Comment Let the farmer's pay for the beef! (Score 1) 449
Scene from Wendy's:
Customer walks to the counter and order's a burger. Wendy's business model says the customer should pay and the customer does and enjoys the burger.
Wendy's goes to the BEEF supplier and says: Where's the BEEF? We need more! The Beef supplier complies. Wendy's hands them a bill and tries to walk off with the BEEF. Wendy's figures they are just providing a BEEF distribution service.
What most people don't know is that this happened to my Grandfather during the Great Depression. He was a Saskatchewan farmer and shipped a calf to Toronto. They sent him a bill because the calf didn't fetch enough to cover the transportation costs.
My Grandfather shipped no more calves to Toronto. Maybe some people in Toronto went to bed hungry.
In fact the telecommunications industry has been double dipping for YEARS. Google may well be able to negotiate a peering arrangement. The VAST MAJORITY of companies that provide internet content are NOT in a position to peer. So they pay for the privilege of providing free content for the telecommunications industry and clients who are often mum and pop ISP's.
Google might have enough clout to fight this. Most content suppliers have no chance. This is a very unfair business model. The ones who pay the price are the consumers who might be missing out on websites created by some very talented people. Then we have web masters and graphics artists many of whom spend a great deal of time and money one school and tuition while learning their craft. They are looking for careers that might not materialize.
How many people remember the Dot.Com Bubble? For those interested in economics I'll provide this link to Eric Janszen's website: http://www.itulip.com/ Eric writes of the technology bubble in a number of articles.
Eric writes that the action of the FED after the technology bubble burst leads directly to the housing bubble and the present recession. The issue is that a lot of the reason the tech bubble burst is _because_ there was no workable business model. Companies that tried to create internet content went bankrupt.
Look here: http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/02/0081908
How many billions of dollars were lost by investors as the internet unfolded and the dream of "if we build it they will come" unfolded? Well - we did come. Unfortunately there was no money in it for those who were living the dream!
I say the greed of the telecommunications oligopoly had a lot to do with this.