In EU, Google Accused of YouTube "Free Ride" 449
An anonymous reader passes along a Financial Times piece that covers a push by EU telecoms to get Google to pay them directly — years after US ISPs began rattling that sword, to little effect thus far. "Some of Europe's leading telecoms groups are squaring up for a fight with Google over what they claim is the free ride enjoyed by the technology company's YouTube video-sharing service. Telefónica, France Telecom, and Deutsche Telekom all said Google should start paying them for carrying bandwidth-hungry content such as YouTube video over their networks.... Some European telecoms groups fear Google will reduce them to 'dumb pipes' because the internet search and advertising company pays the network operators little or nothing for carrying its content. Rick Whitt, a senior policy director at Google in Washington ... said Google was spending large amounts on its own data networks to carry its traffic to the point where it is handed over to telecoms companies round the world." Note that FT.com operates on a "first few per month free" paywall basis.
dumb pipe (Score:5, Interesting)
Some European telecoms groups fear Google will reduce them to 'dumb pipes'
And I 'dumb pipe' is all I ever expected from my ISP, and it is what I'm paying for! If they want Google to pay for delivering the content, I will get access for free, right? Bullshit.
Why don't telecoms pay google? (Score:5, Interesting)
If we're not going to buy into net neutrality, why does it follow that google should pay the telecoms? Why shouldn't they pay google for enhancing their service?
If google stopped serving pages to people connecting through specific ISPs, those ISPs would go under. Who here wouldn't change their provider if they couldn't get google? You wouldn't really be on the net without google.
Accounting (Score:5, Interesting)
Remminds me of the story about the rich man and the poor village....A rich man walks into a hotel in a poor village where all the bussinesses are in debt. He gives the hotelier $100 for a room on the condition that if he doesn't like it he will take the money back and leave. The hotelier gives him the keys, confident the rich man will like the room he takes the $100 and pays the grocer for the food he bought on credit. The grocer takes the $100 and pays back the farmer the money he owes him, the farmer uses it to pay back the blacksmith who then goes to the hotel to pay off his debt to the hooker who in turn gives it to the hotelier for past rent. The rich man comes back dissatisfied with the room, takes the $100 and leaves the village. Nothing has changed but the village is now debt free.
Re:Interesting (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm from the Netherlands, so I don't deal with the providers in question.
Interesting detail is that these companies are mostly large monopolies, so google could simply start complaining about monopoly abuse.
And for added worries to those companies: the EU tends to respond quite allergic to monopoly abuse.
If that wasn't enough, wait until various consumer organizations learn about this. While they're basically powerless in the US, over here they can generate a world of hurt for companies.
I'd actually like them to try this, things can become really interesting over here if that happens. The net result will probably be guaranteed net neutrality by the various national laws.
Re:Interesting (Score:2, Interesting)
Interesting how you can always find Deutsche Telekom behind these ideas. I'm so sick of their self proclaimed sanctity. I say let DT block youtube so that all the users migrate to another ISP. My bet is that would be the very last thing they ever did as an ISP.
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Interesting)
You're using "The EU" to refer to both the EU's competition regulators, and EU-based businesses. The former have nothing to do with the current action, and the latter are behaving as they would be expected to in an unregulated free market: petulantly and with no regard for their customers.
Re:Seems like the bandwidth has already been paid (Score:2, Interesting)
Maybe Google should charge them (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Interesting (Score:3, Interesting)
They're originally telco's. They're not used to being dumb pipes because only a decade or so ago, they mostly weren't.
Wha? What is a Telecommunications company besides a dumb pipe? Does your phone company's hold-muzak count as original content?
Re:Interesting (Score:3, Interesting)
They're originally telco's. They're not used to being dumb pipes because only a decade or so ago, they mostly weren't.
I don't get this "dumb pipe" thing. What other kind of pipe do they hope to sell ? In Europe ISPs typically sell three services when they hook you up via ADSL : Internet access, telephone (via VOIP) and TV (as streamed MPEG2 or 4). Some of them separate those offers but increasingly, you tend to just get the whole package, whether you want it all or not.
My ISP only has one offer with all 3 services on top of ADSL2+ (and a WiFi and video-recording set top box thrown in) for 30 €/month (in France). No cap or limit on anything. You also get IPv6 if you like and a user settable reverse DNS.
But behind this is really just a dumb tube. They do have streaming video servers and VOD services (which I never tried) that could be seen as a kind of update to the useless portal page each ISP feels like it needs to have. Although strictly speaking that data isn't on the Internet. Just on their network.
Are there *any* ISPs that have anything of value to add to their "Internet tube" ? I doubt it. They can offer services to piggyback on the connection but that's pretty much it I think. Mostly, what they seem to have to offer is restrictions these days...
Usury is the ultimate sin. (Score:3, Interesting)
Remminds me of the story about the rich man and the poor village....A rich man walks into a hotel in a poor village where all the bussinesses are in debt. He gives the hotelier $100 for a room on the condition that if he doesn't like it he will take the money back and leave. The hotelier gives him the keys, confident the rich man will like the room he takes the $100 and pays the grocer for the food he bought on credit. The grocer takes the $100 and pays back the farmer the money he owes him, the farmer uses it to pay back the blacksmith who then goes to the hotel to pay off his debt to the hooker who in turn gives it to the hotelier for past rent. The rich man comes back dissatisfied with the room, takes the $100 and leaves the village. Nothing has changed but the village is now debt free.
And that's is how things would work in a sane world. (Minus the prostitute.)
And by "Sane" I mean, "Free of Usury". In fact, things would work even better than that, because the Sun keeps pumping energy into the system. The planet is one gigantic solar collector. Logically, scarcity should only ever be a temporary situation at the worst of times because there is simply so much raw energy freely available. But that's not how it works in reality. Why?
Because of the cowardice of the Dark Side and their fear of the Universe and their resulting desire to control all variables so that nothing can hurt their precious, delicate little selves.
I've been trying to boil the idea down to a single sentence. I've not quite managed it yet, but this is what I've got so far to explain how the world has been set up in the ultimate con job. . .
All the money in the world is provided by the banking system. The way all of that money first gets into circulation is by being borrowed by the public and by governments. Borrowing is done at interest. If the banks decide to call in all of those debts, then all the money in the world is now gone. Except interest is still owing. So where does the money come from to pay that interest?
The money isn't the valuable thing. Debt IS, because it automatically creates slaves.
The banks create slaves, and thus control over the entire populace.
That's the con job. It is exactly this simple, and it is exactly how it was intended to work by those who created it.
The way out of the trap is to unplug from dependence upon interest bearing currency. There are many ways to do this. Can you think of any of them? Double points to those who can solve for the big ticket items, such as housing.
Have a nice day!
-FL
ISPs shoud pay search engines (Score:3, Interesting)
Just think - If the only websites you knew about was the ones that you found by clicking links on websites that you started with or ones you learned about from other people. For example: Digg or Slashdot would lead to many new sites, but pdp11.org might not take you much out of it's content realm. A vast portion of the Internet would be unavailable.
Dumb pipes (Score:3, Interesting)
If the ISPs don't want to be just dumb pipes, they will have to meet the requirements. Firstly, they must stop being dumb. As long as they are dumb, they won't advance. To not be just a pipe, they'll have to build something else their customers will want more than they want google. I suggest they get busy hiring the world's best and brightest for premium salaries and start building various internet based services that their customers actually want enough to willingly forgo access to google.
If they are dumb and all they have built is a pipe, they shouldn't be surprised that they are considered to be a dumb pipe.