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Cable Companies Saying No to WiFi Sharing
blastedtokyo writes: "According to this story from CNet, Time Warner Cable is going after people who share their wireless connections via NYC Wireless or other public share networks. All we need is a warchalking symbol that conveys 'I'm a lawyer who doesn't have time to figure out how to set up a WEP link.'" This might remind you of a story posted the other day about other ways cable ISPs are trying to lock down their networks.
I own a small ISP, so I fully agree that it's within ISPs rights to limit the connection to only those who purchase it for consumer grade services. If you're a business or reseller customer, you can purchase a T1 or higher cost/bandwidth circuit and do whatever you want with it. If a ~$50/month residential user ends up giving his access to the whole neighboorhood, there won't be any money to run the services. We all know free Internet doesn't work. So suck it up and pay for your own service so you can have reliable and decent service from your providers.
Because they base their pricing on "average use". You giving away your connection is not "average use" and you against your contract. Want to give away your connection? Go buy a T-1 with no usage clause like that. What? It costs a lot more? Sure does.
Flamebait...oh well.
Sure, you're paying for your connection, but what about everyone else piggybacking off of it over WiFi? Sounds quite a bit like the one-apartment-stealing-cable-for-the-building situation to me. Sure, Time-Warner or whomever is paid $40 or so a month for the service, but what about the $1200 from the other 30 apartments that get it for free?
If they are worried about people giving bandwidth away. Instead of chasing off potential customers. Why don't they just charge for bandwidth usage like a lot of them are anywaiz. That way, even if someone gives it away using wireless, they get their money and everyone is somewhat happy.
As a Time-Warner NYC cable customer I LIKE not having to worry about bandwidth charges, and I sure as hell wouldn't be "happy" if a bunch of cheap yahoos who are too 37337 to just follow the damn TOS messed it up for the rest of us.
This kind of stupidity, along with the crackdown on "bandwidth hogs", is all due to the shortsightedness of those creating the subscriber contracts and AUPs. If the ISPs would simply provide clear policy on bandwidth usage and set something that both their customers and they could live with, this kind of witch hunt would be unnecessary. We have cable modem providers banning servers regardless of whether they are public or private (for the subscriber's use only). They are banning 802.11 because they think it might cause a bandwidth problem. They block ports for applications ranging from web servers to P2P networks.
If there is a usage limit, spell it out. If you want more money for more usage, publish a price schedule. But quit targeting early adopters who are just using their connections in new and innovative ways.
We're paying them for our connection. Why do they care what we do with it after that?
Because their efforts to pigeonhole human beings into predictable consumers who do only what they anticipate, and nothing creative, is failing, and with it quite possibly their flawed business models.
These are the same people who misguidedly think that bandwidth is something that can be "stolen" (never mind the dictionary definition of the word) and would probably accuse you of "stealing" temperature if you went to a shopping mall to enjoy the warm air (in winter) or air conditioning (in summer) without buying anything.
The fact that you can't steal temperature, any more than you can steal bandwidth, doesn't seem to bother the purveyors of such newspeak in the least, and such nuances as the fact that you might be guilty of loitering (in the shopping mall example), or of violating the terms of your service contract (with your ISP), but not stealing, seems to be completely lost on such people.
One can only hope the FBI, who in many such instances have become judge, jury, and executioner (or at least "fine levyer" in the form of stolen, or seized, equipment) eventually catches on to this and starts putting their resources into fighting real crimes, rather than one-sidedly settling contract disputes extra-judicially.
In the meantime, expect "theft" to become an even more abused word than "terrorism," if it hasn't already.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
NetJunkie writes:
Because they base their pricing on "average use". You giving away your connection is not "average use"
So? The whole point of an average is that some people use more and some less. If three machines are using my connection, then I am using more than "average use", but that in and of itself doesn't give them the right to retaliate.
and you against your contract.
Not necessarily, that depends on the contract. My contract explicitly allows me three connections. If I'm within that limit, they should not care; if I go over it, I expect them to complain.
Other people with other providers have other contracts. Some of them might have contracts that say basically, "here's a connection, do whatever you want with it".
The issue is whether or not the usage is within the terms of the contract, not whether or not it's "average use"; and you don't know the terms of the contracts in question. If your service contract specifies that you must not exceed "average use" then I would tell you your contract is fundamentally flawed and you should look for another provider (or renegotiate, if possible).
Want to give away your connection? Go buy a T-1 with no usage clause like that. What? It costs a lot more? Sure does.
T-1 lines generally come with usage clauses too, and whether or not they restrict sharing or reselling connections or bandwidth depends on your ISP. Also, there are many more (and cheaper) options than a T1 for internet access now, many of which have laxer usage policies than your typical consumer-grade Cable Modem or DSL contract.
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Open mind, insert foot.
Zelet asks:
Think of it this way. Bandwidth is limited and an increase of bandwidth use increased the cable companies cost.
We both give them money and cost them money. Balancing those two and coming up with a profitable pricing schedule and service contract is their job, not ours.
For example, assume you are on a fixed electrical plan (they have them in Omaha, I don't know if they have them elsewhere) and you start giving electricity to your neighbors for free. Would that be wrong?
If I paid for an unlimited amount of sharable electricity, then no, it wouldn't be wrong. I would be very surprised to get such an agreement without paying at least the GNP of a small country for it, but if I had such an agreement, I would expect to be able to use it.
To bring the analogy a bit closer, if I had a contract with my electric company that said, for $100 per month, I could draw up to 500kWH of power and do what I like with it, then why shouldn't "what I like with it" include sharing it with my friends and neighbors.
If I could get a similar contract for $80/mo, but with a clause saying I couldn't share it, and I decide to save money by going with that contract, then I couldn't legally or morally share it.
[Disclaimer: Above numbers are for illustration only, and do not necessarily represent reasonable usage or pricing]
If so, why isn't stealing bandwidth just as bad?
This isn't stealing bandwidth, the people sharing the bandwidth are paying for it. In exchange for $X per month, they get Y bandwith and some other contract clauses. Provided they remain within their contract, nobody should care what they do.
In some of the cases where the Broadband ISP's are "cracking down" they are cracking down on actual contract violations, that's fine. In other cases the broadband ISP's are going "hey, we didn't think of that" and rather than eating their mistake, they are taking it out on legitimate paid customers who are operating within their terms of service. That is NOT fine.
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Open mind, insert foot.
These companies should not be free to decide who their customers are. And should not be free to decide how their services are used. They are providing a public utility under a public license.
This is not like buying soap or corn flakes. This is like getting electric service and using it for whatever I damn well like. Their are bandwidth issues to be accounted for for sure, but that is it.
These are just a bunch of greedy bastards that want to charge me hundreds of dollars a month for services that have virtually no real operating costs and could be provided for with a minimum of techical knowledge
But apparently we are going back to the days when Ma Bell takes 30 years to implement touch tone service or call waiting or the next great thing and then pat themselves on the back (and charge us an arm and a leg) for a job well done. Jeez... I can't wait to be charged per email or per authorized web page I load into my next generation cell phone that costs me $300 and displays ads from the phone companies in the middle of my 911 call!
Just a few years ago these same companies were arguing that people shouldn't be able to hook up their own phones to the network because of the risks. Now we see that the risk was that people would take it upon themselves to revolutionize communications first with BBS and then with the inter connected internet and email, thus circumventing the big bells.
People easily forget that the phone company didn't want the internet and it was Congress and the Universities that forced it to open it's lines to data traffic. Let's not let them put in tolls at every corner. Keep the air free.
Your roommates names and yours as well are on the lease for the room. You live there and the broadband is a utility that you all use. The old lady is not on the lease and your paying for a utility does not give her the right to use it. That's where you draw the line.
Now someone will respond and say "what if you built a heating duct from your room to the old lady's room and gave her permission to enjoy heating at your expense?"
The difference here is that heating costs in terms of energy and you are paying a fixed amount per kWh or per m^3 of natural gas. This means that the extra heating nessary to heat the old lady's place will increase your bill. On the other hand, WiFi'ing your broadband and giving the old lady access does not increase your bill.
Bandwidth costs money. More bandwidth costs more money. I think that for higher than average users, bandwidth should be paid per quantity used. In this way, it becomes easy to draw the line as to the 'cost' of sharing because no matter how you look at it, bandwidth costs money and more bandwidth costs more money.
..changes.
Until you pay rates on the Kilobyte, the providers have every right whatsoever, both legally and morally, to prevent you from sharing your connection.
Right now, most services in the US allow subscribers to buy an unlimited amount of transmission at a fixed rate. For example, you might pay $50 a month for a 768k downstream connection.
Compare this to the electric company, which charges you variable rates -- you use more electricity, you pay more cash. The electrical companies probably don't care if you run a line to your poor neighbor's shack -- other than the risk associated with you frying yourself and knocking out the power grid, the only thing they have to concern themselves with is collecting additional revenues for the added kWh.
ISPs are the exact opposite. They let you transfer as much data as you want, but they limit how quickly you can send and receive it. With unlimited transmission rates, they get the same amount of money from you if you transfer 1M or 10T in a single month. They make loads of money on the 1M, and stand to lose quite a bit on the 10T. ISP's assume you won't have 768K of traffic 24/7 for an entire billing cycle -- and this is how they make money.
Simple logic: if more people use your connection, more data is transferred. The ISP begins to lose lots of money. Eventually, even at the fixed bandwidth rate you're paying for, the ISP loses. If you're paying per K, M, or G, suddenly, the ISPs won't care HOW many people you share your connection with -- they'll receive money proportional to the amount of data you and your leeches transmit.
This isn't a big deal, and I'm surprised that it's taken the ISPs this long to jump on the issue.
In the past, some people have suggested that bandwidth be treated like a utility service. I think that's a great idea. Just like every residence is supposed to have water and electricity service and acceptable levels of reliability, a data connection should be treated the same way. This data connection can be for conventional telephone service, cable television, internet, and whatever permutations and combinations the future brings us. This way, an infrastructure can be established whereby each connection receives metered bandwidth, and the recipient can do as they please with it because they are paying for the bandwidth they use. The power and water companies don't care if you leave the faucet running all day or every light in your house on all day because you're paying them based on your consumption.
This will also have the effect of forcing the consumers to educate themselves to prevent abuse of their bandwidth. If you have a leaking faucet or toilet, it's in your best interest to fix it. If you have an unsecured WAP, then you'll end up paying for whatever bandwidth leaks out of it.
That sounds like a lot of education. How can that be accomplished? Part of it is available in most public schools. It's called "Home Economics". In addition to learning basic sewing, cooking, cleaning, and typing skills, students should also be presented basic information about home networking. The students can then bring this information home and educate their parents. The other part of the education solution lies with the equipment producers. They should provide more information with their products about setting up a secure home network. This is in addition to products already available like personal firewall software and "Idiot's guide to.." publications.
This could also help with adoption of IPv6. Just like every phone line gets a telephone number, every data line will get an IP address.
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