
Charter, Comcast don’t have First Amendment right to discriminate, court rules - ProAm
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/11/charter-cant-use-1st-amendment-to-refuse-black-owned-tv-channels-court-rules/
======
AaronM
Interesting, I looked at the channels they offer and I couldn't see any reason
why they would refuse to carry the network, none of their programming seems in
poor taste or extreme.

~~~
mikeryan
There's a limited amount of bandwidth that can be carried over your cable line
and its pretty much tapped out until more carriers switch to an IP based
system. Ultimately these providers do need the ability to "discriminate" on
which channels they choose to allocate bandwidth to. It's a strange case
trying to make a racial discrimination case here (more so for Comcast as
apparently someone from Charter said a few things out of line)

~~~
kw71
Well this isnt so much the case anymore with switched networks. This was a
thing 10 years ago when I retired from broadcasting. Basically the headend
sets up a video session for the program if someone in the area tunes to the
channel. This is like vod streaming except more than one viewer can utilize
the session/stream.

~~~
mikeryan
I was going to mention this but didn't want to get too far into the weeds. My
understanding was the the infrastructure rollout to Switched Video has slowed
as providers look at leapfrogging to IP based solutions. Comcast's X1 platform
can run IP based.

~~~
milankragujevic
Hm, I always thought IP based solutions were worse, given my terrible
experience with IPTV (Actual IPTV, over DSL on a different VPI/VCI number)...
+ they can track your viewing habits...

~~~
kw71
Like I said above I retired from this business a decade ago but I have a hunch
that IP is going to be a better experience over docsis or any other broadband
link. I don't see much complaining from fios/uverse customers, and I worked
independently on a metro WAN iptv development in moscow, which worked pretty
well when the residents had fast-ethernet connections, once we got the
infrastructure to handle all the multicast traffic.

~~~
metildaa
IPTV like what Centurylink Prism offers is a really good experience. Extremely
fast channel switching, live previews of the last couple channels you were on,
and a decent UI made for a good experience.

I have yet to find another IPTV provider that offers tthe first two features
mentioned, despite it being possible with ddecade old technology running WinCE
(in Centurylink's case).

------
ggggtez
The TL;DR is: The court says it's ok to say "no" to accepting a channel. BUT
not if it was because of racism.

The trial will focus on whether they can prove it was racism, or some other
reason.

~~~
rconti
Agreed. If Charter said "too few of our customers will pay for this channel,
it's not worth it to us", then they're within their rights. They shot
themselves in the foot by having a VP of programming make racist comments to
protestors. If those racist comments are found to be evidence that they _also_
refused to carry the channel for race-related reasons, then they've got a
problem. If the two facts are unrelated, then they don't.

I wonder what happens if some emails are found during discovery that say "only
X% of our customers are African-American, and X is less than our threshold for
whether a channel will be profitable for us"?

I suspect that would be an illegal reason, as, of course, customers of any
race might be interested in this channel.

~~~
mikeryan
It doesn't seem like the channels in question target an African American
audience.

[http://entertainmentstudios.com/network/](http://entertainmentstudios.com/network/)

Frankly they look like cheap knockoffs of existing channels.

~~~
howard941
Would you make an exception for The Weather Channel?

------
educationdata
"In addition to recounting Entertainment Studios' failed negotiations with
Charter, Plaintiffs' amended complaint also included direct evidence of racial
bias. In one instance, [Charter VP of programming Allan] Singer allegedly
approached an African-American protest group outside Charter's headquarters,
told them "to get off of welfare," and accused them of looking for a
"handout." Plaintiffs asserted that, after informing Charter of these
allegations, it announced that Singer was leaving the company. In another
alleged instance, Entertainment Studios' owner, Allen, attempted to talk with
Charter's CEO, [Tom] Rutledge, at an industry event; Rutledge refused to
engage, referring to Allen as "Boy" and telling Allen that he needed to change
his behavior. Plaintiffs suggested that these incidents were illustrative of
Charter's institutional racism, noting also that the cable operator had
historically refused to carry African-American-owned channels and, prior to
its merger with Time Warner Cable, had a board of directors composed only of
white men. The amended complaint further alleged that Charter's recently
pronounced commitments to diversity were merely illusory efforts to placate
the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)."

\- The evidence of discrimination is extremely weak. None the things mentioned
("get off of welfare", "handout", "boy", "change his behavior") is necessarily
racism. But the result is not surprising, since the ruling is from the 9th
Circuit.

A side note. This kind of law suit properly will increase implicit racial
bias, because it is trying to reenforce the idea that welfare and bad behavior
only or strongly links to African Americans. See: Even completing a Race
Implicit Association Test increases implicit racial bias:
[https://psyarxiv.com/vxsj7/](https://psyarxiv.com/vxsj7/)

~~~
zrail
Leaving everything else aside,

> None the things mentioned ("get off of welfare", "handout", "boy", "change
> his behavior") is necessarily racism.

All of those are explicitly racist when addressing people of color.

~~~
orthecreedence
> > None the things mentioned ("get off of welfare", "handout", "boy", "change
> his behavior") is necessarily racism.

> All of those are explicitly racist when addressing people of color.

Agreed.

I read that and cringed pretty hard. For someone to say calling a black man
"boy" is not racist is either willfully ignorant to an alarming degree or just
plain insincere.

I'm all for differing viewpoints, but let's at least call things what they
are. If you're going to be racist, at least own up to it.

~~~
iamdave
_For someone to say calling a black man "boy" is not racist is either
willfully ignorant to an alarming degree or just plain insincere._

It's probably as another commenter alluded below: people are taking this weird
position of "I haven't personally lived through it so it must be literally any
other explanation" when someone who has direct experience with the type of
behavior exhibited points to it happening, live and in living color and says
"this is a problem for me as a member of this group".

I couldn't ever in a hundred years imagine telling a blind person who says
"this is my experience as a blind person" they're wrong, or what they live
through on a day to day basis isn't valid because I, a person with full vision
experience it differently.

But here we are. Reading some of the comments in this thread has me cringing
just as much as reading the claims alleged in the article [0].

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18495817](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18495817)

