Time Warner Concedes To Public Outrage On Tiered Billing

Time Warner recently offered a concession to strong public outrage regarding a proposed tiered billing policy. The tiered billing policy that Time Warner wanted to push through was to charge users more if they use the internet for anything more than general email and light web surfing. The rates that Time Warner were considering were as much as 100 dollars more if you watch online videos or use web video chat such as the popular iChat application that comes installed on all Mac computers. Such service charges are obvious attempts to reduce or halt pier-to-pier file sharing--which Time Warner and other content production companies have complained are havens for copyright infringement. Others argue that such a broad spectrum punishment will have a negative impact on small (legitimate) content producers and will reduce competition in numerous markets due to a higher entry cost and reducing the number of users that can afford to access such rich media content.