What is Digg?95 Comments
- jarcoal, on 10/12/2007, -1/+127ISP's, ESPN, and others it may concern: We just want the bandwidth we pay for. We don't want it manipulated, we don't want extra features, we don't want to be blocked from buying these features separately.
- MioTheGreat, on 10/12/2007, -2/+38"If your (or my) ISP goes crazy on charging google for access we can switch. There are lots of options these days."
No. No we can't. Many people have no viable alternatives. My choices are: Pay $70 for 2048/2048 DSL, or dial up. If my ISP decided to start pulling this crap, I would have no alternative. - FuzzyBunny, on 10/12/2007, -0/+29I agree. I don't like the precedent this could set. I have a $60/month cable bill that pays for 200 chanels I don't watch and about 5-10 that I do. I don't even want to think about what my broadband bill would be like in a couple of years if this trend catches on.
- anteyekon4myst, on 10/12/2007, -0/+22Dear Rogers,
Please do not pay for ESPN360 on my behalf as I do not require or desire this service.
Thank you,
Customer wondering if he will get a say in this - HMTKSteve, on 10/12/2007, -1/+21I read about this a few days ago in the Wall Street Journal... but it wasn't online yet...
Very interesting...
Customer: So, I want broadband, what packages do you offer?
ISP: We have 1.5, 3, and 6MB services.
Customer: Can I get to www.ESPN360.com with you?
ISP: huh, what?
Customer: Yeah, see ESPN360.com is only available to me if YOU pay to connect to their network.
ISP: Umm... let me get my supervisor...
Customer: Well?
ISP: Yes we carry that...
Customer: OK great... By the way... What about Google.com, Yahoo.com etc.... - Frozenpython, on 10/12/2007, -0/+20They need to put a stop to this ASAP before it gets out of hand. Stuff like this is going to kill the internet as we know it now.
- b0rg, on 10/12/2007, -3/+18ESPN is one of the biggest parts of your monthly cable bill. It's a "must-carry"; i.e. cable providers are required to give it to ALL customers, even those on the basic cable tier, and are NOT allowed to provide it as an optional service.
Your cost to get ESPN is between three and ten bucks a month, not counting what the cable co decides to add on top of that.
Hope you like watching ... whatever was on ESPN last time I looked? Desert Kayak racing or something equally pointless? - NSMike, on 10/12/2007, -0/+15Here's what we're looking at with tiered internet service folks - a duplication of CableTV service. And always - always in the end - the cost is passed on to us.
- thewebguy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13as much as i just want to say "take that isps, this is what you get!!", it is still wrong.
- thomasknowland, on 10/12/2007, -0/+12This is not the cable companies' responsibility to pay for this. If individual customers want this service, let them pay for it. The internet as I see it should remain FULLY customizable by ME.
This was copy/pasted from my email to ESPN and Comcast. - etnu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11If the company wants to charge for a premium service, so be it, but let the people who actually want to pay for it foot the bill. I don't give two ***** about ESPN, why should I pay to subsidize somebody who does?
This business model was neccesary for cable TV because it's a multicast system. There are only so many channels available, and it's the only real way to make the business model work. The internet is not like this at all.
If the service is bandwidth-intensive on part of ESPN, then they have to choose the pricing model that's appropriate FOR THE PEOPLE THAT ACTUALLY WANT TO PAY FOR IT. If it's bandwidth-intensive for the ISPs, then the ISPs should charge more for CUSTOMERS (not websites, since they have no control over it) who use more bandwidth (oh, wait, you mean ISPs are already lying when they claim that they're selling you a 7Mb / sec connection? Surely you jest...)
Stop trying to fleece consumers into paying for ***** that they don't want. Stop trying to fleece businesses into subsidizing your network costs.
Fortunately, unlike the cable industry, there aren't any government-sanctioned monopolies when it comes to the internet. As much as I'm concerned about the radiation, I'm all in favor of the idea of universal wi-fi. - ElectroBot, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10Actually what's contrary to "getting along" is telling people that they have to fork over $1 to use your faster cooler slide that was built using governmemt money (the $200,000,000,000 tax breaks/incentives that the Telcos got to deploy fiber to consumers over ten years ago). If you don't then you can use the slide on the other side of the street that isn't shiny or new and had mud poured on it to be slower than the "premium" slide.
- Frieked, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10If this works it'll have interesting implications on the whole net neutrality thing.
- Frozenpython, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9It's not the fact that it's ESPN alone. This is going to send a message to ALL the large Media outfits that they can do something like this and get away with it. There for costing US ,the customer, more money for something that has always and should always be free other than your connection fee to the cable/DSL company. Crap like this is going to turn in to your EXTRA HBO, Showtime, Cinemax, etc... type fees.
- ThatsUnpossible, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9Lanser, I agree that getting the gov't involved is a bad plan in general. However, what ESPN is trying to do is not related to that. ESPN is apparantly trying to turn the internet into cable TV, where they cajole the cable provider into paying ESPN and spreading the cost out to all customers, rather than forcing each customer that wants ESPN to pay for it directly.
The solution is to do what this article has done, bring this fact to light, so that everyone can complain to their ISPs not to pay this fee, or to at least be transparent about this charge in any rate increases to customers:
ESPN360 Fee: 0.50 / month
And let the fallout solve it. - Stark, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9has anyone been able to get espn 360 to play a video without constant "buffering" pauses? They need to put whoever was responsible for the free ABC "Lost" videos in charge of 360. Now that was cool.
- tokyomonster, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8Reverse net-neutrality? Aren't the telco's supposed to be doing that?
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -6/+13one don't think it will work, doubt many people will go to their isp and say, yeah i will pay 60$ for the whole Internet and then another 3$ for ESPN. The major websites have tried premium content in the past and tend to fail against all the free content. But I will still personally write ESPN and tell them to go suck my left nut.
Lanser84 opened his mouth and spewed
"There are lots of options these days. In the meantime, It sure would be nice to have new features dependent on wicked bandwidth that isn't available without a cost."
How many isp choices do you have? for me and most of America it is only a couple of options.dsl or cable(i don't include sat because it sucks)
And in the mean time you have the option of paying extra for your isp for extra bandwidth. We have several tiers of bandwidth options here, from double 56k to 10meg cable.. maybe higher as well haven't checked.
No i think you are one of those people that has to one up other people and are just interested in having a different net you can brag about. Either that or you work for the telecoms, you do understand how the net works? Google pays almost 2 million a month for bandwidth, they can pay more for more and faster. I pay $60 a month for 5 meg cable, i can pay more for faster. No one is getting a free ride, the isp's just are mad they didn't invent google and want to extort profits from them. I say if the isp's want to do this, they can but not on the public net, just wall off a portion of their own, like AOL, and see if they can get customers that way, but don't go changing the public net that we all enjoy and allowed the isp's the benefit of being part of it all.
If att wants to try to make a google, using their own bandwidth, i say more power too them, but once they start double charging google, they are going too far.
I will go back to dial up before i let the telco get away with that crap.
It will end up, they will block political sites they don't like
companies like skype and other competition
they will block questionable sites
They want to turn the net into a device like your cell. It isn't extra features they want to charge you for, it is all of them. Want new wallpaper for your PC, 2$ for 3 months. Want new desktop sounds, $2 for 3 months. .. Just like sprint will rent me a ring tone for $3 for 3 months of a song I already own and can get from itunes for 99cents and own it as well.
That is what they are salivating over. micro payments and competition control.
sorry for the book but ignorance gets me angry. - DangerMouse9, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Someone wants to view digg, your internet goes up by $1. Someone else wants to visit myspace, your internet goes up by $4. Someone else wants to go to ESPN your internet goes up $14. All you want is digg, you're paying an extra $18 so people that subscribe to the same ISP as you can view their content.
Charge the people that want access to the sites like ESPN, instead of everyone else that couldn't care less if ESPN never existed. I don't want to pay outrageous prices for crap I'm never going to use, it's why I don't have cable.
For those that say "go to alternatives" I say "ha, I'm glad you have that freedom, but many don't." What happens when every provider carries that service and passes their cost on to you? What will you do then? Go back to dial up?
I'm tired of footing the bill for companies that instead of facing the risk, pass the cost of that risk onto everyone else (especially those that don't want the service). - timeshifter, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6People often ask me if they can get Google with their new broadband service. The general public is already confused enough about all this stuff. This will only make it worse. Maybe Dvorak is right, this is the Golden Age of the Internet. Enjoy it while you can.
- Zipko, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6The part I hate about espn.com is that even the free content must be paid for if you want to see archives. A few weeks after publishing, every article writen on the site becomes insider only content. So even if the story isn't considered in depth enough to be worth charging for when writen, it suddenly is worth charging for a month later when most of the content is outdated.
- kmedlin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6ESPN is NOTORIOUS for strong-arming Cable Providers. They regularly increase their fees at a higher rate than other cable stations on basic cable. I remember that I was with a smaller Cable Provider that would regularly send us breakdowns of their costs to justify their price increases and ESPN was the biggest offender always. Other stations would raise their rates like 4-6% and they'd raise it 12-15% in a single year.
I've used 360, and it's not that great. It's bigger versions of videos that are free on their site in addition to some additional highlights and PTI stuff that USED to be available to ESPN Insider members. So they took services away from Insider folks and made now a THIRD tier of service for their website.
ESPN has STOPPED being about sports in the past 5 years. They are ruining sports journalism by getting in bed with stars they are supposed to be covering. They are taking good journalists and forcing them into stereotypical roles of sports screaming pundits, and losing credibility among sports fans as fast as they earned it back in the early days. - bigboludo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I would have paid extra on my comcast bill to be able to watch World Cup games on my PC. They're still bastards though.
- djfelix, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Competition will sort this out. So ESPN360.com wants to charge ISP's for using their service. That's fine. Their subscriber base is going to be much lower than any of ther other competing sports websites. This means that they will not be able to charge as much for advertising, as they will have smaller user numbers. Then along comes a company like AOL, with deep pockets, that can do the same thing, but free to everyone. Higher user count, more ad revenue.
What I'm trying to say here is that the natural market competition will sort all of this out. ESPN360 thinks that they are going to be so high and mighty that they can charge ISP's for bandwidth ... I would wait and see before I pass judgement on that. As far as I can tell, most ISP's would tell them to go pound sand. I use Cox, and Cox hosts their own sports video feeds. Why would they pay an extortion fee to ESPN360 for a service that competes against their own? Answer: They won't.
The last thing we need is Government coming in and telling American companies how to compete in the marketplace. The natural way the martket works will sort this out just fine without the FCC mucking things up. The -*last*- thing we need is to give the FCC the power to decide what websites an ISP can connect to. - donnyp02, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I work for Suddenlink Communications, formerly Cebridge Connections, Cox Communications, and Chart Cable, you would be surprised at how often networks pull this crap. Customers are Always wondering why prices are so high, and why there is a price increase just about every year like clockwork, well on top of gas prices, networks like ESPN like to sock it to the end user, not the cable companies, its beyound our control, if our customers want the content, then we have to pay for it, which is exactly why we are not falling under the NFL networks games this time around and dropping them, they wanted to increase rates so much it was going to force us to increase our rates for the customer, and we decided against it...
- thegreatsam, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Ummm....ESPN isn't offered on my basic cable tier.
- Joey67, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Perhaps I'm missing something here. Why can't ESPN do exactly the same thing that every other pay site does. If you want their premium content, you pay them and they provide you a login ID and password to view that content. The only reason I can see them trying to do this with ISPs is to force everyone to pay for it. I don't see any benefit here except to ESPN.
- duke_nate, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6And in other news, The ISPs tell ESPN to go ***** themselves.
- FuzzyBunny, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5@Reidtheweed01
That's the problem with cable service here in the US. Regardless of what your taste is in TV, you'll still end up paying for channels you're never going to watch, simply because that's the way they have the business model set up. Do we really want our internet access to be the same way? I have no problem with paying for certain services on the internet, but let me be the one to pick which services I want to pay for and which ones I can do without. Don't lump it in with my broadband bill and expect me to subsidize other people's services, because that's what this is. - echobucket, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I guess they'd rather extort money from ISPs so that ALL of our bills go up, rather than just making the espn360.com website require paid login accounts. :P
- callingshotgun, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5While I don't agree with charging ISP's to carry your internet content... I can't help but dig that they're getting a taste of their own medicine, you know? Their big defense against this is going to be that "We have the right to deliver whatever internet content we want to our users without being charged premiums."
Which is where Google, Amazon, Ebay, and every popular basement blogger in the world will step in and say, "That's what we've been saying all along, dumbass."
I, for one, would like to see more sites try to pull the crap ESPN is trying to pull right now. Maybe that's what it'll take for the telcos to see the point behind net neutrality. - tekmage3000, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Screw ESPN... and anyone else pulling this kind of junk.
- ElectroBot, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I, as an another Rogers cable TV and cable internet subscriber, also don't want these "free" services that we'll all have to pay in higher subscriber fees.
- terinjokes, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5i just figured it was my (now outdated) mac trying to decode thw WMV streams...
- ThatsUnpossible, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Lanser, if your ISP wants to prioritize this traffic, they don't need to pay ESPN to do it. This is a non-sequitur.
I don't see this as a net-neutrality issue, this is simply a stupid business move by ESPN and any ISP that agrees to it without giving their customers the option to pay for it or not. - actionscripted, on 10/12/2007, -7/+11Who cares? Screw ESPN.
- Tweekster, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3This service will last one billing cycle, so that the three people that subscribe can cancel.
who comes up with these idiotic ideas and do they actually sit there and go "Man have i got a great idea..." - Lanser84, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3@ThatsUnpossible
Very good point. Net Neutrality does come into this issue (from the opposite side), but not in the way indicated in the post just above.
My response to this post was to counter the idea that there should be a legislated solution to the issue which the previous poster had brought up. - rustytwonderdog, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4most of ESPN.com sucks now. It's one of the slowest and bloated sites on the net and half of their articles require a subscription.
except for the bill simmons articles, i've stopped going there and just use yahoo sports instead. - runbmd, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Techdirt linked to us:
http://techdirt.com/articles/20060802/1132240.shtml
I guess we are the "furor." - ElectroBot, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5Lanser84: We're already paying real-world rates for bandwidth (yes all consumers sudsidize the bandwtdth hogs). The people who are against net neutrality want to charge us even more by making us pay for the faster access that the government already gave the telcos $200 billion to build.
- allnightbaby, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5As an avid sports fan and someone who probably watches too much on TV--one who does watch ESPN highlights from time to time--I'd like to say the following.
***** you, ESPN.
I hope no ISPs pay for this service. - mecole21, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3idk why ESPN can't do ESPN 360 like Major League Baseball does MLB.tv with either a monthly charge to the customer or a one time fee for a certain program... this way the people who want to use it pays for it and then ones who don't don't have to pay... My one experience watching a college basketball game on it last winter was pretty *****... i gave up after 5 minutes cause it was constanly buffering and went to just watching the box score refresh every minute on regular espn.com...
- merreborn, on 10/12/2007, -7/+10This has nothing to do with net neutrality at all!
Firstly, the companies involved in net neutrality are the backbone companies. Note that they have no place anywhere in this equation!
Secondly, this isn't a new business model, at all! Where do you think comcast gets all the content they have on comcast.com (including their large video library)? They're paying somebody for it!
If you throw your arms up and shout "Net neutrality, net neutrality" every time you see ***** like this, you are HURTING THE CAUSE, not helping it!
"I agree. I don't like the precedent this could set. "
Have you seen comcast.com? You're years too late. - Joey67, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Exactly... it's the MTV syndrome. Does anyone remember when MTV used to actually play videos (and there was some variety to those)? Now they're just one big commercial.
- thobejp, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Sounds like he situation is this. The companies providing this/these services know that if they charge people to sign up and use their services directly from their site like newspapers and other Internet content they may get a few thousand paying customers. However, if they charge ISPs for it, then in theory the ISPs will be paying the companies for all their clients(10,000+) even if no one watches it. The companies make out great because they don't have to worry about whether or not people really love their content nearly as much, they get paid anyway. This whole system is messed up...
- cbiz, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3ESPN360...what a cool name. Other choices, iESPN, ESPNWii, iESPNWii360.....
- Grayfox777, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4...
***** ESPN. - david630, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5Espn 360 sucks anyway
- speaker219, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2As you can see, the ESPN360 Window is customized for your internet provider (in my case adelphia) screenshot: http://charlies-stuff.fragism.com/pics/espn360.jpg
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