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Is Streaming Video the Real Throttling Target?
snydeq writes "Responding to legal pressure over its throttling of P2P traffic and other dubious practices, Comcast says it will now punish the most abusive users rather than particular applications. Yet its pilot tests in Pennsylvania and Virgina, which would 'delay traffic for the heaviest users of Internet data without targeting specific software applications,' raise greater concerns over net neutrality, ones that belie a potential preemptive strike against the cable company's chief future competition: streaming video. 'Despite the industry's constant invocation of the P2P bogeyman, at present, the largest bandwidth hog is actually streaming video,' writes Mehan Jayasuriya at Public Knowledge. 'Clearly, the emergence of online video is something that cable video providers find very threatening and by capping off bandwidth usage, they're effectively killing two birds with one stone; discouraging users from using their Internet connections for video while increasing the efficiency of the network. Is this anti-competitive? It sure seems like it.'"
It seems that promising too much in order to hook new users and then hitting the heaviest users (instead of fulfilling the promise)is a very valid business strategy lately.
So if I sign up with MLB to watch games which are not in my local television area, should I expect to get throttled by my local cable company because for 3hrs a week, I use a lot of bandwidth. The other hours of the week, I'm doing email and IM.
Isn't this taking away what people pay for? I know the main reason I got a faster internet connection was so I wouldn't have to wait for videos to buffer.
Admit it. You post strawman arguments as AC so you get modded Insightful for refuting them, rather than Troll
... it's pro-retarded.
"You can use your car for anything you want... as long as you don't use it to go to work, or drive long distances. That's rough on the engine."
I like to place meaningful quotes in my sig, so people will know that I know what meaningful quotes are.
Last I checked, Verizon wasn't doing this to their customers. Guess they're becoming the better communications company on multiple fronts now, huh?
I was just looking at the new Netflix Roku streaming service. To me this seems like a no brainer. $9/month for 1 DVD out at a time plus unlimited streaming movies and tv shows from there current selection. If Comcast was to start resetting connections while I was watching a movie that would really tick me off. Also don't providers realize that entertainment is moving more and more to the internet.
I watch most of my news stories on the internet, primarily CNN. I have noticed in the past week that the videos seem to be stopping midstream when it never did that before. I glance over at my gkrellm network monitor and see zero data coming to my box. Then it will pick up again after a short pause. Something has changed, not sure if it is Comcast or the video feed itself.
But Comcast always seemed fine with my purchasing only their HSI package. I even once scheduled DirecTV and Comcast to show up at the same time. Amusing for all. :)
I'd be delighted to see streaming video killed.
We'd go back to "download the video to the client's hard drive, and play it back." Was that really such a bad thing?
Requiring a web-based client to stream content hosted on an external server, is, at the root of it, a form of DRM. When the server goes away (or deletes the link to it), the content becomes unplayable. This applies whether you're talking about YouTube's embedded flash player, or the hoops through which Windows users have to jump in order to save .wmv clips from TV news sites, etc.
And streaming is inefficient. You not only require a continuous throughput at a reasonably high bitrate, but after you've finished downloading your 20 megabytes of content for that 2-minute video clip, your client does you the favor of immediately deleting it. So the next time you want to watch the video, you get the joy of re-downloading it. WTF? In an age of $200 terabyte hard drives, that's ridiculous.
So bring on the death of streaming video, and let's get back to the good old days of File->SaveAs .mpg, .flv, .avi, .mp4, and a few minutes later, you can play the locally-stored content to your heart's content. Forever.
Like I said, cable companies... be careful what you ask for.
They want to control what we access, and when. The motive, of course, is money. But the collateral damage is our freedom.
Set the "baseline" price for video-on-demand = to your per-bit price for internet.
If the video is ad-supported, the price goes down.
If it's a blockbuster video, the price goes up.
Either way, the cable company gets the same $carraige_fee for every 1-hour video, whether it's from the end user or a sponsor. If the cable company has to pay a studio something, then that cost is passed on to end users.
So, instead of videos being "free" because the cable co. doesn't have to pay a vendor, they'll be $1 or something unless the vendor steps in and subsidizes them.
Normal-pay videos will go up in price by $1 or whatever per hour, unless the vendor is willing to lower his take.
Now, by "vendor" may mean the non-transport arm of the very company that owns the wires. You'll need some Chinese-walls between the two arms of the company to make this work effectively.
The bottom line is that within a given quality-of-service and time of day, a bit is a bit is a bit, and the "carraige fee" portion of the customer's bill should be the same whether it's from streaming video or video-on-demand.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
If I had a choice in high speed internet companies, then they could throttle all they wanted. The problem is that I don't, Cox is the only game in town. They don't have any competition in the internet department, so by your reasoning they should be able to kill any service they don't like? That's murder, not competition, and it's not good for anyone involved except for a few executives who won't have to deal with the fallout of their monopoly being broken up by force.
How does this competition benefit the consumer?
After all, I am strangely colored.
To regurgitate, again: it's anticompetitive. because they use a monopoly in one market (internet access), which might be state-funded no less, to help their position in a different market, specifically streaming video.
This hampers competition in the streaming video market by making it impossible for online video sites to compete on equal footing.
People need to remember that the free market exists for a purpose - to allow the best product to win. These kinds of tactics completely destroy that mechanism.
Non-discrimanatory traffic throttling and bandwidth caps are in my eyes, the only workable solution for a balance between net neutrality and 'ISP over-saturation'.
If my telco/cable offers a rate based on raw bandwidth even if it is tiered more expensively during peak times, it still means they have more respect from me than specificly targetting any given application / company. At least then I pay for my access to a given service is directly relational to the amount I pay for their service, instead of having a divisor calculated based on how much Google payola's to my ISP.
If I download 120GB and my cap is 100, I should get throttled/warnings/charged/dropped based on my ISP's policies. If I want >200GB cap, I can pay more, or look for a carrier that is more bandwidth compatable.
The most important factor in this whole thing is transparency. If my ISP wants to meter me at a given policy, the policy should be laid out 100% in my terms of service. If 'changes' that affect my experience on their network occur, it should be reported -proactively-. It doesn't mean that I can change their mind, but it does allow me to decide if I want to change providers before they break my internet.
Bye!
most of the major ISPs either already provide video (cable) or are paying billions of dollars to offer video (verizon, att, etc).
the phone companies got hit by VOIP. and now the cablecos and the telcos are worried that some "video vonage" will come in and offer video at a lower rate over their own data lines.
this has been the game all along. come on in, take a seat.
just because I don't care doesn't mean I don't understand!
I remember when my friend, Bob Ames was first running rush.com, and he kept having to change ISPs because EVERY ONE of them broke their promises regarding bandwidth. The business model seems to be provide the shittiest service possible to force users to upgrade well beyond their needs. Bob used to point out his throttled bandwidth to me when he was watching the news in dutch &c. Of course he had T-1 because he couldn't even get DSL service.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
You don't start a business to benefit the consumer, that's what a charity is for. You start a business to benefit you. And maybe kittens. But mostly you.
Took this comment seriously, did you?
Of course it is. These cablecos and telcos care most (and in fact, care only) about one thing: preserving their monopolies, or at worst, keeping their cartel defended against any new entrant, especially ones who aren't $billion network corporations, which have similar $billion interests and agendas.
A horde of independent YouTubers, whether at some new Google operation like YouTube or millions of independent video websites or P2P sessions, is a nightmare for them. Because they all want a free ride on the networks that have always been kicked off and subsidized by investments by the people, through the government, removing any risk. That's what they've always gotten, and that's what they demand.
They should just build out more capacity, instead of the more expensive and less effective content filtering. Then they'd have a lot more product to sell, even if they didn't control the market for it.
--
make install -not war
I honestly couldn't believe it, but this past week Comcast has stopped throttling my torrent traffic completely and even increased the upload speed. Granted, they said they were increasing the speed a couple weeks ago (I suspect due Verizon recently entering the area and adding some competition). However, I figured it would be the usual initial burst of high speed followed by an immediate dive that never recovers, which is what has been happening as long as we've been hearing about it.
;)
No shit though, that stopped happening. It still isn't anywhere near advertised speeds, but it went from ~100KB/s up to more than 200 (and higher overnight) and there's none of that interfering bullshit anymore.
It's amazing what a little competition can do. They actually also added all of the premium movie channels for $5 less than we were paying (we'd only had HBO previously).
And no, I don't work for them, nor am I defending their questionable behavior (check past posts if you like). But it is nice to be surprised sometimes, even by nasty corporations
MIT's Open Course-ware has videos (for some courses) of the entire semesters. I usually watch one or two per day, and they stream over an hour of .rm content each. So, I'm guessing that MIT is inherently evil for opening its fascinating courses for the public to view? Wait, MIT is trying to ruin the internet? OMG!!
Not to mention, I routinely download Linux images for Open Suse, Fedora, and Ubuntu for 3 different architechtures AND keep them up to date with patches. That's about 25+ GB (big B) of data/month in free software and video alone.
Damn, this free stuff is undermining the entire ISP's monopoly and forcing them to expand their networks... and charge me more money/month. Guess there really is no such think as a free lunch.
Can I get some sort of open source ISP please?
Grandpa: My Homer is not a communist. He may be a liar, a pig, an idiot, a communist, but he is not a porn star.
This is just the fundamental flaw with cable that has been waiting to expose itself since day 1:
Cable uses a shared local loop, and they advertise it as unlimited, and they advertise it as having 5 megabits. That math does not work. It is a lie. It is false advertising. They've only been getting away with it because most customers don't use what they've been sold.
Except that is changing. Video is exposing the lies of cable, and they're proposed solution is screwing the customer. Since they've been getting away with it for so long, they believe they are entitled to continue lying and to screw their customers to protect their lies. This is false advertising that has not been painful enough to result in a lawsuit. Now it is going to get there real fast unless they do something. So they are trying to convince the world that the customers are at fault. That is another lie. Don't buy it.
Stop lying about the product. False advertising is the problem here. People expect their cable to support 5 megabits unlimited because that's what they were sold. Degrading the service to those who consume what they were sold isn't just ethically reprehensible, it is (or at least should be) illegal.
There is no question of whether protocol throttling or customer throttling is the solution to the problem. There is no problem with the product. The problem is the false advertising.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
How does one abuse an "unlimited" internet plan?
Will they then make their own video streams more functional?
I think it's time for the cable companies to start building on the broadcast protocols.
But, I suppose they might be scared of scaring off their advertisers?
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
"[..]the most abusive users [...]"
since when is USING a flat rate abuse? Goddammit, sell your bandwidth as "10GB per month" and shut up.
On second thought, let's not go to Camelot. It is a silly place.
This is problematic because the largest US ISPs are also big media companies.
Ideally, an ISP would be like a utility company. Pay a metered rate and the ISP moves data in the quickest and most efficient way possible. The ISP shouldn't care if broadband connections are used for streaming TV shows and movies. But many ISPs do care because they own TV networks and movie studios which are threatened by streaming media.
Look at Time Warner's plan to charge customers $1/GB if they exceed the monthly limit of 40 GB. Would you be surprised if Time Warner opens its own online store to sell movies and TV shows, one where downloads aren't counted against the monthly bandwidth limit? You think Apple or Netflix would appreciate that? And given the pitiful state of broadband competitiveness in the US, many consumers would be stuck with Time Warner...that or dial-up.
Just some of the many dangers of media consolidation.
(This is ALL supposition.)
It isn't video specifially so much as any service that proves that "unlimited" internet service doesn't mean what they've been insinuating it means for years.
Look at it like this: When the cable companies sell their service to the public, the only thing they can say that users can latch into is that it's Faster Than X, where X is a transfer speed offered by a competitor or, in areas where there isn't much competition, X is a perception of slowness in general. That, or reliability, but let's focus on the first.
They've been riding on preexisting infrastructure, but But now that people are actually using their services, the companies are realizing that a maintenance-only approach isn't cutting it any more, and that expanding to new areas won't help if the areas they're already servicing start becoming saturated with downloaders.
So the broadband money faucet is drying up while costs are rising, and all of a sudden the pinch is being felt, and lawyers are cheaper than fiber.
What the companies don't realize is that, there's absolutely no way they can win this fight. More programs that need more bandwidth bandwidth will force the companies to innovate, advance or die.
This is just a sucky time to be an internet user. C'est la vie, say the old folks.
I know I'm stating the obvious, but we don't have
mod+1 ironically informative
as an option.
The whole purpose of business is supposed to be to benefit the customer. Cast your bread on the waters, etc.
Do it for yourself and you only cheat yourself. Do it for the other guy, and the benefits come back to you.
Cheat the other guy and even if he doesn't cheat you, he's likely to go somewhere else. Treat the other guy the way you would like to be treated if you were in his shoes, and he's going to treat you decent, too.
If the mutual benefit of moral behavior gets lost, the economy itself just wanders away.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
It seems like YouTube is getting throttled a lot lately. To be fair though, I haven't checked for the deadly RST packet. Shouldn't be too hard. I just need to set Wireshark to filter everything but RST packets. Of course, that won't really let me know that it was Comcast that sent it. I'd say that a RST followed by the next packet in the expected sequence would be a giveaway, since the TCB at YouTube's server wouldn't send the next packet in sequence if it had sent the RST. Of course, if what Comcast is using to do this is stateful and smart, it'll block that next packet too. So. There is no way to tell, barring YouTube actually logging instances of having sent the RST itself, and letting us access that log. Feel free to point out any flaws in this analysis. I just typed it out in 5 minutes.
The bottom line though, is that YouTube is choppy lately.
It'd be nice if Adobe fixed flash so that it would double the buffering time whenever it got stuck. In other words, if it waits 5 seconds to buffer and then gets stuck again, it should wait 10 seconds the next time before trying to resume the stream. If it gets stuck again, it should wait 20 seconds. And so on, until, if necessary, it buffers the entire vid before playing.
Of course Adobe is not the underlying problem; but they could be more robust given the current environment.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
"Did you,sir, or did you not sell us unlimited bandwidth"
Read radical news here
. . . start creating some competition. I know, I know, it's definitely an uphill battle trying to gain traction against incumbent monopolies/duopolies who would love to protect the status quo, but, the best way to ensure network neutrality is to start an ISP, then you can guarantee network neutrality. Also, the best way to make sure there is sufficient bandwidth, again, is to start your own ISP (granted, anywhere you have to peer to other networks is a place for the other networks to hose you, but, hopefully, if you have enough peers, you can route around the damage, and then take whatever steps necessary against the network that is screwing you up (e.g. lawsuit, if you have a Service Level Agreement with them which they are not abiding by).
I'd love to see a new startup in the Fiber-to-the-home business, to give Verizon & ATT some competition.
I use both Comcast and Cox (home/work), and all streaming video has become very choppy. But when I use an ssh tunnel to a proxy outside either network, it runs just fine. I'm sure there's an innocent explanation...
I'm sorry, but that's just idiotic. I am stuck paying for both comcast internet and verizon wireless internet because neither is sufficient by itself. In fact both together are still pretty inadequate, considering this is 2008. Comcast is the only company offering wired broadband in my area, Verizon FIOS or ATT broadband do not even exist here -- and I'm a mere 12 miles from downtown Atlanta, not exactly the middle of nowhere. If I pay for a T1, it will not help me on the road and my costs skyrocket beyond reason. If I use satellite or dial-up (or try to use Verizon wireless for everything), it's "bye bye streaming content" and "hello, 1997 internet speeds".
Dial up and satellite are not actually competition for cable/DSL, not at all.
Caveat Utilitor
Whatever happened to "build a better mousetrap"? It's thinking like yours that has ruined American business.
Caveat Utilitor
(For the benefit of the irony impaired:)
"As everyone knows".
That mythical "everyone", by which teenagers and sophomores seek to excuse doing things they should (ahem) know better than to do.
And, yeah, at this point in time, real competition, competition which matches resources with needs, has been seriously throttled by government that is overly anxious to "prove its own value" by regulating, instead of competing in the real world of politics where politicians go out and get involved in their constituencies, not waiting for the spoilitical action committees to come to them. In a way, the whole world has become a special olympics, an artificial arena of competition of strained appropriateness. Of course, the non-special olympics is even less of a meaningful competition, these days, too.
I don't have anything against wheelchair basketball, but making an international spectacle of it seems it's sometimes a bit counter to the purpose.
And I don't have anything against artificially induced athletics, but I remember a time when the olympics were supposed to be about ordinary people with ordinary jobs pushing their own envelopes -- amateur sports. I think we should split the olympics organization in two.
One group goes back to amateur competition, gets rid of the media parade, drops the medals and returns to the laurel wreath, maybe even throws away the records of previous years.
The other group becomes the international showcase of professional sports.
Then we aren't all running the same race competing for the same prize that none of us really needed anyway.
I once had a dream at college. All the guys at the college I was attending were running a race on the indoor track, and all the women were competing in a beauty contest, and the winners of each competition would be married to each other, whether they wanted to or not. And all the rest were condemned to celibacy. Competition becomes meaningless pretty fast when it gets organized.
Trying to get back on topic, yeah, the government (self-lamed) and business (self-blinded) are now competing with each other to see who can lead us into the ditch the fastest.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
I don't see why they don't just place a clause in the contract specifying a maximum bandwidth that customers will be billed for if they exceed. There's no reason to throttle... just charge for the extra services provided. I don't see how that's complicated at all.
Of course, it's possible the cable companies are specifically intending to hurt p2p... In that case, hand me a torch, and let's get on with the lynching!
Well I guess I deserve that response for feeding a troll, but when you grow up maybe you'll see the real problem here : that the big telecoms are holding back our nation's technological progress just to satisfy the greed of thier shareholders.
Caveat Utilitor
You're not a broadband provider!
If you cant deliver the pipe... get out of the broadband industry because the demand for bandwidth is ONLY going to increase. It will NEVER decrease. We are a technological society, with more and more people using the internet everyday. The applications on the net are only going to increase the demand for bandwidth and speed.
Comcast, if you think you're having bandwith problems now... wait until 2011. Get off your ass and build for it, today. Stop punishing your customers, you have plenty of money as a business to provide the services that are demanded by your customers. AND YES... they are obviously demanded by your customers because the demand is too much for your network.
FIX IT.
How can a broadband provider see an increase in demand for bandwidth, and simply say... we're not going to increase our capacity? The demand is there because it is what is required by todays users.
You're not a broadband provider if you can not provide broadband. Comcast, you're a failure.
Yes, but society only tolerates businesses' profit-seeking behavior because ultimately society benefits. If your business becomes a net drain on society, then we either raise your taxes until we break even, legally constrain your behavior, or put you out of business.
I am amazed on a regular basis by just how hostile Comcast is toward it's customers. Hopefully my cable provider doesn't start doing this crap too.
No-one said anything about "doing away with the profit motive", that's just your sad, sad way of attempting to save face. You lose -- buh-bye!
P.S. You may have the last word now, obviously that is what matters to you.
Caveat Utilitor
The worse part is the multi-billion dollar corporations have been paid billions by the government to roll out universal broadband to everyone and have never delivered. That's worth whining about.
So the major telcos were given over 200 billion to give broadband to the nation and not delivering, in exchange for special FCC privileges to deny competition from really getting a foothold. There's been numerous articles about the money spent for services never delivered, that was just the first to show up in google.
The '96 telco act was passed to help get competition. CLECs were able to be formed, basically a second fiddle telco setup. Then Bush selected Powel's kid as chairman of the FCC and they went - not surprisingly - for big business monopolistic decisions. They dropped the telco act, they allowed companies to be pure monopolies once again. In fact Ameritech/SBC was petitioning that they wouldn't roll out any more broadband until the act was rolled back as they didn't want competition. They promised that if it was rolled back they'd get everyone on the latest broadband. And the suckers in Washington believed it!
If our telco companies existed in a free market, I'd be perfectly fine with having to move to get real service. Being in federally and state mandated monopolies is just a pain in the ass for innovation and should be complained about often.
Ebeneezer seems to have several /. accounts today, actually.
I have (choke) Dial-up.
Alas I live in the deep woods, with a 35-year-old underground telecom wire. And can barely pull 35 Kbs if I'm lucky.
If I need an SPx upgrade or whatever, I go to a friend's in the town nearby and DL it onto my thumb-drive.
I do not understand these people who use THE INTERNET to download live action! It slows down even MY pathetic bandwidth!
Fer goodness sakes guys, get a satellite dish. And if it's some illegal movie? Hell- go rent the damn video at your local store! It's faster. And cheaper.
And - it's ILLEGAL? So go get an FTA sat receiver. They are easy enuf to find!
You idiots are destroying the internet! I use the internet for internet-specific tasks (wotever that means; I'm still in WEB-1)
A pox upon your movie torrents!
.
- aqk
F U
Sounds like you live in a perfect market location to start your own ISP. Its really not that expensive to install a tower for fixed wireless or wimax. (compared to running wires all over town). Seriously. Start your own..
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
Now why didn't I think of that? WiMax broadband would probably sell well around here. I can't imagine I'd be the only one unhappy with comcast here in the Lithia Springs - Douglasville area... Thanks!
Caveat Utilitor
Then that's some good decades-old wiring. 50k is the best you can really get on dialup even in perfect conditions with pristine wiring, 33.6 without downstream tricks.
You're obviously trolling here, but it provides a good jumping off point for what I want to say, so I'll bite. First off, other people watching live streaming video online aren't likely to impact your connection. Satellite TV, Cable and over-the-air antenna don't carry every live video feed of interest to everyone, so that may be someone's only option to see a particular event live. Also, there are lots of legal services to get movies off the Internet--some dinky 2 bit operations you may have heard of called iTunes and Amazon.com. I can download a 2 hour standard def movie in about 20 minutes on my connection, which is on par with how long it would take to go to the rental store, minus the hassles and gasoline. And it's certainly not cheaper to rent.
Nobody's destroying the Internet--well, maybe the cable companies. You see, what's going to happen is we consumers might actually get what we've been asking for these past few decades--ala carte channels. Paying only for the channels and shows you actually want, and the cable company becomes a mere bandwidth provider akin to a utility. No more content, premium channels, pay per view, or any of that crap. You pay for the pipe to your house, and what you want to watch. Cable companies want to retain control and maintain their monopolies, so they'll fight this every step of the way. That's what the net neutrality fight is really all about. The cable companies don't want to relinquish control.
If you want to use rhetoric rather than reason, how would you suggest we communicate? Because I certainly didn't say anything remotely like "I want companies to do things that run counter to the satisfaction of their shareholders".
*sigh*
Well, perhaps you are one of those extremist capitalist types who believes we should unbalance our economy by removing all economic controls and allow only the richest to profit in business, in which case I would like to point out that moderation in all things is as necessary for economic health as it is for physical health. Think about it. Unless of course you'd rather not. Think, that is.
But consider this: unless you're one of the world's richest people, this modern and terribly incorrect idea that a free market is a market with no controls will not benefit you a bit should it be implemented. Don't be brainwashed.
Caveat Utilitor
Give me what I'm paying for, you bastards.
This is kind of like the console vs. PC gaming war. The various corporate interests that are over charging and over spending for game development and then bilking the consumer want PC gaming to go away, or at least play a distant second fiddle to console gaming. In truth though, the PC is a far superior platform for gaming, and the development costs and competition would make for MUCH cheaper games if everyone wasn't so sold on the console wars.
It's the exact same thing here: You can get about half of what you want on joost or bit torrent or both, and then you don't need to pay for cable TV. The reality of course is that cable TV almost universally sucks, so your viewing habits may actually improve by cutting the cable. You cut the ads (well most of them, joost has a really obnoxious ad structure), you only get the content you want on demand (well, maybe not ALL of it, but some of it), and you can watch TV anywhere there is a computer and the internet, which, for a lot of people with laptops is EVERYWHERE.
These corporate monopolies that own every stitch in every fiber of your home, car, and body (and debt, and actual cash, and your senator, congressman, president, vice president, and all your radio stations, tv stations......) are going to keep shoving horse shit down your throat and charging you four times what it's worth until you JUST SAY NO.
Which you won't, unless you're in the minority on slashdot who know how to download Lost and The Office.
The reality is: Even with adhoc wireless G 90% of the populace could have free internet just by buying a router and making the whole infrastructure p2p. Then you could have all the shows, games, music, and books that you want, for free, and those corporations would be forced to go away, and maybe quit buying our politicians.
Those corporations will fight to the death not to let that happen. Just like they are right now in the cell phone market, even though we could all have free wifi skype video phones NOW that far surpassed the iPhone etc in functionality, if certain corporations weren't so set on entrenching you into their salaries. These corporations are vast methodical parasites destroying all life on the planet, including the gadgets us slashdotters love.
Wake the fuck up people! Stop giving them money NOW!!!
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
Anwser just one question. Why don't we hear about this stuff from companies offering DSL? It seems its ONLY THE CABLE companies that see any need to limit or throttle traffic.
I feel sorry for people stuck with Virgin broadband.... NTL/Telewest were bought out, and it was obvious that when they were bought out the buyers were in it purely to profit heavily from the cable monopoly that NTL/Telewest had.
Not much later, Virgin brought in dynamic throttling of download speed at peak times. Then they were found to be installing spyware on their network (Phorm), then they added more throttling during the day.... and The Register is running a story about how VM are getting into bed with the BPI to police the network for pirated stuff. And the bigwigs from VM have been documented very publicly mocking the idea of net neutrality (the CEO described NN as "bollocks", IIRC).
Of course, VM sell TV and music services. They are clearly attacking the competition to this (zero monetry cost downloads from the internet, and even pay-for shit like iTunes).
Car analogies break down.
Interesting. If I understand you correctly, then
...like that'd catch on! Can you imagine how scratched the disks would get?
- streaming would be suited to your latest Sony or Warner mega-super-duper blockbuster, where it's only really worth watching once anyway
- whereas for good movies, that are more like an onion and less like a ping-pong ball, then a file download would be more appropriate.
You might even look at backing up the re-watchable movie on physical media. I suppose putting the other on an actual disk would be a bit of a waste,
unless it could be rented out to multiple viewers or something... mehhhh
thx e
I think a better analogy is that of paying for access to roads (taxes). The roads are then free for your use in your car (computer) as much as you want. You can drive on the road just to and from work or to transport good from one place to another.
I realize this is a very complex topic; however, as a consumer, it boils down to this.
I pay for use of x upload and x download, and I expect full, unbridled usage of that bandwidth -- though I rarely use it, I expect my provider to manage their commitments to their customers by building out their infrastructure. Though I realize the customer relationship is different than that of a commercial relationship, I don't really see it that way.
If, on the other hand, they're going to insist on limiting my bandwidth (that I pay for), I expect the prices to be reduced accordingly, if not significantly if they are unable to deliver and/or provide that which I originally paid for.
I'm being somewhat facetious here, though I believe these points are significant.
On a packet based network, as opposed to a circuit based network, streaming video is stupid. A lot of data ends up getting duplicated, and the quality of the viewing experience is directly related to the quality of the network at that particular time. It's almost a complete waste of effort. The fact that it works at all is probably an indication that it is an under-utilized service; expect that to change.
What I _really_ wish to see is content providers get smart, and just start creating AVIs of their shows with commercials embedded. Then release those on the P2P networks before the "priates" do. It would put them back in control, and entirely subvert the ISPs doing their best/worst in trying to deal with the problem their indifference/ineffectiveness is creating.
I highly doubt, due to general human nature, that more than 10% of users would download these shows, edit the commercials out, then reupload them. Even more so, I highly doubt that there would be too many people who would go out of their way to find the commercial free versions and download those instead. Particularly if it's easy to find the "offical" version, and moreover, completely legal.
In short, the reason streaming video exists is because content providers can't learn to give up control (and make more money in the process). If this is the case, I shouldn't have to subsidise extra bandwidth through higher ISP fees, the content providers should.
Why people put up with "streaming" video postage stamps is beyond me. Maybe for short clips of something silly, but for real video, p2p download is the only practical way to go. If you really have to watch something live, use and pay for a network designed for it. Seems like an interesting idea would be a separate IP network that was broadcast or multicast only with the live streams. I think they call it "digital cable".
For all the complaining about throttling, just see the screams that would come if they got charged what it would cost to provide all that bandwidth for real...