Boxee reacts to NBC CEO Jeff Zucker’s comments on their Hulu content access

Boxee, a company known for their Apple TV software and their soon-to-be-released set top box, has had to deal with the joy and fun of content deals numerous times in the existence of their company. We all know how tricky that can be. In one instance where Boxee was accessing and playing Hulu content, Hulu’s management had to turn off the access of Hulu to Boxee users due to the request of their content advisors. Jason Kilar, CEO of Hulu, stated at the time, “Our content providers requested that we turn off access to our content via the Boxee product, and we are respecting their wishes.” There was not much Boxee could do here as they don’t exactly own the content.

That said, in a congressional hearing examining the acquisition of NBC Universal by Comcast, Jeff Zucker, the CEO of NBC, put a different spin on the situation. As seen in the video embedded below, the conversation went like this:

Rep. Rick Boucher (D-VA): What about Boxee? Mr. Zucker you probably are in a better position to answer that. Did Hulu block the Boxee users from access to the Hulu programs?

Zucker (NBC): This was a decision made by the Hulu management to, uh, what Boxee was doing was illegally taking the content that was on Hulu without any business deal. And, you know, all, all the, we have several distributors, actually many distributors of the Hulu content that we have legal distribution deals with so we don’t preclude distribution deals. What we preclude are those who illegally take that content.

According to Boxee, however, this is false. In a response to this, Boxee has stated:

Boxee uses a web browser to access Hulu’s content—just like Firefox or Internet Explorer. Boxee users click on a link to Hulu’s website and the video within that page plays. We don’t “take” the video. We don’t copy it. We don’t put ads on top of it. The video and the ads play like they do on other browsers or on Hulu Desktop. And it certainly is legal to do so.

Obviously, we have conflicting reports here. And while I’m not a lawyer or expert on content deals in any sense, I’d have to say that I agree with Boxee on this one. Hulu does provide the opportunity for other websites to embed their content, ads and all, into their sites to show their traffic. This makes sense as Hulu is simply getting more video views and therefore more ad views, driving both revenue and traffic to their own site. If Boxee, a company with close to one million users, wants to do so as well and help drive even more traffic to Hulu, then I’d hope Hulu (and when I say Hulu, I mean them and the content providers combined) would appreciate this. However, it appears not.

Zucker did later say that he has always been open to negotiations with Boxee, and while Boxee says, “That has not been our experience,” they also stated they will take his offer and are already contacting him. For Boxee and more accessible content together, let’s hope it works out for them!