Boxee and Hulu have had a contentious history, with Hulu several times blocking its content from working with the Boxee social media software. NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker once told All Things D he didn’t want Hulu content on Boxee because they were committed to keeping the former “an online experience.”

Today during the Congressional hearing to investigate Comcast’s proposed acquisition of NBCU (you can watch the full length video of the hearing below), Representative Rick Boucher asked Zucker flat out about the company’s exclusion of Boxee users from accessing Hulu content. Zucker’s reponse:

“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.”

In a blog post, Boxee CEO Avner Ronen responds to Zucker’s claims of illegal content access. He explains that the workaround that currently allows Boxee users to watch Hulu shows is to simply use a web browser for access. Just like Firefox or Chrome users can watch Hulu content, so can Boxee users: “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.”

Considering neither Mozilla nor Google (nor Microsoft or other browser makers) have distribution deals with Hulu, it’s hard not to concede that Boxee has a valid point. What do you think: should Congress intervene to prevent a company like Hulu from blocking access to particular web TV companies, be it Boxee or otherwise?

Tags: boxee, Browsers, congress, hulu, internet tv, nbc universal, software, tv

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