Re: State Super-DMCA Too True

[Mike Lyon <mlyon () fitzharris com>]

On Sun, 30 Mar 2003, Simon Lyall wrote:

> On Sat, 29 Mar 2003, Tony Rall wrote:
> > No, it is not theft of service.  It doesn't cost an ISP more for me to
> > have 20 machines than it does if I have just 1.  Nor does it cost them if
> > I use NAT.
> >
> > What might cost them more is if I use more bandwidth or use additional IP
> > addresses (for which there may be an associated expense).  But a user with
> > one machine can potentially use as much or more bandwidth than a user with
> > 20.  There simply isn't a decent correlation between number of machines
> > and amount of service consumed.  Even so, an ISP doesn't have a legitimate
> > complaint against users that are simply consuming the bandwidth that the
> > ISP advertised as being part of their service.
>
> So if I own an "all you can eat" restaurant you would say that I should
> allow you and your whole family to eat for the price of one person as
> long as only one of your was in the restaurant at any one time?

Ahh! But you see it ain't "all you can eat" or rather, "use as much 
bandwidth as you want as we don't throttle you at all." I recently signed 
up for Comcast and had it installed. I get some really nice download 
speeds, would be surprised if the download has a cap on it. However, 
upload is definetly throttled, stops at about 250 kbps.

So that is what I am paying for. It's not limitless. I payed for a big 
mac and a drink with free refills, If I share that with my room mate, I am 
not stealing from them.

-Mike


> Of course you'll say your family of vegetarian dieters eats less food
> than some truck driver I had in last week so thats okay.
>
> The ISP is able to charge the low price for "flat rate" Internet because
> it knows there is only one computer in the house and it's (99% of the
> time) doing normal web browsing and email type stuff for only a limited
> amount of time each day (p2p has screwed up the economics a bit).
>
> If you price your product on the assumption that the average customer only
> uses 5% of their bandwidth then it doesn't take many customers using 50%
> or 100% of it to really spoil your economics.
>
> Banning NAT and servers is a simple way to filter out most of the "power
> users" without scaring the "mom and pop" customers with bandwidth and
> download quotas.

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