No, dvds tend to last more than a few minutes. Now if they were music video dvds, then yes, I would consider ripping them, and then randomizing them.
And as for music, I do not like listening to the whole album at the same time. I prefer my songs randomized, and it has nothing to do with my attention span.
Besides, what does attention span has to do with anything regarding how I use my media. My media, and I chose to listen to it the way I want.
The problem is bigger then that. I would not want to share my local phone, since I would be liable for anything illegal coming from that phone. Common carrier protection would not apply, since I am not a registered provider of anything.
I would not be surprised if their audible difference is a mass delusion. However the 128kbps mp3 / cdaudio difference is much more audible, and average people can distinguish it. Just look at any codec listen test comparison, and you will see that people consistently say that 128 kbps mp3 sounds worse.
I do not believe that it has really been tried before. Dmitry was a victim, but he never was tried. He settled AFAIK. Bruce Perens wanted to be a self-martyr, but had to back down (no one blames him).
There were a few cases of publishing DeCSS, and I think 2600 lost. However, there is noone who has been tried for decrypting something they paid for.
I do not believe that will stand up in court. Meanwhile I will continue breaking the law, hoping that I will not be the one who gets the belt.
So I do not chose to ignore the law, I chose to break it. This is similar to jaywalking. Most people know it is illegal, and most people do it, because it is convenient, possibly necessary, and no one expects to be convicted/ticketed for it.
The reason why I chose not to include DMCA as a part of the copyright law, due to the fact that it does not define what copyright is, but only the extra protections specific to copyrighted materials. But your grouping may be different. Yet the spirit of copyright remains the same, and DMCA does not change it.
Do they take the player with them when they travel. I can take that much by taking my 9" laptop. I wonder if those people lug all 100cds with them too.
And yes, people travel on planes as well, so one can not just through huge containers into the back into the car.
Audible difference is in the ear of the beholder. At 128kbps I can hear the distortions on mp3s, but not in ogg or aac. If reencoding makes it a bit worse, it can be an annoyance to a lot of people (like my father, who is a semi-audiophile).
If you want to hear what the problems sound like, encode a cd in AAC on whatever bitrate you can bearly hear distortions. I bet 64 will do, but 32 will do definetily. Then reencode it to MP3 (or AAC but keeping the lossy format will probably lessen new distortions introduced), and listen again an compare. I bet you will hear the difference. (Oh and sorry to insult your musical hearing, no offense meant)
Oh, and since my father is an audiophile, and an amateur musician, he gets random CDs all the time from friends. He can definitely tell if the CD has gone through the 128 kbit MP3 or worse. Although he listens to a lot of instrumental music, which I believe makes artifacts very apparent.
I can not prove you wrong about your hearing, and your lack of interest in high quality music. But consider this: There are people out there who do not buy CDs because 44000 samples per second does not sound right to them, and thus they will only settle for analog media. There are plenty more people who can tell the difference with lossy codecs, and there are plenty who care to minimize the damage.
I do it because I am a loss freak, I do not like losing data more than I have to. My jpegs are at highest quality, but not bitmaps, because I do not have that many gigabytes of storage. My music is in highest quality oggs, because I can not have the space for the waves/FLAC. My itunes files are in flac (gone through the cd method), and are currently occuping some 120 MB more than they have to. (I have only about 5), and now I can get the same quality files without sacrificing the space.
Yes, I know it is not much space, but what if I were to have more files than that.
Anyway, I am ranting, and I believe that I have gotten my point across for others to hear.
Well, there is a big question of whether or not fair use is a right. For example, it is a (court-determined) right that I can time-shift or record TV. Why should it not be a right that I can change the formats.
Yes, I have "signed" an agreement with apple that I will only use iTunes, but that does not mean that th e contract is legal. In fact if it is found to contain terms that infringe on my rights, then those terms may be struck out by the courts. That is in fact if Apple decides to sue me in court, which they will not, since I am not sharing those files, and hence not violating their copyright.
However, I could end up in jail for violating DMCA, but then again, I already watch DVDs on my linux machine, so hell, I am already a criminal.
That is the solution. It is the one I adopted given the fact that my music collection is small. However the generated files are 20-40 MB. which is a lot more than the 3-4 MB file. Still better than a wave which is at 40-80 MB.
This approach will not work for an extensive library, and if I ever get an mp3 player, the size will be extremely important.
But yes, your solution is the only decent one that stays legal.
Copyright law says nothing to the fact. In fact copyright law says nothing about the encryption as such.
In fact stripping encryption off itunes format is very much analogous to ripping CDs.
The only thing that makes it illegal is DMCA, which is a poor law that goes against the concept of fair use.
I guess the proper question to ask is are you depriving anyone by changing formats? The answer is no. I already paid for my listening to that track at that quality through my Pepsi purchases, and changing formats does not "rob" anyone of their fair compensation.
And what do you mean by the tech sector, and what do they have to do with iTunes.
Lazy? Yeah maybe. But then again, how does one randomize CD's. I might not want to listen to the whole album at the same time. And changing CDs every 4 minutes is a pain. Not to mention, having no way to randomize them.
Sigh....did we not already talk about this? iTUNES -> CDAUDIO -> MP3 is extra loss. ITUNES-> CDAUDIO -> AAC also possibly extra loss. The CDAUDIO is same quality, but not portable, and I do not have an iPod, or disk space to hold the uncompressed ripped cd's. That is why I am also a big fan of physical goods in the mail.
So point by point: THAT *is* fair use
It is also fair use to break their encryption. One fair use does not stop another. DMCA may make it illegal though, but that is a different story.
Why go thru the trouble of breaking encryption? To avoid the loss incurred by ITUNES -> CDAUDIO -> MP3/AAC/OGG/LOSSY and still keep the file size low.
just so you could listen to your music on linux?
Yes. I have no non linux/bsd machines. I had to use my roommate's windows machine to download songs from iTunes via Pepsi promo.
if you're going thru all that trouble then why not create a few audio CDs from all your purchased music, so you could listen to it on your stereo and in your car Swapping CD's is a pain.
AND RIP UN-DRM'ed MP3s onto your linux box? Extra loss incurred. See above.
get a clue or stick to WMA WMA is not any better. I already have a clue.
rather than bashing Apple I have no problem with apple. They can do what they want, I can do what I want via fair use.
DRM scheme that has always been loose in the first place. Not loose enough for what I am trying to accomplish.
i still buy most my music off of amazon, i'm a big fan of physical goods in the mail. Ditto, however this is getting to be more annoying as the cd's are becoming more copy protected every day.
For the people who stumbled into this discussion late, see the previous discussion
Well that is the problem. Take JPEG for instance. If you convert it into a BMP and then back into JPEG, I believe there is no loss of quality, but remove one line on the left and you take another penalty, as the DCT boxes are shifted one.
With sound files it is harder. The problem is that all sound lossy encoders are heuristic based. Can I be certain that the same heuristic is used? The answer is maybe, but what if the encoder is different? Then I will probably take a hit. I guess the question is what encoder is Apple using?
Well, the problem is quite pointless now. I will just shred the encryption off, and will not worry about it anymore.
I bow before your low uid, and believe that you have misunderstood me.
First, I never said there was loss going to cd-audio. Whether it is AIFF, uLaw, mLaw, does not matter....no loss. However, putting it back onto the machine is a problem. If I were to use ANY lossy format including AAC there would be loss.
However, going encrypted AAC -> plain AAC via a crack produces no loss, and still generates a compressed file of the original quality, which is precisely what I want.
I do not care what the crack does to Apple, RIAA. I do not care about formats, as long as I do not get double loss.
What I care about is moving the two songs I downloaded from iTunes via Pepsi to my linux machine, such that they stay compressed, and are of original quality (not twice encoded).
So far I have not seen any good way to do so.
By the way, a wav file contains raw pcm, so CD-AUDIO or wav, does not matter -- they are one and the same in quality.
As your heated comment indicates, you are a bit passionate about the subject, so please reply to this post. I would be glad to explain any issues that I am having. If you can help me figure out how to do this without a crack, I would gladly appreciate it.
Hmm. Suppose I want to listen to an iTunes file on my linux machine, which can play AAC but not encrypted iTunes.
Fine I could go use your method, but the problem is quality loss. iTunes format is an AAC. But going AAC->WAV->AAC is additional loss, plus there is the cost of a wasted CDR (fine, I can use a cdrw) plus the wasted time spent mucking around.
Now that there is a much clearer path from iTunes -> AAC, I might actually consider buying their tracks.
Umm, since when was iTunes cross platform. Let's see. Linux. No. *BSD. No again. Fine, I will compile it from source, and port if necessary. What, no source? Fine, I will write my own player. What? I can not go to the store without iTunes? well, I will at least play files. What? DRM? I have the key right here, so it is legal for me to play this. If you would just give me the algorithm. No?
While not being a good attempt, iTunes is not cross platform. It is nothing more than an application which exists for one purpose, try to sell more iPods, which are expensive (I did not say overpriced) luxury items. Personally, if I were a music fan, I would stick to non-corrupt CDs. I think, I am lucky that I am not.
Actually, criminal cases have a 'beyond reasonable doubt' restriction. There can always be a shadow of a doubt, and the phrase seems to have been brought about by tv shows like Matlock.
1. Get a laser printer -- all inkjets are crap. 2. Higher end HP or any Samsungs are awesome (lasers, not inkjets, of course). 3. Laser printers are no more expensive than inkjets. 4. If you need to print color photos, take them to the photo / copy people, where you will get a nice printout for 30-40 cents. 5. Profit.
Mostly because there is no one in open source development is really set on promoting open source to PHB.
Lets see a typical interview: Reporter: So how do you feel about microsoft's long term strategy around linux? Linus: Microsoft? Meh. ESR: Microsoft does not get it. RMS: It does not matter, there is no freedom. Reporter: Well, what do you plan to give to people that will counter the Microsoft deal? Linus: People? Meh. ESR: People who have to think about choosing Microsoft or Linux do not get it. RMS: FREEEEEEEDOM. Reporter: Thank you.
See, this kind of thing just will not work. The top leaders of open source/free software (sorry for the lack of distinction) are not the best to try to convince anyone to use Linux. Let Linus code, and ESR and RMS push and enhace their philosophy, that is what they do best.
Now you might be on to something with RHAT CEO. Better yet, there should be someone at redhat who is in charge of marketing. Let them speak sense and money on corporate level. Red Hat should really make noise as much as they can, that shouild earn them some interviews and publicity.
Now Perens is a good spokesman, but I think his speeches need to be heard by CIOs, and techies. PHBs do not care to understand shared source versus open source. And judging by what is going on, Perens is already speaking to the technology aware masses, via slashdot or other tech-oriented magazines / news sites. He is doing a good job, even if it means that we do not seem in WSJ or NYT, or Forbes.
They would have a techincal problem. I believe there is no current standard for elvish characters in unicode. But it seems that the inclusion has been considered for a while (in the Miscellaneous section)
Well...hard to say. The answer is that no one has the authority in the US to sue me. There is no patent or copyright protection. As far as I can see I am legally in the clear.
Since no one can make money off these movies, I am not hurting anyone financially...(well except infringers like me, only for profit...)
Moreover, many of these movies were produced in the communist countries. Theoretically they were owned by the people. Now I have no clue where did the ownership go, given privatization.
Now...here is another funny part. Some of these movies were actually violating British copyright due to stories they were based on. So it would be funny if I end up getting yelled on for violating that.
But I will continue on, given that I have no moral objections to what I am doing.
You did not mention that it is 1GB upstream per day. And even then it seems to be more of a running average tally, over what seems to be a 3-5 days.
Being a student, and a violator (warnings only) I have to say that I approve. 1GB upload hurts a bit on certain legal filesharing. (I used to upload foreign movies that had no distribution rights in the US). And it forced me to write a CBQ based watcher/limiter that keeps me constantly under 1GB. The last time I went over the limit is because the damn thing overflowed, and did not limit anything. I have no hard feelings for this practice, and appreciate my huge ISO downloads finishing in less than an hour.
Now the wireless caps are a different story..... (I guess I understand....but....)
Anyway, in general, it is a good practice...it works, and there are few problems. I suggest unis will pick up on this practice (with possible addition of additional bandwidth for pay). It is way better than any subscription thing will do. I personally do not share, download, or even listen to music (with very small exceptions), and would probably revolt if I heard that I am paying for something that I am not using.
Keep up the good work. And yes I know where you work, I did not mistake one college for another. Thanks for all the packets.
Slashdot Mirror
No, dvds tend to last more than a few minutes. Now if they were music video dvds, then yes, I would consider ripping them, and then randomizing them.
And as for music, I do not like listening to the whole album at the same time. I prefer my songs randomized, and it has nothing to do with my attention span.
Besides, what does attention span has to do with anything regarding how I use my media. My media, and I chose to listen to it the way I want.
The problem is bigger then that. I would not want to share my local phone, since I would be liable for anything illegal coming from that phone. Common carrier protection would not apply, since I am not a registered provider of anything.
P2P phones will not work due to that fact.
I would not be surprised if their audible difference is a mass delusion. However the 128kbps mp3 / cdaudio difference is much more audible, and average people can distinguish it. Just look at any codec listen test comparison, and you will see that people consistently say that 128 kbps mp3 sounds worse.
I do not believe that it has really been tried before. Dmitry was a victim, but he never was tried. He settled AFAIK. Bruce Perens wanted to be a self-martyr, but had to back down (no one blames him).
There were a few cases of publishing DeCSS, and I think 2600 lost. However, there is noone who has been tried for decrypting something they paid for.
I do not believe that will stand up in court. Meanwhile I will continue breaking the law, hoping that I will not be the one who gets the belt.
So I do not chose to ignore the law, I chose to break it. This is similar to jaywalking. Most people know it is illegal, and most people do it, because it is convenient, possibly necessary, and no one expects to be convicted/ticketed for it.
The reason why I chose not to include DMCA as a part of the copyright law, due to the fact that it does not define what copyright is, but only the extra protections specific to copyrighted materials. But your grouping may be different. Yet the spirit of copyright remains the same, and DMCA does not change it.
Do they take the player with them when they travel. I can take that much by taking my 9" laptop. I wonder if those people lug all 100cds with them too.
And yes, people travel on planes as well, so one can not just through huge containers into the back into the car.
Audible difference is in the ear of the beholder. At 128kbps I can hear the distortions on mp3s, but not in ogg or aac. If reencoding makes it a bit worse, it can be an annoyance to a lot of people (like my father, who is a semi-audiophile).
If you want to hear what the problems sound like, encode a cd in AAC on whatever bitrate you can bearly hear distortions. I bet 64 will do, but 32 will do definetily. Then reencode it to MP3 (or AAC but keeping the lossy format will probably lessen new distortions introduced), and listen again an compare. I bet you will hear the difference. (Oh and sorry to insult your musical hearing, no offense meant)
Oh, and since my father is an audiophile, and an amateur musician, he gets random CDs all the time from friends. He can definitely tell if the CD has gone through the 128 kbit MP3 or worse. Although he listens to a lot of instrumental music, which I believe makes artifacts very apparent.
I can not prove you wrong about your hearing, and your lack of interest in high quality music. But consider this: There are people out there who do not buy CDs because 44000 samples per second does not sound right to them, and thus they will only settle for analog media. There are plenty more people who can tell the difference with lossy codecs, and there are plenty who care to minimize the damage.
I do it because I am a loss freak, I do not like losing data more than I have to. My jpegs are at highest quality, but not bitmaps, because I do not have that many gigabytes of storage. My music is in highest quality oggs, because I can not have the space for the waves/FLAC. My itunes files are in flac (gone through the cd method), and are currently occuping some 120 MB more than they have to. (I have only about 5), and now I can get the same quality files without sacrificing the space.
Yes, I know it is not much space, but what if I were to have more files than that.
Anyway, I am ranting, and I believe that I have gotten my point across for others to hear.
Well, there is a big question of whether or not fair use is a right. For example, it is a (court-determined) right that I can time-shift or record TV. Why should it not be a right that I can change the formats.
Yes, I have "signed" an agreement with apple that I will only use iTunes, but that does not mean that th e contract is legal. In fact if it is found to contain terms that infringe on my rights, then those terms may be struck out by the courts. That is in fact if Apple decides to sue me in court, which they will not, since I am not sharing those files, and hence not violating their copyright.
However, I could end up in jail for violating DMCA, but then again, I already watch DVDs on my linux machine, so hell, I am already a criminal.
That is the solution. It is the one I adopted given the fact that my music collection is small. However the generated files are 20-40 MB. which is a lot more than the 3-4 MB file. Still better than a wave which is at 40-80 MB.
This approach will not work for an extensive library, and if I ever get an mp3 player, the size will be extremely important.
But yes, your solution is the only decent one that stays legal.
Copyright law says nothing to the fact. In fact copyright law says nothing about the encryption as such.
In fact stripping encryption off itunes format is very much analogous to ripping CDs.
The only thing that makes it illegal is DMCA, which is a poor law that goes against the concept of fair use.
I guess the proper question to ask is are you depriving anyone by changing formats? The answer is no. I already paid for my listening to that track at that quality through my Pepsi purchases, and changing formats does not "rob" anyone of their fair compensation.
And what do you mean by the tech sector, and what do they have to do with iTunes.
What about the ones I have received via Pepsi route. All the other music that I (which is extremely little) have has gone through the CD route.
Lazy? Yeah maybe. But then again, how does one randomize CD's. I might not want to listen to the whole album at the same time. And changing CDs every 4 minutes is a pain. Not to mention, having no way to randomize them.
Sigh....did we not already talk about this? iTUNES -> CDAUDIO -> MP3 is extra loss. ITUNES-> CDAUDIO -> AAC also possibly extra loss. The CDAUDIO is same quality, but not portable, and I do not have an iPod, or disk space to hold the uncompressed ripped cd's. That is why I am also a big fan of physical goods in the mail.
So point by point:
THAT *is* fair use
It is also fair use to break their encryption. One fair use does not stop another. DMCA may make it illegal though, but that is a different story.
Why go thru the trouble of breaking encryption?
To avoid the loss incurred by ITUNES -> CDAUDIO -> MP3/AAC/OGG/LOSSY and still keep the file size low.
just so you could listen to your music on linux?
Yes. I have no non linux/bsd machines. I had to use my roommate's windows machine to download songs from iTunes via Pepsi promo.
if you're going thru all that trouble then why not create a few audio CDs from all your purchased music, so you could listen to it on your stereo and in your car
Swapping CD's is a pain.
AND RIP UN-DRM'ed MP3s onto your linux box?
Extra loss incurred. See above.
get a clue or stick to WMA
WMA is not any better. I already have a clue.
rather than bashing Apple
I have no problem with apple. They can do what they want, I can do what I want via fair use.
DRM scheme that has always been loose in the first place.
Not loose enough for what I am trying to accomplish.
i still buy most my music off of amazon, i'm a big fan of physical goods in the mail.
Ditto, however this is getting to be more annoying as the cd's are becoming more copy protected every day.
For the people who stumbled into this discussion late, see the previous discussion
Well that is the problem. Take JPEG for instance. If you convert it into a BMP and then back into JPEG, I believe there is no loss of quality, but remove one line on the left and you take another penalty, as the DCT boxes are shifted one.
With sound files it is harder. The problem is that all sound lossy encoders are heuristic based. Can I be certain that the same heuristic is used? The answer is maybe, but what if the encoder is different? Then I will probably take a hit. I guess the question is what encoder is Apple using?
Well, the problem is quite pointless now. I will just shred the encryption off, and will not worry about it anymore.
I bow before your low uid, and believe that you have misunderstood me.
First, I never said there was loss going to cd-audio. Whether it is AIFF, uLaw, mLaw, does not matter....no loss. However, putting it back onto the machine is a problem. If I were to use ANY lossy format including AAC there would be loss.
However, going encrypted AAC -> plain AAC via a crack produces no loss, and still generates a compressed file of the original quality, which is precisely what I want.
I do not care what the crack does to Apple, RIAA. I do not care about formats, as long as I do not get double loss.
What I care about is moving the two songs I downloaded from iTunes via Pepsi to my linux machine, such that they stay compressed, and are of original quality (not twice encoded).
So far I have not seen any good way to do so.
By the way, a wav file contains raw pcm, so CD-AUDIO or wav, does not matter -- they are one and the same in quality.
As your heated comment indicates, you are a bit passionate about the subject, so please reply to this post. I would be glad to explain any issues that I am having. If you can help me figure out how to do this without a crack, I would gladly appreciate it.
Hmm. Suppose I want to listen to an iTunes file on my linux machine, which can play AAC but not encrypted iTunes.
Fine I could go use your method, but the problem is quality loss. iTunes format is an AAC. But going AAC->WAV->AAC is additional loss, plus there is the cost of a wasted CDR (fine, I can use a cdrw) plus the wasted time spent mucking around.
Now that there is a much clearer path from iTunes -> AAC, I might actually consider buying their tracks.
Umm, since when was iTunes cross platform. Let's see. Linux. No. *BSD. No again. Fine, I will compile it from source, and port if necessary. What, no source? Fine, I will write my own player. What? I can not go to the store without iTunes? well, I will at least play files. What? DRM? I have the key right here, so it is legal for me to play this. If you would just give me the algorithm. No?
While not being a good attempt, iTunes is not cross platform. It is nothing more than an application which exists for one purpose, try to sell more iPods, which are expensive (I did not say overpriced) luxury items. Personally, if I were a music fan, I would stick to non-corrupt CDs. I think, I am lucky that I am not.
Actually, criminal cases have a 'beyond reasonable doubt' restriction. There can always be a shadow of a doubt, and the phrase seems to have been brought about by tv shows like Matlock.
signed driver requirement?
Not very surprising. Considering that both AAC and Ogg Vorbis (and possibly flac, but I can not find the page) support 5.1.(search for 'surround')
Heck, I would not be surprised if apple will push some kind of 5.1 headphones, and thus claim superiority over mp3 for portable music format.
But then again, why do I care? I do not even listen to music, and video is already AC3 (aka dolby digital surround?) encoded.
1. Get a laser printer -- all inkjets are crap.
2. Higher end HP or any Samsungs are awesome (lasers, not inkjets, of course).
3. Laser printers are no more expensive than inkjets.
4. If you need to print color photos, take them to the photo / copy people, where you will get a nice printout for 30-40 cents.
5. Profit.
Mostly because there is no one in open source development is really set on promoting open source to PHB.
Lets see a typical interview:
Reporter: So how do you feel about microsoft's long term strategy around linux?
Linus: Microsoft? Meh.
ESR: Microsoft does not get it.
RMS: It does not matter, there is no freedom.
Reporter: Well, what do you plan to give to people that will counter the Microsoft deal?
Linus: People? Meh.
ESR: People who have to think about choosing Microsoft or Linux do not get it.
RMS: FREEEEEEEDOM.
Reporter: Thank you.
See, this kind of thing just will not work. The top leaders of open source/free software (sorry for the lack of distinction) are not the best to try to convince anyone to use Linux. Let Linus code, and ESR and RMS push and enhace their philosophy, that is what they do best.
Now you might be on to something with RHAT CEO. Better yet, there should be someone at redhat who is in charge of marketing. Let them speak sense and money on corporate level. Red Hat should really make noise as much as they can, that shouild earn them some interviews and publicity.
Now Perens is a good spokesman, but I think his speeches need to be heard by CIOs, and techies. PHBs do not care to understand shared source versus open source. And judging by what is going on, Perens is already speaking to the technology aware masses, via slashdot or other tech-oriented magazines / news sites. He is doing a good job, even if it means that we do not seem in WSJ or NYT, or Forbes.
That is the way it should be.
If McDonald's was a court-determined monopoly with 90+% penetration, including BK fries might not sound as silly as it does now.
They would have a techincal problem. I believe there is no current standard for elvish characters in unicode. But it seems that the inclusion has been considered for a while (in the Miscellaneous section)
Well...hard to say. The answer is that no one has the authority in the US to sue me. There is no patent or copyright protection. As far as I can see I am legally in the clear.
Since no one can make money off these movies, I am not hurting anyone financially...(well except infringers like me, only for profit...)
Moreover, many of these movies were produced in the communist countries. Theoretically they were owned by the people. Now I have no clue where did the ownership go, given privatization.
Now...here is another funny part. Some of these movies were actually violating British copyright due to stories they were based on. So it would be funny if I end up getting yelled on for violating that.
But I will continue on, given that I have no moral objections to what I am doing.
Hi admin.
You did not mention that it is 1GB upstream per day. And even then it seems to be more of a running average tally, over what seems to be a 3-5 days.
Being a student, and a violator (warnings only) I have to say that I approve. 1GB upload hurts a bit on certain legal filesharing. (I used to upload foreign movies that had no distribution rights in the US). And it forced me to write a CBQ based watcher/limiter that keeps me constantly under 1GB. The last time I went over the limit is because the damn thing overflowed, and did not limit anything. I have no hard feelings for this practice, and appreciate my huge ISO downloads finishing in less than an hour.
Now the wireless caps are a different story.....
(I guess I understand....but....)
Anyway, in general, it is a good practice...it works, and there are few problems. I suggest unis will pick up on this practice (with possible addition of additional bandwidth for pay). It is way better than any subscription thing will do. I personally do not share, download, or even listen to music (with very small exceptions), and would probably revolt if I heard that I am paying for something that I am not using.
Keep up the good work. And yes I know where you work, I did not mistake one college for another. Thanks for all the packets.
PS> When will we get ipv6?