> From: Erik Reuter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > On Fri, Oct 25, 2002 at 09:39:17PM -0500, The Fool wrote: > > > To achieve this, the cable industry, which sells Internet access to > > most Americans, is pursuing multiple strategies to closely monitor > > and tightly control subscribers and their use of the net. One element > > can be seen in industry lobbying for new use-based pricing schemes, > > which has been widely reported in trade press. Related to this is the > > industry�s new public relations campaign, which seeks to introduce > > a new "menace" into the pricing debate and boost their case, the > > so-called "bandwidth hog." > > This is a GOOD thing. Bandwidth costs money to provide, and is a limited > resource. It makes perfect sense to charge based on how much bandwidth > is used,
Except that this is false advertising. Bait & switch. > that is how a free market works. If you try to suppress the > law of supply and demand, you get shortages and outages, much like what > happened with power in California. This wouldn't be necessary if the local-phone monopolies would install fibre optics right up to the home like they should have done. > This essay is misguided, and the comparison to the airwaves is false > (cables and routers cost money to install and maintain, unlike > "airwaves" which could be used in peer-to-peer fashion without any > expense by a 3rd party). The problem you should be worried about is > ISP's who try to control content of the bandwidth used, not ISP's who Which is happening and was mentioned. > want to charge market rates for bandwidth use. Already most cable modem > companies prohibit running certain services on your computer, such as a > web server or some peer-to-peer file sharing programs. My previous ISP, > Optimum Online, actually blocked port 80 so it was impossible to run a > web server. Some ISP's even forbid you to run SMTP (email) services, and > Earthlink recently stopped accepting email from people who run their > own mail servers. These are the types of things you should be worrying > about. I am and I do. One of the concerns I see with these policies is that they raise to barrier to entry even farther out of the reach of the little guy. It is wrong for the same reason that the RIAA is wrong when it tries to close the barrier to entry for the small guy by outlawing certain technologies, so that none should offer/sell/etc. but through the record companies. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
