[M4IF Discuss] Ad supported MPEG-4 Content & use fees

[Kevin Marks]

On Tuesday, March 5, 2002, at 04:50 PM, Jordan Greenhall wrote:
> 3. Logistical nightmare.  Particularly for the very large content
> providers.  They already have enough headaches tracking SAG fees, do
> they really need to track and report MPEG-4 fees?  One interesting
> proposal I've heard here is a cap on the delivery fee as well.  "One
> Check" is something that might make sense.  Let us pay some fee and
> figure out how we can make money against it.

On that front, this article seems relevant:
http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/garfinkel0302.asp
> I spent eight months as the “chief scientist” for an Internet startup 
> called Broadband2Wireless.  Our company tried to build a high-speed 
> wireless Internet service that could be accessed in cities throughout 
> the United States, South America, Europe and Asia. We were going to do 
> it using unlicensed portions of the spectrum and with wireless network 
> equipment that employed a hot new standard called 802.11. And we were 
> going to charge no more than $50 a month.
>
> Of course, we failed. We had $30 million in funding; we needed $200 
> million.
> [...]
> One of the most surprising things we learned from launching our 
> Internet startup was that providing wireless Internet service is really 
> cheap. What ended up bankrupting the company were all the ancillary 
> services we had to develop—credit card billing, technical support, the 
> corporate Web site and the various security measures we had to put in 
> place to prevent unauthorized use of the network by nonsubscribers. 
> Organizations that aren’t trying to make money providing wireless 
> Internet service can do away with all of these measures and offer the 
> service for free.