I recently switched from AT&T back to Comcast and I was horrified when I tired to connect my roku to HBOGO. The message pretty much said my only option was to use the Comcast box and watch On Demand.
So, if this is the same issue: it's not that Comcast is using packet inspection to prevent HBO Go from working, it's that they have not partnered with HBO to allow authentication. So you are paying Comcast for HBO but you are not getting them to vouch for that fact.
HBO Go (in the US anyway) doesn't have "paid subscribers." Comcast customers who have subscribe to HBO as part of their TV packages get access to HBO Go as an additional service. Comcast authenticates subscribers to tell HBO Go whether to allow users access to the service. But in this case, they aren't supporting their authentication on Roku devices.
It's legal in the sense that you are buying an inferior version of HBO from Comcast than you are from other providers. Comcast isn't blocking HBO Go. It's just not giving it to you. Unfortunately, the only way to get HBO Go is through your TV provider (unless they've changed it recently).
A very un-sarcastic "thanks Obama" seems to be in order
edit: strage downvotes considering that Obama specifically stated that this type of behavior is something that he wouldn't condone (once in office) and given that net neutrality is topical...
When it comes to unilateral actions, the president is mostly Commander in Chief of our military. Meaning, he could pull all our troops out of Afghanistan and Iraq and close Gitmo tomorrow just by saying so.
I assume he has similar command control over the NSA, the FBI, and the CIA.
It's important to separate well meaning rhetoric that's out of his hands from the actual lies he's told about the things he has power over.
> When it comes to unilateral actions, the president is mostly Commander in Chief of our military. Meaning, he could pull all our troops out of Afghanistan and Iraq and close Gitmo tomorrow just by saying so.
Unless, for instance, any of that required spending money, and Congress explicitly forbade spending money for the purpose. Or Congress otherwise prohibited the military from doing what the President wanted to direct.
Commander-in-Chief doesn't mean "dictator", it means that Congress' power to "make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces" is limited so as not to allow them to vote to have someone other than, and independent of the authority of, the President direct how the military will operate within the rules Congress has set, it doesn't give the President independent authority to set the rules on his own, or to direct the military in a manner contrary to the rules established by Congress.
> Unless, for instance, any of that required spending money, and Congress explicitly forbade spending money for the purpose. Or Congress otherwise prohibited the military from doing what the President wanted to direct.
Wait, can Congress do that? I know that they approve budgets obviously, but I thought all they could do was allocate it to different departments. I didn't think they could say, "here's this money but you can only use it for this purpose.. you absolutely cannot use it for this other purpose". I thought their only way of stopping some part of the government from doing something was to create a law removing that authority. And it's hard to imagine them removing the military's authority from withdrawing from a war. :)
> I know that they approve budgets obviously, but I thought all they could do was allocate it to different departments. I didn't think they could say, "here's this money but you can only use it for this purpose.. you absolutely cannot use it for this other purpose".
Not only can they do that, that is usually how they allocate money. Even when there is some flexibility in how the funds are spent, that flexibility is defined in the law appropriating the funds.
> And it's hard to imagine them removing the military's authority from withdrawing from a war.
Withdrawing from a war is an unlikely thing for Congress to act to bar, sure, but that's not because they couldn't, just because they would be unlikely to choose to. Closing the detention facility at Guantanamo, well, that's a different story. While they haven't exactly prohibited it, they've removed funds for it from budgets and prohibited the specific steps the administration proposed to take to do it (such as transferring prisoners from Guantanamo to the US.)
Wait, what? Do they seriously do that?
Can Comcast please die any more quickly?