Beginning Of The End Of The Internet; Thanks ESPN

ESPN, I’ve never had a love/hate relationship with something quite like the ‘worldwide leader in sports’. On one hand they’ve made the ability to watch sports much easier, and I wouldn’t be able to see or keep up with alot of my teams without them. Then again they’ve killed much of the magic of sports as well. There’s tons of shows on ESPN that are just worthless, with all the “expert analysis” that’s generally wrong. Its really killed the spirit of sports in our modern world.

ESPN, or their owner Disney, looks to set their eyes on destroying the spirit of another entity; the internet. If you visit ESPN360, there’s a chance you’ll be able to view the site, and chance that you won’t. The deciding factor about whether you get to view the site or not is based on what ISP you have. You heard me correctly.

Surprisingly, this all started quietly, two years ago when an idea went off in someone’s head at ESPN. ‘If we charge ISP’s the ability to offer our content to internet users, that could bring in quite a bit of money’. I can imagine the dollar signs light up in someone’s eyes over there. The problem is, that this model really can only hurt everyone involved, not help.

Let’s look at this logically for a minute. What sounds like more of a money maker? Distributing your content so more people can view, which in turn will bring about more money through advertising. Or only allowing certain people to view your content, based on something a lot of times they don’t have any control over. I’m left speechless at the backwards logic that ESPN is implementing here.

The great thing about the internet, is that information is out there for anyone to view. Sure, ISPs charge users for access to the information, but for the most part it’s not regulated beyond that. What does ESPN think is going to happen when these ISPs have to pay in order to offer their content to users?

First, either the ISP will pay the money, or they won’t. For certain regions across the country, people have very few choices in terms of their ISP. So, what happens if neither ISP pays the fee to distribute the content? No one gets to view it.

Ok, let’s move to the next scenario. The ISP pays ESPN to distribute the content, but just how much are they charging? More than likely it’s an amount that will drive the ISP to increase the cost of providing internet access. Just imagine if this catches on. The more sites that decide to get in on this profit making strategy, will either drive up the cost of internet coverage. Or force ISPs to limit the amount of content that they can provide to users.

Looking at both of those options, neither look like logical decisions to me. I hate to sound so apocalyptic, but if the domino effect does occur we could be seeing the beginning of the end of the internet as we know it.

[via: Wired]