Bell Canada kills video store, creating new round of DRM victims

by Michael Geist on Jun 16, 2009 at 12:34 pm

Bell has quietly announced that it is closing its Bell Video Store (coverage here and here) with plans to instead focus on its Bell TV Online service that provides online access to movies and television shows for its subscribers. The closure serves a reminder of the consumer risk associated with DRM, since purchasers of videos will lose access to them once the service shuts off and they switch computers or devices. Moreover, the shift to the online service again raises the concerns associated with Bell's throttling practices, since subscribers get unfettered access to the Bell-backed TVOnline offering but throttled access to competing content made available over the Internet via BitTorrent.

Michael Geist is a law professor and the Canada Research Chair in Internet and e-commerce law at the University of Ottawa.

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Mike Kenyon
Jun 17, 2009 at 6:21 am
Where does this—Deterring access through Bell Internet while encouraging the medium where they make money—fall with respect to the anti-trust laws? Surely this sort of move is illegal and disingenuous. Bell claims the throttling is due to bandwidth and network stress, but it's more likely that money is the bigger issue.
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