
what’s seemingly becoming a trend, this is a story about a bigger company
attempting to bully another company into succumbing to their demands, to get
them that much closer to becoming a monopoly. Pretty much what this equates to
is that Amazon is attempting to bully publisher Hachette to accept their terms
for e-book pricing (retail and wholesale). To force Hachette’s hand Amazon has
put artificial delays on their books. They’ve made some of their titles
unavailable fro pre-order, increased the shipping time on books they already
have available, and have even blocked certain titles from showing up in search
the way that they should. Stephen Colbert, one of Hachette’s authors that this
affects, gives his take on this situation far better than I ever could…
