Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: For once I agree with weird harold
Shaping was an attempt to cut down the amount of traffic so as to keep the service good for the 90% of people who don't trade files 24 hours a day. It wasn't done the best way possible, and now the likely result will be no shaping but hard caps at a very low traffic level. I am guessing that ISPs will go as low as 30gig a month, which is more than enough for most people. You guys shoving 400 or 500 gig a month of file trades will be paying out the butt, which is pretty much what you are asking for.
you can get even more for even less. the actual price of transfer just isn't that much. sure, residential ISPs have higher costs for wiring, equipment, and customer support, but a lot of it has to do with the fact that the hosting space is highly competitive and the residential broadband space is not.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: For once I agree with weird harold
Long winded chris, I hope you are getting paid for it :)
and just who would i be getting paid to shill for? who would pay for vitriolic posts full of leetspeak and typoes? :-)
seriously, are any of you interested in paying for it? i could seriously improve the quantity and quality of my nerdrage if i didn't have a real job :-)
The point isn't to block anything. Shaping was an attempt to address the issue by punishing the 10% that eat most of the bandwidth to the advantage of those that don't. The ISPs got slapped for it. End discusion, they aren't doing it in the US anymore
i disagree. one of the concessions for the at&t/SBC merger was that AT&T offer 768/128 dsl without filters or caps, effectively creating the internet slow lane they have always wanted.
all of this "bandwidth crisis" nonsense is about creating a tiered internet. there are hundreds of ways to implement the tiers and all of them involve residential ISPs treating their users like a captive audience that you have to pay to put your applications in front of. it's a move to get web companies to pay twice to deliver content and applications.
My point is this: Overselling is the issue only when people are doing things beyond what an average used does. Most of us are not actively using the majority of out connectivity all the time. It allows us all to have a faster connection for the bursts of things we do, because there is enough lulls in our activity to let someone else go ahead.
and my point is this: new applications become available everyday that add value to high speed internet access so the idea of the "average user" doesn't exist anymore.
bouncing calls through the internet used to be the kind of thing that only fone phreaks could do, now skype makes it uber simple for everyone. the next innovation (whatever it will be) will enable even more functionality which will mean even fewer "average users".
innovation happens way faster than cable and telecommunications companies can handle, so it's better for everyone if they just shut up and deliver the bits.
over selling was great when internet access was largely used to surf and check email. almost no one does just that anymore thanks to IM, MMO's, xbox live and the like. thanks to sites like youtube, googledocs, facebook, and myspace, even surfing the web isn't what it used to be.
the world changed, it's time for ISP's to change along with it.
When you visit this website, example, you download the page quickly, and then spend X amount of time reading it. That doesn't use bandwidth.... With average users, the ISPs only need a certain amount of connectivity to satisfy their needs.
that might have been the case 5 years ago, but like i said before that is no longer the case. there is no such thing as an "average user" anymore thanks to tabbed browsers, ajax, and other new innovations. every day new applications move more people away from simple surfing of static pages.
as communications unify, they will unify over the internet. there are plenty of other uses for the internet besides HTTP and bittorrent and the longer american ISPs ignore that fact, the further we as a nation are going to lag behind countries with progressive network infrastructures.
ISPs don't want to work with the P2P community because they don't want to get involved in policing content. It would also violate net neutrality by giving advantage to one type of traffic over another.
no, ISPs are also in the content delivery business and do not want the competition from p2p. cable compaines are offering phone services, at&t uverse, verizion FIOS, phone companies with no video offerings often partner with satellite TV providers, the list goes on and on. these corporations are fighting tooth and nail to avoid competing not only with each other but with new pure play start ups.
and even if p2p is bad for the internet, if we allow ISPs to block, filter, or cap it, what's to stop them from doing the same thing to games or streaming video or VOIP?
most broadband advertisements talk about how fast you can download music and video as a selling point. it's no secret that napster sold more DSL subscriptions than the cleverest of madison avenue marketing campaigns.
the problem with p2p is competition in the video and communications space, and that scares ISPs shitless.
The response is caps. There is no part of net neutrality that says "and you get an unlimited connection at full bandwidth at all times". net neutrality just says no particular traffic will be blocked. Capping usage (say 50gig a month) isn't a violation of net neutrality, but certainly sticks it to the heavy file traders. Without those caps, the ISPs will do exactly what you ask, increase their network to match their complete offer, and raise you price through the roof to use it.
now you are being deliberately obtuse. i said nothing of the sort. i said that ISP's should be honest about what they sell. that means being upfront about the actual speeds you can connect at, and disclosing things like caps instead of burying them in the fine print, or implementing them after the fact. this helps consumers make the best of their limited (if any) choices.
and so if "average use" is 50gb a month, what happens when the next hulu comes along and more "average people" start doing more with the web than ever before? internet usage will only continue to grow. isp's can grow to meet that demand, or they can upset their userbase and risk government intervention.
you can't sell a drug and says "cures cancer" on the label, why should an ISP be able to sell limited service with caps with "unlimited" on the label?
You might want to try thinking about it as a business person, rather than as a teenager in moms basement. The big world is very different from theoreticals.
and you might want to think about the future instead of clinging to the flawed thinking of the past. deceptive and anti-competitive behavior is not now and never has been good for business.
how's this for theoreticals in the big world:
first let's talk real traffic numbers. at my house i have two voip phones, my wife plays an MMO, i am a very active steam user, and my nephew is an avid xbox live user, plus i seed/leech torrents 24x7 and according to my firewall logs this month i have pulled in 55.8gb and put up 66.4gb, which is well under the 200gb a month transfer i get on my rented VPS for $20 a month.
i pay $85 a month for basic cable and "unlimited" broadband, yet i can get almost twice the transfer for almost half the price from a web host. based on those numbers i am all for paying for what you use, and i am one of the bandwidth hogs.
based on your speculation, that would put my costs "through the roof" but i am not so certain. now, let's assume that residential bandwidth is somehow more expensive than the commercial variety, and that twice the price is justified. what about the almost half the transfer?
is it really 4 times as expensive per bit to push traffic to a home?
now let's take these numbers to your mom's basement. if i am being overcharged per gigabyte, and i max out my connection 24x7, imagine what your mom is paying per gig as a "average user" whatever that is.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: For once I agree with weird harold
What P2P does (even when used to distribute entirely legal, permitted commercial content) is that it takes bandwidth FROM the ISP (at their cost) and gives it to the software distributor for free. The usually answer is "that's not true, I pay for my 5mbps connection, I can use it as I want!". That may be true, but the ISP has priced your connection like you use many 10% of it, maybe less. Now, when it's only a few people using a bit more bandwidth than the others, it isn't an issue. But if the expectation is that everyone will use their connection to 30% or even 50%, the ISP needs to pay for more connectivity, more bandwidth, to support the business models of OTHER companies that the end users are choosing to use (and to provide bandwidth to).
that's great, then stop over selling. if you can only afford people using 512k down, then sell it as 512k down, not 5mbps.
the world is changing. people don't just surf the web and check their email anymore. new applications and technologies come out every day that let people do more with the computers and the internet access they already have.
you act like the need to make a profit some how supersedes this innovation.
if your ISP can't deliver what it sells it either needs to be honest about what it is selling, or upgrade what it sells so it matches what is advertised.
if p2p is destroying your ISP, then maybe your ISP can work with the p2p community to improve the protocol before the community moves encrypted connections make shaping impossible. or do something crazy like talk to it's users about what they want and what they think is important.
this old world idea that you can just block something and expect it to go away is absolutely foolish.
being a corporation doesn't grant an ISP the right to lie about what they sell. profits are not more important than people.
Re: Net neutrality legislation is not the solution
i use QOS to do exactly the same thing on my network: voip is given top priority, and p2p is given the back of the bus treatment.
but that was my decision. i was involved in the decision making process. with corporate agreements, i wouldn't be given any input. if youtube or vonage can't pay the asking price for preferential treatment, they won't get it. in fact, they may get degraded to the point of being useless, or blocked altogether.
this is especially dangerous when time warner and verizon are offering their own voice and video services that they want their customers to pay for and have plenty of incentive to discriminate against competitors.
1) Low caps on bandwidth. If ISPs cannot control the low percentage of people who use huge amounts of traffic by blocking or disabling certain types of traffic (P2P, Skype, etc), then they will have to limit everyones traffic to a number low enough to make the heavier users pay dramatically
time warner is already implementing caps without legislation. it's the lack of a mechanism like legislation that gives ISP's the idea that they can do these kinds of things without consequences.
2) Higher monthly costs.If the ISPs are forced to provide both ingoing and outgoing bandwidth to support P2P, Skype, and other "peered network" commercial systems, they will have to purchase significantly larger connections to peering points and increase their internal network size and connections to support it.
the costs are high already, and they never go down. no residential broadband provider has ever lowered prices except temporarily as part of a promotion. the current duopoly of cable and telephone companies guarantees high prices and little competition.
companies like skype and even the pirate bay already pay for bandwidth (both incoming and outgoing) already. residential users pay for bandwidth as well, incoming and outgoing. it's already being paid for by both parties. why should the ISP's be allowed to charge twice?
if the ISP's don't want to upgrade their networks, that is their prerogative. since there is no competition in the residential broadband space, it's not like consumers will be able to switch providers or anything.
In the end, absolute net neutrality isn't any better for the average consumer than a restricted network. 90% of the bandwidth is used by 10% of an ISPs users. Being obligated to support all these other business models will mean massive changes, and those changes will go in the wrong direction.
there is a simple way to fix this, which is to abandon the unlimited model and charge for bandwidth the way that hosting companies do.
this will never happen, because then consumers could choose providers based on a price per gigabyte basis, making cable and DSL an apples to apples comparison when deciding which of the two providers to go with (if you are fortunate enough to have two to choose from).
Yes, You could use an iphone with other carriers but the majority of un-tech savvy Americans can not. Plus, Unlocking a phone I believe is technically illegal.
unlocking phones is not illegal. there is even a proviso in the DMCA for unlocking phones.
Record Labels in the end help to narrow down the field so I am get to look at a few hundred of the best acts around, rather than listening to the deafening static of tens of thousands of untalented wannabes.
you can't have it both ways. either you spend millions to force the world to listen to your chosen few bands and their music gets pirated en masse, or you cut your spending on creating universally desired music and profit.
if there is such a broad selection of music that no one knows what to listen to, maybe you could provide a service to connect a person with music they like? you could probably charge for that service as well. this is how amazon and netflix are able to compete with other outlets: their recommendation services make people happy.
the setup that you describe is focused on what you want to sell, not on what the public wants to buy. if you sell something that people want to buy, you are more likely to see a profit and you have to spend less on promotions to trick people into buying.
The funny part is that unless we respect artists rights (the original artists, not the guy who hacked them together), the only think that will be left in the music business will be lower quality products from people willing to work for only the joy of it. All this of course while flipping burgers at McDonalds.
right, there is no work with music that isn't selling CD's. no one teaches music, no one writes jingles for commercials, no one sells music for real commercial use in movies and on television. all you can do to make money in music is sell music to consumers.
Yes, musicians make music for the love of music. However, if they are unable to make a living making music, they have to spend much of what would have been creative time instead punching a clock for the man so they can afford to live.
not only do they need money to live, but they need money for divorce lawyers, platinum grillz, alimony, ferraris, cocaine, rehab, mansions, agents, publicists, and lavish parties.
that takes money that can only be generated by selling CD's. it's illegal for a musician to earn a living any other way. i cry myself to sleep every night worrying how pdiddy is going to be able to buy another giant diamond watch.
We don't see it so clearly right now mostly because we are still in transition. Without a proper music industry to reward artists and allow them to work on making new original music, the music will go away.
also exactly right. no one made music or enjoyed it before the record industry was invented in the 50's. artists like motzart and beethoven needed record deals to live and create music.
thank god tribes in africa have a lucrative CD trade to keep traditional music alive or their culture would have died out hundreds of years ago.
There is a difference between raw materials and a finished product. A single note on a piano is raw materials. A combinations of noted played is a product. A single molecule of paint is nothing more than that, but enough of them together in a certain way is art, a finished product.
yeah, and mashups use bits of other works as raw materials. what's the difference?
if there is a difference, then by that logic anything that isn't 100% original is wrong. are you saying that recycling is wrong? are you also saying that covers and remakes are wrong? how about repeating an experiment to verify the results of the original, is that wrong? is quoting a work in a paper wrong? is making marginal improvements on an existing product wrong? is using part of work in a classroom wrong? is fair use in general wrong?
most mashups are not sold for profit, they are used as examples of people's talent or people just create them for the hell of it. are you saying that is wrong too?
Would you think it fair for someone to open a restaurant and offer the chicken using the KFC recipe plus McDonalds fries and Starbucks coffee together as fair because nobody else sells this particular combination?
so you think that KFC hold some sort of exclusive ownership on fried chicken? why haven't they sued popeye's and church's then? oh, maybe any fool can make fried chicken, but it takes something more to bring a product to market and launch a successful business with it.
you think that companies in all industries don't analyze the products of their competitors? are you really that niave?
Basically, as art (and only as art) the issue wasn't ever settled. It is clear that Campbells retains their rights and controls how their image is used.
do you think warhol gave an ounce of consideration to campell's rights? i'll bet the rights issue didn't come up until the work was a success. and just what does a picture of soup cans mean in the grand scheme of things?
did campbell's really think that an artsy rendition of their label is going to negatively impact sales of soup? or was campbell's just trying to exert control over something unnecessarily?
I'm pretty sure that 0% of the people the RIAA has sued over the last several years have profitted (or planned to profit) from piracy. So I'm not exactly sure what point you're trying to make.
not making money is the same as losing money. just like standing still is the same thing as moving backwards.
i can prove it. go outside and face south while standing still. before you know it you will move backwards to the north pole.
If you want the shiny baubles of life, you have to pay for them. If you aren't paying for them, then you are stealing them. There isn't very many other ways to get them, now is there?
music and movies aren't shiny baubles. they are things which are experienced.
if you are in the bauble business, where you are making and selling baubles, and someone takes one, then you are out one bauble. if you want to use or sell that bauble you need to either get it back from the person that took it or create or buy another.
a digital copy of song or movie cannot be stolen. it can be distributed without your authorization, but that is not the same thing as stealing because you still have your original to use or sell or whatever.
You are making the same mistake that Mike often makes in his posts: You are not thinking to the end of the process. Distribution (digital or otherwise) isn't the main cost in the content. So distribute it any way you like, you haven't changed the price of producing the content. Would you deny artists their right to profit from their work?
and you are making the same mistake that all content producers make: the cost of production is fixed and has no impact on price.
the market decides the price it will pay without regard for your fixed costs. you can't just make up numbers to charge and expect success. if you price yourself out of the market, you fail.
the going rate for content online is nothing. you can either sell at that price and have a chance at succeeding or charge more and be guaranteed to fail.
profit is a privilege, not a right. if you want to be guaranteed a profit, then don't make content, get a real job and put your money in a savings account.
show business it risky, that's why everyone's parents tried to talk them out of doing it.
a great way to increase profits is to cut your fixed costs. if a movie costs $200 million to produce and promote, then it has to do $200 million in sales to break even. cutting costs means the film has to do far less in sales to turn a profit.
If nobody is paying for content, who can afford to produce it?
there are plenty of people out there that give their content away and make money. penny arcade is a great example. new comics and other downloadable content every week for free, and they are not only able to make money, but they can raise and donate millions to charity every year.
Right now you are getting your music and movie free ride on the torrents only because enough people are overpaying for the content in other ways.
torrents give the market what it wants: decent quality, ultra low price, freedom, usability, and plenty of choice.
if you want to make money provide something that the torrents can't: convenience, speed, longevity, etc.
Your $1 a song price is in part because a large percentage of total sales are lost because people like you think that the music has not monetary value, and you have no interest in paying for it regardless of the price it is offered at.
paying for songs? hell no. i won't pay for songs, movies, or plastic discs. i will, however, pay for merchandise. i have never purchased an mc frontalot or mc chris cd or a single track, but i have t-shirts for both. i have never purchased a penny arcade or megatokyo comic or book, but i have quite a few t-shirts. the same is true for linux and bsd software.
digital distribution is only a method to ship the product, not the removal of cost to create it.
no one gives a rat's ass about your costs. your costs are not anyone's problem but your own. no one cares how much it costs for GM to make a car, no one cares how much it costs mcdonald's to make a cheeseburger. all we care about is convenience, quality, and price.
the sooner you figure out that fixed costs are your problem, and not the consumers', the sooner you will have a chance at succeeding.
if you want to see people paying for access to free content, take a look at newsgroup services. the content is free, but people pay monthly fees to get it quickly and conveniently.
i would pay for a service that helped me find quality digital content quickly AND recommended new content ala the netflix/amazon recommendation system AND kept me from being hassled by the content compaines. getting my internet access shut off due to a DMCA letter is an inconvenience, not a deterrent, since my provider just switches me back on again.
When nobody pays for music anymore, there will be no more music produced of the current style and quality level.
first off, the current style and quality is total crap.
all the music i pirate is back catalog stuff that has been sold on probably two formats already and may or may not be available for sale anymore. those songs are paid for several times over.
as for new music, i really only listen to independent and underground music that really isn't all that mainstream and most of the time the internet is the only way those artists can distribute and promote their music.
the current state of popular music is dreadful. all the pop stars in the world could die in a fire and i wouldn't care in the slightest.
when it comes to piracy of music, the labels have themselves to blame. they wanted everyone in the world to listen to and buy a small selection of music so they can save money on the manufacture and promotion of their stars.
congratulations! good job! thanks to the record labels and radio conglomerates there are only 40 hit songs in circulation now. your generic music is universal now, which makes pirating it a breeze.
why not inject a whole lot of variety into your pablum?
why not diversify your offerings? why not make music that has cult followings rather than universal appeal? that seems to have worked for the grateful dead.
if you can build a community or a cult around your acts, you are going to see more purchases of merchandise and tickets to events by fanatical fans.
also, if the top40 or the itunes top100 was more like the top ten thousand or the top one million then it would be a lot harder for piracy to reach critical mass because of the sheer volume of music that was available.
if there were a way for people to learn about computers and the internet (not just how to use windows and word) so it dispelled some of the magic that seems to surround computers, and maybe introduced people to some of the culture of the internet, maybe there wouldn't be so many people supporting stupid laws and it would cut down on some of the hurt feelings that come with learning the hard lessons.
Simon has a point about covering beats like city hall - you don't see bloggers covering the daily, mundane events like regular city council meetings... True, you also don't see newspapers doing this anymore.
if the bloggers don't cover this stuff, and the journalists don't either, the question isn't "who is going to cover it?" but "why isn't it being covered anymore?"
that's the problem with news as a saleable product, if no one is buying it, it won't get sold. you will run into this problem no matter who is doing the news.
On the post: Are Industry Best Practices Enough To Protect Net Neutrality?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: For once I agree with weird harold
look at these transfer prices:
http://www.linode.com
400gb of transfer is $39.95 600gb is $59.95. they aren't the best deal around either:
http://www.webkeepers.com/vps/index.html
you can get even more for even less. the actual price of transfer just isn't that much. sure, residential ISPs have higher costs for wiring, equipment, and customer support, but a lot of it has to do with the fact that the hosting space is highly competitive and the residential broadband space is not.
On the post: Are Industry Best Practices Enough To Protect Net Neutrality?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: For once I agree with weird harold
and just who would i be getting paid to shill for? who would pay for vitriolic posts full of leetspeak and typoes? :-)
seriously, are any of you interested in paying for it? i could seriously improve the quantity and quality of my nerdrage if i didn't have a real job :-)
The point isn't to block anything. Shaping was an attempt to address the issue by punishing the 10% that eat most of the bandwidth to the advantage of those that don't. The ISPs got slapped for it. End discusion, they aren't doing it in the US anymore
i disagree. one of the concessions for the at&t/SBC merger was that AT&T offer 768/128 dsl without filters or caps, effectively creating the internet slow lane they have always wanted.
all of this "bandwidth crisis" nonsense is about creating a tiered internet. there are hundreds of ways to implement the tiers and all of them involve residential ISPs treating their users like a captive audience that you have to pay to put your applications in front of. it's a move to get web companies to pay twice to deliver content and applications.
My point is this: Overselling is the issue only when people are doing things beyond what an average used does. Most of us are not actively using the majority of out connectivity all the time. It allows us all to have a faster connection for the bursts of things we do, because there is enough lulls in our activity to let someone else go ahead.
and my point is this: new applications become available everyday that add value to high speed internet access so the idea of the "average user" doesn't exist anymore.
bouncing calls through the internet used to be the kind of thing that only fone phreaks could do, now skype makes it uber simple for everyone. the next innovation (whatever it will be) will enable even more functionality which will mean even fewer "average users".
innovation happens way faster than cable and telecommunications companies can handle, so it's better for everyone if they just shut up and deliver the bits.
over selling was great when internet access was largely used to surf and check email. almost no one does just that anymore thanks to IM, MMO's, xbox live and the like. thanks to sites like youtube, googledocs, facebook, and myspace, even surfing the web isn't what it used to be.
the world changed, it's time for ISP's to change along with it.
When you visit this website, example, you download the page quickly, and then spend X amount of time reading it. That doesn't use bandwidth.... With average users, the ISPs only need a certain amount of connectivity to satisfy their needs.
that might have been the case 5 years ago, but like i said before that is no longer the case. there is no such thing as an "average user" anymore thanks to tabbed browsers, ajax, and other new innovations. every day new applications move more people away from simple surfing of static pages.
as communications unify, they will unify over the internet. there are plenty of other uses for the internet besides HTTP and bittorrent and the longer american ISPs ignore that fact, the further we as a nation are going to lag behind countries with progressive network infrastructures.
ISPs don't want to work with the P2P community because they don't want to get involved in policing content. It would also violate net neutrality by giving advantage to one type of traffic over another.
no, ISPs are also in the content delivery business and do not want the competition from p2p. cable compaines are offering phone services, at&t uverse, verizion FIOS, phone companies with no video offerings often partner with satellite TV providers, the list goes on and on. these corporations are fighting tooth and nail to avoid competing not only with each other but with new pure play start ups.
and even if p2p is bad for the internet, if we allow ISPs to block, filter, or cap it, what's to stop them from doing the same thing to games or streaming video or VOIP?
most broadband advertisements talk about how fast you can download music and video as a selling point. it's no secret that napster sold more DSL subscriptions than the cleverest of madison avenue marketing campaigns.
the problem with p2p is competition in the video and communications space, and that scares ISPs shitless.
The response is caps. There is no part of net neutrality that says "and you get an unlimited connection at full bandwidth at all times". net neutrality just says no particular traffic will be blocked. Capping usage (say 50gig a month) isn't a violation of net neutrality, but certainly sticks it to the heavy file traders. Without those caps, the ISPs will do exactly what you ask, increase their network to match their complete offer, and raise you price through the roof to use it.
now you are being deliberately obtuse. i said nothing of the sort. i said that ISP's should be honest about what they sell. that means being upfront about the actual speeds you can connect at, and disclosing things like caps instead of burying them in the fine print, or implementing them after the fact. this helps consumers make the best of their limited (if any) choices.
and so if "average use" is 50gb a month, what happens when the next hulu comes along and more "average people" start doing more with the web than ever before? internet usage will only continue to grow. isp's can grow to meet that demand, or they can upset their userbase and risk government intervention.
you can't sell a drug and says "cures cancer" on the label, why should an ISP be able to sell limited service with caps with "unlimited" on the label?
You might want to try thinking about it as a business person, rather than as a teenager in moms basement. The big world is very different from theoreticals.
and you might want to think about the future instead of clinging to the flawed thinking of the past. deceptive and anti-competitive behavior is not now and never has been good for business.
how's this for theoreticals in the big world:
first let's talk real traffic numbers. at my house i have two voip phones, my wife plays an MMO, i am a very active steam user, and my nephew is an avid xbox live user, plus i seed/leech torrents 24x7 and according to my firewall logs this month i have pulled in 55.8gb and put up 66.4gb, which is well under the 200gb a month transfer i get on my rented VPS for $20 a month.
i pay $85 a month for basic cable and "unlimited" broadband, yet i can get almost twice the transfer for almost half the price from a web host. based on those numbers i am all for paying for what you use, and i am one of the bandwidth hogs.
based on your speculation, that would put my costs "through the roof" but i am not so certain. now, let's assume that residential bandwidth is somehow more expensive than the commercial variety, and that twice the price is justified. what about the almost half the transfer?
is it really 4 times as expensive per bit to push traffic to a home?
now let's take these numbers to your mom's basement. if i am being overcharged per gigabyte, and i max out my connection 24x7, imagine what your mom is paying per gig as a "average user" whatever that is.
On the post: Are Industry Best Practices Enough To Protect Net Neutrality?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: For once I agree with weird harold
that's great, then stop over selling. if you can only afford people using 512k down, then sell it as 512k down, not 5mbps.
the world is changing. people don't just surf the web and check their email anymore. new applications and technologies come out every day that let people do more with the computers and the internet access they already have.
you act like the need to make a profit some how supersedes this innovation.
if your ISP can't deliver what it sells it either needs to be honest about what it is selling, or upgrade what it sells so it matches what is advertised.
if p2p is destroying your ISP, then maybe your ISP can work with the p2p community to improve the protocol before the community moves encrypted connections make shaping impossible. or do something crazy like talk to it's users about what they want and what they think is important.
this old world idea that you can just block something and expect it to go away is absolutely foolish.
being a corporation doesn't grant an ISP the right to lie about what they sell. profits are not more important than people.
On the post: Are Industry Best Practices Enough To Protect Net Neutrality?
Re: Net neutrality legislation is not the solution
but that was my decision. i was involved in the decision making process. with corporate agreements, i wouldn't be given any input. if youtube or vonage can't pay the asking price for preferential treatment, they won't get it. in fact, they may get degraded to the point of being useless, or blocked altogether.
this is especially dangerous when time warner and verizon are offering their own voice and video services that they want their customers to pay for and have plenty of incentive to discriminate against competitors.
On the post: Are Industry Best Practices Enough To Protect Net Neutrality?
Re: The sky is Falling - The sky is Falling
i hope he's a shill and is at least getting paid to act like a corporate whore.
On the post: Are Industry Best Practices Enough To Protect Net Neutrality?
Re:
time warner is already implementing caps without legislation. it's the lack of a mechanism like legislation that gives ISP's the idea that they can do these kinds of things without consequences.
2) Higher monthly costs.If the ISPs are forced to provide both ingoing and outgoing bandwidth to support P2P, Skype, and other "peered network" commercial systems, they will have to purchase significantly larger connections to peering points and increase their internal network size and connections to support it.
the costs are high already, and they never go down. no residential broadband provider has ever lowered prices except temporarily as part of a promotion. the current duopoly of cable and telephone companies guarantees high prices and little competition.
companies like skype and even the pirate bay already pay for bandwidth (both incoming and outgoing) already. residential users pay for bandwidth as well, incoming and outgoing. it's already being paid for by both parties. why should the ISP's be allowed to charge twice?
if the ISP's don't want to upgrade their networks, that is their prerogative. since there is no competition in the residential broadband space, it's not like consumers will be able to switch providers or anything.
In the end, absolute net neutrality isn't any better for the average consumer than a restricted network. 90% of the bandwidth is used by 10% of an ISPs users. Being obligated to support all these other business models will mean massive changes, and those changes will go in the wrong direction.
there is a simple way to fix this, which is to abandon the unlimited model and charge for bandwidth the way that hosting companies do.
this will never happen, because then consumers could choose providers based on a price per gigabyte basis, making cable and DSL an apples to apples comparison when deciding which of the two providers to go with (if you are fortunate enough to have two to choose from).
On the post: Groups Again Take Aim At Cellphone Subsidies
Re: Re: Re: You can buy unsubsidized phones
unlocking phones is not illegal. there is even a proviso in the DMCA for unlocking phones.
On the post: Finland Agrees To Let Companies Spy On Workers
it's not hard to circumvent
if you can ssh out of the network, then you can encrypt all of your traffic via a tunnel or use one of the many vpn services that are available.
tunneling has the added benefit of knowing if you are being watched when big brother approaches you about your large volume of SSH/IPSEC traffic.
On the post: Recording Industry, Once Again, Stomps Out Optimism
Re: Re: Re:
you can't have it both ways. either you spend millions to force the world to listen to your chosen few bands and their music gets pirated en masse, or you cut your spending on creating universally desired music and profit.
if there is such a broad selection of music that no one knows what to listen to, maybe you could provide a service to connect a person with music they like? you could probably charge for that service as well. this is how amazon and netflix are able to compete with other outlets: their recommendation services make people happy.
the setup that you describe is focused on what you want to sell, not on what the public wants to buy. if you sell something that people want to buy, you are more likely to see a profit and you have to spend less on promotions to trick people into buying.
On the post: Who Says Remixing Isn't Creative Or New?
Re: Re:
right, there is no work with music that isn't selling CD's. no one teaches music, no one writes jingles for commercials, no one sells music for real commercial use in movies and on television. all you can do to make money in music is sell music to consumers.
Yes, musicians make music for the love of music. However, if they are unable to make a living making music, they have to spend much of what would have been creative time instead punching a clock for the man so they can afford to live.
not only do they need money to live, but they need money for divorce lawyers, platinum grillz, alimony, ferraris, cocaine, rehab, mansions, agents, publicists, and lavish parties.
that takes money that can only be generated by selling CD's. it's illegal for a musician to earn a living any other way. i cry myself to sleep every night worrying how pdiddy is going to be able to buy another giant diamond watch.
We don't see it so clearly right now mostly because we are still in transition. Without a proper music industry to reward artists and allow them to work on making new original music, the music will go away.
also exactly right. no one made music or enjoyed it before the record industry was invented in the 50's. artists like motzart and beethoven needed record deals to live and create music.
thank god tribes in africa have a lucrative CD trade to keep traditional music alive or their culture would have died out hundreds of years ago.
On the post: Oh Look, Another Set-top Box For Streaming Movies
Re: What (I think) a lot of (families) want.
there are too many regional hoops to jump thru, too many studios have to agree, too many lawyers and too many people that will want their share.
now, if you were willing to pay $500 a month, or say buy the box for $15,000 then that would be a different story.
On the post: No Surprise Here: Lost Votes In Last Election Due To Faulty Diebold Equipment
Re: Money vs Votes
On the post: Who Says Remixing Isn't Creative Or New?
Re:
yeah, and mashups use bits of other works as raw materials. what's the difference?
if there is a difference, then by that logic anything that isn't 100% original is wrong. are you saying that recycling is wrong? are you also saying that covers and remakes are wrong? how about repeating an experiment to verify the results of the original, is that wrong? is quoting a work in a paper wrong? is making marginal improvements on an existing product wrong? is using part of work in a classroom wrong? is fair use in general wrong?
most mashups are not sold for profit, they are used as examples of people's talent or people just create them for the hell of it. are you saying that is wrong too?
Would you think it fair for someone to open a restaurant and offer the chicken using the KFC recipe plus McDonalds fries and Starbucks coffee together as fair because nobody else sells this particular combination?
so you think that KFC hold some sort of exclusive ownership on fried chicken? why haven't they sued popeye's and church's then? oh, maybe any fool can make fried chicken, but it takes something more to bring a product to market and launch a successful business with it.
you think that companies in all industries don't analyze the products of their competitors? are you really that niave?
Basically, as art (and only as art) the issue wasn't ever settled. It is clear that Campbells retains their rights and controls how their image is used.
do you think warhol gave an ounce of consideration to campell's rights? i'll bet the rights issue didn't come up until the work was a success. and just what does a picture of soup cans mean in the grand scheme of things?
did campbell's really think that an artsy rendition of their label is going to negatively impact sales of soup? or was campbell's just trying to exert control over something unnecessarily?
On the post: If Piracy Is Destroying The Movie Business, Why Is The Box Office Surging?
Re: Re: Box Office isn't the only income stream
“[Dark Knight] will continue to sell copies for years to come ... provided that there isn't a huge competition from pirate sites.”
Funny you should claim that, because it turns out that Dark Knight was the most pirated movie of 2008.
hell, i downloaded it like 3 times after i saw it in the theater: i downloaded the cam, the telesync and then the DVD rip.
On the post: No Doubt: Buy A Concert Ticket, Download All Our Songs
Re: Re: Perhaps too
not making money is the same as losing money. just like standing still is the same thing as moving backwards.
i can prove it. go outside and face south while standing still. before you know it you will move backwards to the north pole.
On the post: Oh Look, Another Set-top Box For Streaming Movies
Re: Re: Re:
music and movies aren't shiny baubles. they are things which are experienced.
if you are in the bauble business, where you are making and selling baubles, and someone takes one, then you are out one bauble. if you want to use or sell that bauble you need to either get it back from the person that took it or create or buy another.
a digital copy of song or movie cannot be stolen. it can be distributed without your authorization, but that is not the same thing as stealing because you still have your original to use or sell or whatever.
On the post: Oh Look, Another Set-top Box For Streaming Movies
Re: Re: Re:
and you are making the same mistake that all content producers make: the cost of production is fixed and has no impact on price.
the market decides the price it will pay without regard for your fixed costs. you can't just make up numbers to charge and expect success. if you price yourself out of the market, you fail.
the going rate for content online is nothing. you can either sell at that price and have a chance at succeeding or charge more and be guaranteed to fail.
profit is a privilege, not a right. if you want to be guaranteed a profit, then don't make content, get a real job and put your money in a savings account.
show business it risky, that's why everyone's parents tried to talk them out of doing it.
a great way to increase profits is to cut your fixed costs. if a movie costs $200 million to produce and promote, then it has to do $200 million in sales to break even. cutting costs means the film has to do far less in sales to turn a profit.
If nobody is paying for content, who can afford to produce it?
there are plenty of people out there that give their content away and make money. penny arcade is a great example. new comics and other downloadable content every week for free, and they are not only able to make money, but they can raise and donate millions to charity every year.
Right now you are getting your music and movie free ride on the torrents only because enough people are overpaying for the content in other ways.
torrents give the market what it wants: decent quality, ultra low price, freedom, usability, and plenty of choice.
if you want to make money provide something that the torrents can't: convenience, speed, longevity, etc.
Your $1 a song price is in part because a large percentage of total sales are lost because people like you think that the music has not monetary value, and you have no interest in paying for it regardless of the price it is offered at.
paying for songs? hell no. i won't pay for songs, movies, or plastic discs. i will, however, pay for merchandise. i have never purchased an mc frontalot or mc chris cd or a single track, but i have t-shirts for both. i have never purchased a penny arcade or megatokyo comic or book, but i have quite a few t-shirts. the same is true for linux and bsd software.
digital distribution is only a method to ship the product, not the removal of cost to create it.
no one gives a rat's ass about your costs. your costs are not anyone's problem but your own. no one cares how much it costs for GM to make a car, no one cares how much it costs mcdonald's to make a cheeseburger. all we care about is convenience, quality, and price.
the sooner you figure out that fixed costs are your problem, and not the consumers', the sooner you will have a chance at succeeding.
if you want to see people paying for access to free content, take a look at newsgroup services. the content is free, but people pay monthly fees to get it quickly and conveniently.
i would pay for a service that helped me find quality digital content quickly AND recommended new content ala the netflix/amazon recommendation system AND kept me from being hassled by the content compaines. getting my internet access shut off due to a DMCA letter is an inconvenience, not a deterrent, since my provider just switches me back on again.
When nobody pays for music anymore, there will be no more music produced of the current style and quality level.
first off, the current style and quality is total crap.
all the music i pirate is back catalog stuff that has been sold on probably two formats already and may or may not be available for sale anymore. those songs are paid for several times over.
as for new music, i really only listen to independent and underground music that really isn't all that mainstream and most of the time the internet is the only way those artists can distribute and promote their music.
the current state of popular music is dreadful. all the pop stars in the world could die in a fire and i wouldn't care in the slightest.
when it comes to piracy of music, the labels have themselves to blame. they wanted everyone in the world to listen to and buy a small selection of music so they can save money on the manufacture and promotion of their stars.
congratulations! good job! thanks to the record labels and radio conglomerates there are only 40 hit songs in circulation now. your generic music is universal now, which makes pirating it a breeze.
why not inject a whole lot of variety into your pablum?
why not diversify your offerings? why not make music that has cult followings rather than universal appeal? that seems to have worked for the grateful dead.
if you can build a community or a cult around your acts, you are going to see more purchases of merchandise and tickets to events by fanatical fans.
also, if the top40 or the itunes top100 was more like the top ten thousand or the top one million then it would be a lot harder for piracy to reach critical mass because of the sheer volume of music that was available.
On the post: Do Kids Still Need Courses In Basic Computer Skills?
white kids in the suburbs... probably not
if there were a way for people to learn about computers and the internet (not just how to use windows and word) so it dispelled some of the magic that seems to surround computers, and maybe introduced people to some of the culture of the internet, maybe there wouldn't be so many people supporting stupid laws and it would cut down on some of the hurt feelings that come with learning the hard lessons.
On the post: Politician Wants Google To Blur Street View Images Of Buildings; Next Up: Blurring Reality
Re: other terrorist tools
disposable cameras
long range optics
batteries
cash
wire transfers
soldering irons
box cutters
copper wire
hand held radios
On the post: David Simon Whines About The State Of Journalism While Undermining His Own Point
Re:
if the bloggers don't cover this stuff, and the journalists don't either, the question isn't "who is going to cover it?" but "why isn't it being covered anymore?"
that's the problem with news as a saleable product, if no one is buying it, it won't get sold. you will run into this problem no matter who is doing the news.
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