Google Watch : When Google Becomes Pay to Play

Google Watch : When Google Becomes Pay to Play

Imagine paying to use Google search.

The notion is deservedly absurd right now. But that landmark day may come, and it may be traced to present-day legislative and legal wrangling over how neutral the Internet is to be.

The ongoing net neutrality fight, in U.S. courts, the Senate and Congress, is over whether companies that own the networks delivering Internet access have any say as to what goes over the pipes. To a large degree, they really don't.

Should the likes of AT&T and Verizon Communications have their way, any network owner would be able to, say, create a kind of commuter lane to guarantee a speedy delivery to customers.

That would mean a new expense for the likes of Google, Yahoo, AOL and other Internet firms, which will surely pay up in order to remain competitive.

Eventually, the expense could become so burdensome, the folks in Mountain View, Calif., and elsewhere would be forced to pass on some, or all, of it to customers.

There are a lot of factors at work that could steer the future in any number of different directions, so there's no guarantee anyone will ever have to pay to use Google.

Yet there's an argument to be made that a day could come when the Google bill goes in the mail, or you'll be Googling per hour at wireless Internet hot spots, and cable operators add $5-a-month unlimited Googling to their steeply discounted quintuple play of services.

Just what would it be like to subscribe to Google? Given Google's ethos, it's a safe bet the experience will be painless, and have a certain Quakerish-look to it.

The biggest unknown in all this involves how much network owners would charge the likes of Google, so the degree of possible financial burden is a mystery.

For argument's sake, say Google has to pay Comcast a penny a search. That translates to a fee, just to Comcast, of about $5 million a month. There are a dozen or so major Internet providers in the United States alone, and scores, if not hundreds, worldwide.

So the price of a speedy Internet delivery in the United States for Google and Yahoo, the two major search engines, would amount to an annual fee in the hundreds of millions of dollars. That's a burden, even for these two revenue machines.

History provides examples of the same present-day forces at Google's heels shifting other technology industries from being largely free to coming with strings attached.

One such industry is Internet telephony. In the wake of each courtroom and legislative loss, many providers were forced to have customers foot the bill to meet the expenses of abiding by new rules and regulations.

posted on Monday, June 12, 2006 8:25 PM by Ben Charny

If Google becomes pay-to-play, I walk.

U.S. Wants Companies to Keep Web Usage Records - New York Times

U.S. Wants Companies to Keep Web Usage Records - New York Times

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U.S. Wants Companies to Keep Web Usage Records

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By SAUL HANSELL and ERIC LICHTBLAU
Published: June 2, 2006

The Justice Department is asking Internet companies to keep records on the Web-surfing activities of their customers to aid law enforcement, and may propose legislation to force them to do so.
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The director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Robert S. Mueller III, and Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales held a meeting in Washington last Friday where they offered a general proposal on record-keeping to a group of senior executives from Internet companies, said Brian Roehrkasse, a spokesman for the department. The meeting included representatives from America Online, Microsoft, Google, Verizon and Comcast.

The attorney general has appointed a task force of department officials to explore the issue, and that group is holding another meeting with a broader group of Internet executives today, Mr. Roehrkasse said. The department also met yesterday with a group of privacy experts.

The Justice Department is not asking the Internet companies to give it data about users, but rather to retain information that could be subpoenaed through existing laws and procedures, Mr. Roehrkasse said.

While initial proposals were vague, executives from companies that attended the meeting said they gathered that the department was interested in records that would allow them to identify which individuals visited certain Web sites and possibly conducted searches using certain terms.

It also wants the Internet companies to retain records about whom their users exchange e-mail with, but not the contents of e-mail messages, the executives said. The executives spoke on the condition that they not be identified because they did not want to offend the Justice Department.

The proposal and the initial meeting were first reported by USA Today and CNet News.com.

The department proposed that the records be retained for as long as two years. Most Internet companies discard such records after a few weeks or months.In its current proposal, the department appears to be trying to determine whether Internet companies will voluntarily agree to keep certain information or if it will need to seek legislation to require them to do so.

The request comes as the government has been trying to extend its power to review electronic communications in several ways. The New York Times reported in December that the National Security Agency had gained access to phone and e-mail traffic with the cooperation of telecommunications companies, and USA Today reported last month that the agency had collected telephone calling records. The Justice Department has subpoenaed information on Internet search patterns — but not the searches of individuals — as it tries to defend a law meant to protect children from pornography.

In a speech in April, Mr. Gonzales said that investigations into child pornography had been hampered because Internet companies had not always kept records that would help prosecutors identify people who traded in illegal images.

"The investigation and prosecution of child predators depends critically on the availability of evidence that is often in the hands of Internet service providers," Mr. Gonzales said in remarks at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in Alexandria, Va. "This evidence will be available for us to use only if the providers retain the records for a reasonable amount of time," he said.

An executive of one Internet provider that was represented at the first meeting said Mr. Gonzales began the discussion by showing slides of child pornography from the Internet. But later, one participant asked Mr. Mueller why he was interested in the Internet records. The executive said Mr. Mueller's reply was, "We want this for terrorism."

At the meeting with privacy experts yesterday, Justice Department officials focused on wanting to retain the records for use in child pornography and terrorism investigations. But they also talked of their value in investigating other crimes like intellectual property theft and fraud, said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, who attended the session.

"It was clear that they would go beyond kiddie porn and terrorism and use it for general law enforcement," Mr. Rotenberg said.

Kate Dean, the executive director of the United States Internet Service Provider Association, a trade group, said: "When they said they were talking about child pornography, we spent a lot of time developing proposals for what could be done. Now they are talking about a whole different ball of wax."

At the meeting with privacy groups, officials sought to assuage concerns that the retention of the records could compromise the privacy of Americans. But Mr. Rotenberg said he left with lingering concerns.

"This is a sharp departure from current practice," he said. "Data retention is an open-ended obligation to retain all information on all customers for all purposes, and from a traditional Fourth Amendment perspective, that really turns things upside down."

Executives of several Internet companies that participated in the first meeting said the department's initial proposals seemed expensive and unwieldy.

At the meeting scheduled for today with executives of Internet access companies, Justice Department officials plan to go into more detail about what types of records they would like to see retained and for how long, said a Justice Department official who spoke on condition of anonymity. "It will be much more nuts-and-bolts discussions," he said, adding that the department would stop short of offering formal proposals.

So this is what it comes down to. They want to de-gut the Fourth Amendment to "protect the chiiiiillldddryyuunnnnn". Fuck the children! My right to privacy is more important!