ABC, Cox Bar Ad Skipping in Video on Demand - WSJ.com

ABC, Cox Bar Ad Skipping in Video on Demand - WSJ.com

To me, the beauty of VOD is the ability to skip commercials. ABC and ESPN (through COX) have agreed to disable the fast forward button for their fall offerings.

Does anyone else have a problem with this? Now, this doesn't affect viewers who use digitial video recorders at the time of viewing...YET. How long before it does?

But disable my FF button? Isn't that like Websense on a commercial scale - controlling what we view, not for our protection, but for making a buck? Isn't that worse?

I suppose that I can accept the non-skippable commercials since their VOD offerings will be free. Most web users already put up with short advertising before a free news clip, so this isn't really much of a stretch.