YouTube Coming Soon To Cellphones 78
Krishna Dagli writes to mention a short New York Times article about a deal between Verizon and Google. YouTube will be coming to Verizon's VCast service. There's lots of catches: It's a $15/month fee, and you don't gain access to all of the content YouTube has to offer. Just the same, the article makes Google out to be thinking along these lines; YouTube may start showing up in many different places. From the article: "'Everybody carries a phone with them, but they may not have a computer,' said Steve Chen, chief technology officer and a co-founder of YouTube. People can 'take the phone out of their pocket while waiting for the bus' and watch a video, he added. Verizon Wireless and YouTube said the service would be available early next month. The companies would not discuss the financial terms of their deal but said Verizon would have the exclusive rights to distribute YouTube videos on mobile phones 'for a limited period of time.'"
Re:Does this mean... (Score:3, Insightful)
That is not how I read it. They appear to be charging the consumer $15 a month for a heavily 'filtered internet'. If Verizon wish to remain free from infringement they should be a 'common carrier' and should not be providing restricted content. IANAL, but it appears that if they restrict some content, they are liable for all the content that gets through.
Why don't they just offer 'common carrier' data service to the Internet? Their self imposed restrictions will hurt them in the long run.
What? (Score:3, Insightful)
*checks his pockets* Sorry, don't seem to have a phone on me. Oh that's right, now I remember, I DON'T HAVE A CELL PHONE MORON!
Why is it that people assume everyone has every worthless gadget out there? I know it's hard to believe but there are those of us who don't have a cell phone, don't need a cell phone and don't want a cell phone.
Just like there are those of us who don't have that insecure Flash product installed on our computers, don't need to have Flash installed and don't want to have Flash installed.
Technology is great and all but this nonsense that people should always have the latest and greatest crap is one of the leading causes for our negative savings rate [bea.gov].