[ NNSquad ] Re: More on Verizon's rejection of AT&T's attitude toward filtering

[Rahul Tongia <tongia@cmu.edu>]

Yes, but doesn't a *publisher* charge on a fraction of **profits** (or 
revenues, depends on the contract), after taking out costs of printing? 
But there are other costs, such as marketing, advance royalty, etc.  I'm 
not claiming it's a fair, competitive, or an ideal situation (and it 
really fails when we consider Old Media companies), but it's what we 
find acceptable and the norm.

But ISPs are NOT publishers, so I am not sure the nuance of Vint's quote 
is even appropriate (costs-plus vs. up-front profit sharing).

ISPs are delivery people. Sure, UPS, USPS, etc. have overnight vs. 
regular. But the end-users make that decision based on what they want or 
need. The carrier doesn't make that decision after inspecting the 
payload.  Sure, they can air-ship my candy instead of ground trucking it 
if they have empty space on the plane going out. But that rarely happens 
in a well-optimized system.

Taking this argument to the extreme, let's say regular mail was slow 
(Mother's day coming up?), and my expensive candy would melt/spoil. The 
carrier might contact me and offer to get it to me in time by my paying 
an extra fee. How would I feel? Other than my concerns of how they found 
out (maybe the box has to say perishable, food item), at the margin it 
would be worth it. But some part of me would wonder did they purposely 
slow down that piece? Or, allowed "regular" service to degrade so much 
that everyone will pay for premium? Is Venti the new small?

In a free market, companies should be allowed to do that. But we don't 
have a competitive market. I find recent data interesting that despite 
the consistent discount offered by Telcos over cable, they have not 
pressured cablecos to lower prices. Instead, they are themselves raising 
prices, either of direct services or affiliated products (value-added 
services).

Rahul

Lauren Weinstein wrote:
> > this is like the printer who claims that he should get a share of the  
> > revenues from the book he printed as opposed to profit based on the  
> > cost of printing.
> > v
>
> Indeed, and this is made worse by the fact that anticompetitive
> factors can creep in through a variety of vectors.  
>
> The bandwidth caps, tiers, and surcharges now being contemplated by
> various ISPs become especially problematic when viewed in terms of
> ISPs' own provision of data intensive content (e.g. video and movie
> services) that would *not* be subject to the ISP-dictated bandwidth
> constraints placed on external Internet traffic and similar external
> services.
>
> The potentially anticompetitive aspects of this situation are obvious 
> and dramatic.
>
> --Lauren--
> NNSquad Moderator