Greed 3.0

Slashdot pointed to an article in the Washington Post. It reported, that John Thorne, a senior vice president of Verizon accuses the internet companies to have a free ride on their networks and wants to charge them for access. I'm not quite sure if an intoxicating substance, panic or greed made him utter this nonsense. If he bothers to read his own broadband subscription contracts: his subscribers pay, so they can reach all this sites. So Google, Yahoo and the like a the single big reason why the can sell broadband in the first place. Sounds like a soccer club who wants to charge the players for using the stadium after they sold all the tickets to fans who want to see them playing.
I don't know how lobbying and law-making works in the US, but if Verizon gets its way, it could throw the Internet in the US back for years. Anyway Google doesn't seem to sit idle, they have proven, that they can roll-out free WIFI backed access quite fast.
As the old Chinese curse nicely states: "May you live in interesting times".