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Korea fines Twitch $327k for suspending service

• eek2121 3y ago
  [flagged]
• eutropia 3y ago
  Korea has afaik much higher cost to deliver data for international services because they charge the sender of the data per unit, and Twitch couldn’t operate profitably despite the obvious market fit. Surprising that they’re fining them on top of it though!
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • echelon 3y ago
    > they charge the sender of the data per unit This is why Twitch is leaving. This is absolutely insane.
    • teaearlgraycold 3y ago
      Sorry for asking what I could Google for myself - do they not charge ISP customers for data received? Are they double, or even triple-dipping?
      • kijin 3y ago
        Of course they're double dipping. Korean ISPs can't charge the customers more, because many of the customers (both landline and mobile) have been promised "unlimited" data. There'd be a colossal shitstorm if they ever tried to take that back. So they look for easier prey: foreign video streaming platforms.
        • deprecative 3y ago
          Yet in the US they took it away and we thanked them for the honor. It seems to be coming back but not quite these days.
• garrettjoecox 3y ago
  They will no doubt pay more in human hours dealing with this fine than the fine itself. Calling it a slap is a stretch
• justinclift 3y ago
  This really seems like the Korean telecoms watchdog wanting to both keep its cake, and eat it at the same time. aka "We'll gouge Twitch for all their worth", followed by "How DARE they close up shop after we gouged them?"
• throwaway5959 3y ago
  [flagged]
  • petesergeant 3y ago
    [flagged]
    • throwaway237289 3y ago
      Actually, yes, the American tech companies are working hard to enrich humanity. They enrich themselves too. But they've given off tremendous consumer surplus just in comparison to the previous decade, and you'd have to argue in bad faith to suggest otherwise. But hey you can complain about Americans tech companies. It fits right into the GP's point that attacking American tech companies is hot for governments.
    • throwaway5959 3y ago
      I'm confused as to why you think corporations can be in any way considered noble, but OK.
      • waffleiron 3y ago
        That comment seemed to me to be dripping with sarcasm :)
        • throwaway5959 3y ago
          Oh I know, just messing with him.
• praisewhitey 3y ago
  Trying to squeeze the last bit of money they can before Twitch is gone for good.
• AraceliHarker 3y ago
  It's not just Korea that Twitch isn't profitable in; the company as a whole is not profitable. Considering the high payouts to streamers, the lack of benefits for premium members, the long streaming hours of games which incurs server costs and makes it difficult to display ads, I don't think their business model is sustainable in the long run.
  • viraptor 3y ago
    > and makes it difficult to display ads What do you mean by this?
    • antisthenes 3y ago
      Probably longer intervals between streamers showing ads, compared to TV? I know that if streamers showed ads every 10 minutes and I was forced to watch them, I would just not watch Twitch at all.
      • xboxnolifes 3y ago
        When streamers don't show ads within some interval of time, twitch will automatically play ads to compensate, so I don't think that's what was meant. Twitch has full control of this interval.
        • suddenclarity 3y ago
          The person you're responding to isn't saying that Twitch lacks the ability. They are saying that increasing the occurrence would cause people to get annoyed and leave, resulting in no ads being viewed.
          • pooper 3y ago
            I get that at some point twitch or even amazon.com can't control prices of ads because advertisers will pay only what they think those spots are worth but on the flip side, I think it is worth noting the costs of running twitch have probably massively increased since their justin.tv days. I remember reading in the justin.tv days, they were trying to convince everyone that they're sustainable and that one ad an hour (not one ad roll with multiple ads, just one ad) would MORE than cover all of Justin tv costs. I'm sure the rates have collapsed since then AND the costs have gone up. I wouldn't mind 480p back when the best quality I could watch was from some guy's webcam at 720p but it is a different matter when I want to watch 1080p60 screen share. 480p is worthless for watching video games or coding streams. Probably obvious but just wanted to say out loud that the costs have likely gone up.
• Wingy 3y ago
  If they're exiting anyway, what happens if Twitch just doesn't pay the fine?
  • ripjaygn 3y ago
    Amazon owns Twitch and I guess it has a large presence in SK, so the govt will find a way to extract the fine, for example by enjoining Amazon's bank to transfer them the money.
    • jannyfer 3y ago
      > I guess it has a large presence in SK It doesn’t.
      • coffeebeqn 3y ago
        AWS has a big data center at least
    • giancarlostoro 3y ago
      I guess Amazon will likely just pay just to move on.
    • paulddraper 3y ago
      And given the (relatively) small amount of the fine, they'll probably pay it to avoid any risks.
• ripjaygn 3y ago
  > Twitch Interactive, the operator of the service, reduced video quality in Korea from 1080p to 720p in September 2022 and terminated its VOD service five months later. > The Korea Telecommunications Commission (KCC) determined the suspension of the VOD service violated the local telecommunications business law by undermining the interests of users. > The commission has requested relevant data to examine whether Twitch had a justifiable reason for limiting the maximum viewing quality, but Twitch turned down the request, citing contractual confidentiality obligations. I wonder what the relevant law says. Forcing a non-essential website to host and stream video content feels strange to say the least, especially given that streaming software like OBS can easily record the video locally to be uploaded to YouTube, AfreecaTV or whatever. If it's deemed essential then the ISPs shouldn't be able to extort and extract profits from both sides of the pipe. Also wonder why Twitch didn't provide the numbers given that they have already publicly said that the costs are high.
  • gmerc 3y ago
    Non essential doesn’t play into it. If you’re in a regulated industry and there’s conditions - be it airwave spectrum, minimal service criteria or something else, you have to operate within those conditions.
    • olliej 3y ago
      Afaict this is "you're in a regulated industry [whether or not it should be is irrelevant] but you're also not allowed to cease operation or leave that regulated industry, or you'll be subject to fines".
      • Spivak 3y ago
        Honestly it's one of the better systems for dealing with the "we aren't going to comply with the law, we'll just leave" (for some definition of leave) problem. If you try to pull this trick without pulling all of your business out of SK (i.e. Amazon) they can still collect the fine. Probably cuts down on the performative exits >.> Facebook in the EU, in an attempt to bully regulators. Sender pays clearly has backfired but I don't know if there's a solution that satisfies everyone outside of gov't footing the bill a la public roads and calling it an economic multiplier. Because yes internet is a series of tubes and all but video sites are sending couches to everyone, making it FedEx's problem, and then acting shocked when FedEx wants paid for large item delivery.
• karmasimida 3y ago
  That is a salty move
• amano-kenji 3y ago
  [flagged]
• cute_boi 3y ago
  I think every private company like Google/ Meta/ Cloudflare should stop provide their service to Korea. Always support the right thing. They shouldn't be charging extremely high charge for bandwidth.
  • earthwalker99 3y ago
    I'm sure they'll be right on that.
• olliej 3y ago
  Ok, I'm just trying to understand this: Korea passed a law that increased operating costs for twitch (and similar entities, twitch is just the relevant case here). Twitch responded by reducing those costs by reducing the resolution, which seems reasonable. Then they were told they couldn't do that, so they've decided to simply cease operating in Korea as it would be even more expensive (presumably to the extent that they believed there was no possible path to ever being profitable). And now they're being told that they will be fined for not operating in Korea at all? Is that correct? The logical equivalence would be a government passing a law that said "Farmers must pay trucking companies more than the maximum profit on an apple, for every apple they ship, even though the trucking companies are already being paid by the recipient of the apples. Not only are you not allowed to ship fewer apples, you also can't decide to stop being an apple farmer." (I'm not sure if the Korean law also prevents twitch/apple farmers from increasing prices to cover the cost of those fees, but that would track the rest of the nonsense)
  • russdill 3y ago
    Except in this case, they aren't even charging for apples, they're supported entirely by advertising
  • duskwuff 3y ago
    > Is that correct? You forgot the bit where they also got fined for reducing the resolution. But otherwise, yeah, that seems accurate. The phrase "heads I win, tails you lose" comes to mind.
    • olliej 3y ago
      That was what I meant by "not allowed to sell/ship less". I guess this is a novel new way around trade agreements - just add costs that only meaningfully apply to external products (e.g. "a carbon tax for all products that travel more than 6000 miles from site of manufacture or farming to the location of sale or final customer delivery" - sure that doesn't say it's an import duty, but it sure as hell means nothing from the US is subject to the tax in the US, but anything from china would be covered)
  • 3y ago
• kalleboo 3y ago
  This blog has a good bit of background on the Korean "sender pays" regulation scheme https://www.internetsociety.org/blog/2022/09/sender-pays-what-lessons-european-policy-makers-should-take-from-south-korea/ https://www.internetsociety.org/blog/2022/09/sender-pays-wha... > The story of South Korea’s settlement regime starts with one such cache offered by Facebook. Through peering arrangements amongst the largest ISPs (KT, SK Broadband, and LG Uplus), it enabled content that had previously been accessed over expensive transit links to Facebook’s server in, for example, Hong Kong, to now be accessed from Facebook’s cache in KTs network > But in 2016 the Korean government implemented a set of amendments to its 2005 interconnection policy that fundamentally altered norms of voluntary negotiated interconnection by instead imposing a “sending party pays” regime. The critical piece of this change was to impose a “mutual settlement” requirement amongst same-tier operators, in which ISPs were required to compensate each other for traffic exchanged between them. Not long after, KT found themselves with large bills from the other two Tier-1 ISPs, asking for payment for the Facebook traffic that was sent from the cache in KTs network > Faced with these claims for payment, now mandated under the new interconnection rules, KT sought to recoup these costs by instead charging Facebook for the traffic delivered from the cache. When negotiations between KT and Facebook failed, Facebook decided to disable its cache in KTs network, which meant that Korean users were instead routed to other caches overseas > Due to this deteriorated service quality for connections to Facebook, KT made a claim to the regulator KCC that issued a fine against Facebook of USD $328,000 for deliberately disrupting its services > While the story of Korea’s settlement regime is tied to the presence of large international content providers, it has been the domestic content providers that have borne the brunt of the impact. The 2016 rules that imposed a sender pays regime meant that hosting content in any of Korea’s networks became excessively expensive as the ISP would pass on costs to the content provider. While Facebook could simply disable its cache and route the traffic abroad when KT requested “network usage fees”, local content providers could not
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• xyst 3y ago
  Cost of doing business
  • paulddraper 3y ago
    Or...not doing business
• ffpip 3y ago
  What will they do if Twitch doesn't pay the fine? Suspend twitch? Oh wait
• paulddraper 3y ago
  And if Twitch don't comply, Korea is going to...suspend them...oh wait.
• soerxpso 3y ago
  There is a competitor to Twitch that's specific to Korea called AfreecaTV (in my personal opinion it's objectively a much better platform than Twitch). I'm pretty ignorant about the details of the internal political landscape in Korea, but I wonder if Afreeca's ownership might have some ties to the Korean government that would encourage the Korean government to make plays that hinder Twitch's operations there in order to increase Afreeca's market share.
  • HDThoreaun 3y ago
    My understand is that twitch pulled out of korea because the lack of net neutrality lead to them being extorted by ISPs. They were being charged massive delivery fees and decided it wasnt worth it. I dont think afreeca is owned by an ISP so maybe they had the government negotiate a better rate or maybe the ISPs just did them a solid.
• ksec 3y ago
  Considering most Internet Giant has very little leverage in SK; Google, Bing, Facebook, Amazon etc have very little market shares. There is very little to push or lobby for better Korean International Internet connection. The whole sender pays thing, is AFAIK not a thing in any other developed country. ( And absolutely ridiculous ) I guess that is the Korean government wants all the internet company not from Korea to pulled out of Korea?