Spanish ISP Telefonica Claims Google Gets Free Bandwidth; Says Google Should Pay Up

from the can-we-explain-the-internet-to-you? dept

And I thought Ed Whitacre had moved on to run United States General Motors. You may recall that, half a decade ago, when Whitacre was running SBC (prior to its takeover of AT&T), he made sure that a lot more people heard the term "net neutrality," after he claimed that SBC should charge Google and other big online companies. His explanation was that Google and Yahoo and others were "reaching" his customer's for free. This is, of course, wrong. Very, very wrong. It's actually an attempt to double charge, based on the false belief that when you pay for your internet connect, you are only paying for the connection into the cloud, but then not out to any end point. Google is not getting anything for free. It pays (and pays a boatload) for its bandwidth. What Whitacre was trying to do back then was double dip and get everyone to pay twice for their bandwidth. The reasoning was so bizarre that you would have hoped it had died off by now.

No such luck.

Alan Gerow points us to the news that Spanish telco Telefonica's President Cesar Alierta, appears to be channeling Whitacre, by claiming that big sites like Google and Yahoo get too much bandwidth "for free" and he wants to start charging them for it. Just like Whitacre, he's really looking to double dip. Google pays for its bandwidth. What Alierta really means is he wants Google to pay again just to reach his customers over the bandwidth the customers have already paid for. The claim that Google, Yahoo or any of those companies are getting their bandwidth "for free" is ludicrous. But since Alierta believes that Google is getting bandwidth for free, perhaps he'll agree to pay Google's bandwidth bill.

Filed Under: double dipping, isps, net neutrality, spain
Companies: google, telefonica, yahoo

Sorry ASCAP, A Ringtone Is Not A Public Performance

from the nice-try-though dept

ASCAP and BMI have been pushing all sorts of ridiculous claims over the past few months, trying to squeeze extra money out of pretty much everything, rather than actually doing right by those they represent and helping them adapt new business models based on giving people a reason to buy. Beyond claiming that Congress should make sure their royalties never decrease, they've also been saying they deserve money for things like YouTube embeds (even though YouTube already pays them for that same traffic) and the 30 second previews on iTunes and other music stores. However, the most ridiculous of all was trying to claim that ringtones are a public performance, and thus mobile phone providers need to pay ASCAP/BMI. The thing is, ASCAP and BMI already get paid for ringtone purchases -- but this was an attempt to get a second payment on top of that for the fact that people might hear the ringtones.

Thankfully (as a whole bunch of you have sent in), a judge wasted little time totally rejecting that reasoning. The court pointed out that the Copyright Act is pretty clear that there's no royalty needed for any sort of "performance" that isn't done for commercial advantage and "customers do not play ringtones with any expectation of profit." It's a pretty complete rejection of an obvious stretch by ASCAP.

We might hope that ASCAP will take this and begin to recognize that the best way to serve songwriters is helping them embrace new business models, but we expect that instead they'll keep looking to squeeze more money and double dip from other providers... while continuing to pay industry insiders to smear those who want to protect consumer rights.

Filed Under: copyright, double dipping, public performance, ringtones, songwriters
Companies: ascap, bmi, eff