Last week, Thomas Catan and Amy Schatz of The Wall Street Journal published an article about the Justice Department’s antitrust investigation into whether or not cable companies are manipulating consumers’ access to streaming competitors of television content in order to reduce competition. The investigation’s central question is this: are cable companies like Comcast and Time Warner setting data caps to limit download time, speed, and amount of content in order to stave consumers off from using alternatives like Hulu and Netflix? Furthermore, the DOJ is investigating whether or not selective data limits applied to certain streaming outlets (like the fact that Comcast’s data limits can apply to streaming Hulu, but not Comcast’s own Xfinity services) violates Comcast’s legally-binding oath to not “unreasonably discriminate” against competitors. According to the WSJ, “Attorney General Eric Holder on Tuesday suggested he had sympathy for those who want to ‘cut the cord’ rather than paying for cable channels they don’t watch. At a Senate hearing, Sen. Al Franken (D., Minn.) said cable bills are ‘out of control’ and consumers want to watch TV and movies online. Mr. Holder responded, ‘I would be one of those consumers.’” What’s most important about this story for TV consumers is not so much the specific outcomes of this investigation (though that will no doubt have wide-ranging but uncertain implications), but the fact that lawmakers, regulators, and the industry will continue to be forced to recognize new distinctions being made between cable companies, networks, and individual shows as citizens increasingly

Popular (I think) online comic website The Oatmeal recently uploaded an entry titled “I tried to watch Game of Thrones and this is what happened,” a riveting tale of online piracy. As this is the Internet, the comic has already been widely disseminated with many individuals championing it as a justification for piracy, while others have rallied against it as a perfect example of why pirates are big fat babies. For one view, you can go to what seems to be the first response from Andy Ihnatko, while Devin Faraci also weighed in at Badass Digest. Both of these gentlemen have mostly targeted the pirates themselves in terms I agree with. Let’s run down that quickly before I move on to something both of them have missed.

Depending on your position in life, you most likely fall into one of three camps regarding DVR service. If you’re a user of it, you think it’s one of the greatest inventions of all time. Way better than sliced bread. If you’re someone who has their livelihood tied to commercials, you probably hate it. After all, we use it to skip that shit. The third camp is people who don’t have DVRs and thus don’t really care. Regardless of what camp you fit into, we must all acknowledge that the DVR is here and here to stay. No take-backsies! We have to learn to live with it – well, no, I love to live with it, it frees me up and lets me watch TV on my schedule, but I can understand why some studio people don’t like it. So knowing that a DVR is running in tons of houses, I have a message to Cable Companies: get your shit synchronized!

Robert Fure once again proves he’s angry and full of dirty, dirty words, though surprisingly he manages to be rather civil for 96% of this rant against censorship.

Last night I was invited to a screening of a pilot for a television series as part of the Independent Television Festival, and it might just be a peek into the future of television development.

This article will run from 11:01am to 12:24pm. Set your DVR accordingly. Programming Note: Article may start early or late and end whenever it feels like. You can’t win.

Some evil, real world monsters want to take FEARNet away from you. But will we let them? Oh hells naw!