Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

Fri Dec 17 16:46:22 UTC 2010

George Bonser wrote:
>> What I think George's
>> comment
>> does not completely appreciate is that (ideally) cities are imposing
>> such requirements at the behest of and for the benefit of the (local)
>> public, whereas private constraints on local access are (by design)
>> motivated by profit.
>>     
>
> I wasn't really talking about franchise agreements as those are
> different and in many cases stipulate things like there can be no
> monopoly, etc.
>
> What I was talking about was what if a city simply decided to charge an
> Internet provider an "access fee" to the city's people.  An "eyeball
> fee".  The city says, "hey, you are making millions selling ads that
> these people view and the more eyeballs you have the more money you
> make, so we are going to charge you for those eyeballs".  Which is
> basically what Comcast is doing ... charging content networks for access
> to eyeballs.  What if they themselves got charged for the same thing.
> Would they think that is "fair"?  And what if the city had its own
> community high speed internet that paid no such charge?
>
>
>   
>   
They do already.  It's called HBO, Showtime, HDNet Sports, etc.  - they 
get charged per eyeball for those networks, and so they pass the charge 
on per eyeball to the customer.

Nothing is new here.