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Time Warner Filtering iTunes Traffic?
An anonymous reader writes "Starting on Thursday, January 31st, Time Warner subscribers in Texas starting experiencing connectivity issues to the iTunes store to the point where the service wasn't usable. General internet traffic issues haven't coincided with these problems, and many folks have reported that the store works as normal when they head to the nearest mega-bookstore and use their ISP instead. Time Warner has announced that they're going to begin trials of tiered pricing in one local Texas market, but I'll be darn sure to switch my provider if I hear the slightest hint of destination/content based tiers instead of bandwidth tiers."
At the beginning it seemed as that iTunes 7.6 is just as likely to be the culprit as the ISPs, but given that the peoples' speeds returned to normal (I, too, rtfa'd) - without an update patch for iTunes - it would seem like it was an issue on the server side of Apple or Time Warner. Since nobody from other areas in the United States complained about the issue as frequently as those from the Austin, Texas region this is not likely caused by Apple. Odds are it is a Time Warner issue. I never studied servers or networking, so all I can go by is my own experience.
Tiered internet would support oligarchies and monopolies more.
Imagine a world where "the studios" had to pay for all bandwidth usage twice, or suffer degraded performance. What happens to independent projects, then?
Did someone actually try to argue that raising the barrier of entry can do anything at all other than support the existing, entrenched power structures?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Not to mention that Time Warner either owns or has partnered with Rapsody, an Itunes competitor.