Possible bad news for the Internet in Europe

Tensions Mount Between Google and European Telecoms Over YouTube
http://mashable.com/2010/04/09/google-telecoms-youtube/

Possible bad news for the Internet in Europe:

European telecommunication giants are preparing to fight Google over the data traffic and bandwidth that is consumed due to YouTube videos, according to a new report from the Financial Times. Their goal: to have Google pay them for the bandwidth YouTube and its other websites consume.

Charging publishers would restrict free speech in the long run. Small publishers wouldn't be able to pay, and large companies would have to charge for their content, creating a TV-like pay-per-view subscription model. If anything, the telecommunication companies should charge consumers by bandwidth, but not the publishers.