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Time Warner ToS Changes Could Mean Tiered Pricing, Throttling
Mirell writes "Time Warner Cable has recently changed their Terms of Service, so that they are allowed to charge you at their discretion via consumption-based billing. They were shot down a few months ago after raising the wrath of many subscribers and several politicians. Now they're trying again, but since they make exclusions for their own voice and video not to count against the cap, this could draw the attention of the FCC."
I changed TWC's terms of service first.
It's written on the back of the check in 1 point font.
"Accepting this check indicates the acceptance of the following changes in
service billing:..."
* The internet is not exclusively used for infringing on big media copyrights. Last I looked there were at least a few more things to do online than movies and music.
Porn?
So is your sig saying that I'd have to have root permission to access your arse?
Karma: Excellent Birds (mostly as a result of listening to Laurie Anderson)
No, the textile lobbies have already formed a cartel and manipulated the government specifically so that you aren't baked. ;-)
I don't believe in time. It's a grand conspiracy designed to sell watches.
So basically Time Warner is saying "we can charge you whatever we want based on whatever we feel like and you must agree to this or fuck off"
Time Warner really gets it
Have you tried walking over to his/her apartment?
Childish whining like the OP about cable companies' not metering their own television broadcasts or telephone calls, but metering Internet, gets nowhere. You all want cake, and you want it free, and to eat it too. But the cake is a lie.
Cable runs telephone on reserved, engineered capacity (PacketCable) for which subscribers pay a fee. It doesn't touch the Internet; it goes to a media gateway into the phone network.
Cable runs video on many channels, some analog, most QAM nowadays. That's sent from the head end, mostly from satellite feeds, some from over-the-air receivers and ATSC-to-QAM remodulators.
Internet goes on a separate CMTS that goes over middle mile facilities to an ISP backbone. That all costs money. UPSTREAM capacity on cable is VERY limited; it only works upstream to 42 MHz, and broadband only above about 20 MHz. It is a terrible medium for providing content or running file servers, which is what Torrent is about.
So heavy uploaders in particular, and heavy users in general, tax the shared capacity of the Internet and worsen everyone else's usage (gaming response, data performance, etc.). So I'd rather be on a system that invites the heaviest users to go elsewhere, thank you.
Sure they could "buy" more capacity, but why should I pay more so that a handful of bozos can exchange movies? Tiered pricing allows my price, for using under 50 GB/month, to stay reasonable.
I would prefer a free market in ISPs, with DSL still open to any ISP so that there would be an open market. The FCC could fix that. But regulating ISPs per se is a truly, deeply dumb idea.