Time Warner to Charge Extra for Over-Quota Bandwidth

duckygator writes: "I just came across this article on NetworkWorld discussing Time Warner's announcement that they will begin charging users a fee for exceeding a monthly download limit. The actual limits and associated fees aren't discussed. Guess I knew this would be coming sooner or later ... Now I guess I'll just have to guess where the threshold will be. Anything more than email? Active gamer? Graphic artist?"

Comments

Death of free software.

[twitter]

It might actually be cheaper to go out and buy the CD than download the ISO from Red Hat. All of a sudden RH turns a sale with a cost to them into a sale with profit! That _has_ to be a good thing.

No, I don't see it that way. How am I to contribute to large software projects with these leaches charging me so much to check out? No development, no code, no Red Hat. While distros like Debian are streamlined as is, this will still add costs and trouble to the average user. Cheap people will disable their hits on security.debian.org, and we might just see some breakins on Linux computers. This is all very backward and eliminates the advantages free software has over crappy boxed "products": quick responses to venerabilities, configurabilty and ease of upgrades.

A curse on these asses who wish to return to the bad old days of boxed software, Ma Bell, and all other manner of greedy grabbing oppresion. Ludites all!

So many attacks on free software from so many directions. It is just so depressing. September 11th was bad but what people are making of it is worse.

few points to counter above posts

[systemaster]

First of all, about those posts that say its not fair that the users that only use so many megs a month should have to pay for heavy users. Thats bul****t, those users with such little bandwith should^H^H^H^H^H^H are using dialup...they would notice almost no difference, outside of connection time/drops which isn't a problem with a decent ISP. And if you say it is a problem you just need too look harder, if you can't find a good one, start one you'll make a fortune if your the only good shop in town.

I have a better idea just contact those doing ***GB month transfers. And ask them to lower bandwith usage...and if they don't just change their contract to a $/MB system. I mean I sometimes transfer alot but I know its less than a 1GB/day on average...which for what is supposed to be broadband is not that much.

If I get some letter from TW saying they are charging me more I'm going to bitch like there is no tommorow....IF everybody does that they'd have to listen. If they don't theyll have to rename it something other than broadband:)

And when all that fails, because I know it will, considaring how shitty its getting in the US, less freedom, pay-per-use everything. I'll have to resort to a few really big harddrives to prevent haveing to download anything more than once. And setting up a big caching server. And disabling all ads. That will really help all those websites trying to survive on ad money. I really don't mind ads, at least non popup/under type ones. I often click on the ads in slashdot. Now with broadband popups/unders are minor annoyance, just a few clicks a day to close, but If i'm being charged per MB screw all ads, I can't aford it. Ads will have to die. That and lynx will become my browser of choice.

Real Bandwidth Needs

[Not The Real Me]

From a pure business prospective, since a 56K modem can do approximately 4k/sec in the "real" world. 8k/sec over a 24 hour period is about the same as downloading an entire CD's worth of material (approx 650 megs a day).

The only reason anyone needs to upload or download anything beyond 50 megs a day is to get porn or warez.

Businesses might need the bandwidth, but home users do not. In spite of all the talk about broadband multimedia, the truth is the old fasioned television is far superior to viewing a dinky little presentation on your PC.