Comcast has announced that in October they will officially limit customer downloads to 250 GB a month. It has been rumored before that Comcast has unofficially had download limits before and cut customers off for too much downloading. I think in this age of the Internet and downloadable media, the policy is very short sighted.
Verizon FIOS is my area, but dealing with them is worse than Comcast. At least I have some options. Lots of people don't have options for Internet access.
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Funny, last summer i saw Comcast 'officially' recognizing that they would reset private internet connections if the download rate reached a certain point. The example the local news crew used was downloading several movies in a day. So if you lay around in your underwear on your day off watching a season of Forensic Cop vs Pedophile, or all the Godzilla movies back to back, you will get your feed 'reset' 2 or 3 times a day. The official excuse was to prevent 'piracy' but the effect was the aforementioned and live podcasts using a video cast forum.
Out here on the West Coast, Qwest has realized such and just started offering 'more' bandwidth 7MB to the average consumer for $10 more. A loosening of the strap. Comcast is still pushing their cable package. What? I can get endless Cable TV w/ my internet? No thank you. Tele is dead. And i dont like being accused of piracy because of my stream rate.
I think it is greedy, short sighted and bad practice. I have been in IT for 14 years now and I know a little more than most about how this all works.
Comcast is an Internet level provider, meaning they own part of the Internet infrastructure. Yes they have expenses associated with this but they are not going to loose money with bandwidth usage. The real issue is liability, for viruses, intellectual propriety and copyrighted materials that they don’t want to take a stand on. There is rumored to be an internal battle at Comcast, and most ISPs, that the business doesn’t want to check because they don’t want to be held responsible for what they know. The IT department would like to detect virus infections, bonnets, etc… to protect the users and there businesses. (We also like cool technology)
So a way to deal with this and get more money is they cap how much you can download, but I’m sure they will offer a way to increase download caps at a future date. For a price of course.
For the record kudos to IT guys guys and gals everywhere.
The term intellectual property is a pet peeve of mine. It's only used by non-creative types who secretly think artists dont understand the 'real world'.
Sure there is piracy. But bootlegging wasn't created by the Internet but rather decades ago by the entertainment industry as a way to make black market scratch w/o having to pay the artist. The problem isn't me torrenting Henry Mancini's soundtracks or Season One of the West Wing but the person at the flea market selling printed up packaged bootlegs of the latest hollywood blockbuster. 9 out of 10 they didnt get that from some P2P shareware but from a leak at the production factory itself. Same as it ever was.
Back in the Napster days, studies showed that 10% of us who were obsessive swapping files would spend a far greater percentage of our income on the entertainment industry. P2P file sharing and fandom revived Arrested Development and even that crap-fest Family Guy. No accounting for taste. Back in 2000, Public Enemy decided to forgo Major Labels and has provided all of their subsequent releases free on the internet. They ain't starving. Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails made his last album Survivalism available as Freeware, for eff sake, and then staged a remix contest. That didn't lose him any money and cemented a fan base.
So before Wortwood caps my ranting-bandwidth, i'll slow down and tie up my point.
It's the 21st century, the tools are different and old-fashioned feudalistic business practices will suffer in the long run. Viva la Revolucion!
Andrew, you are correct about piracy and bootlegging. The Internet is simply a tool that made it easier and faster to distribute information. Most artists want to share their work and make a living on what they enjoy doing. It’s the Corporations who screwed it up. They turned art into intellectual property. Before Corporations the law made it so the artist would get the rights to their work for 50 years, after that it became public domain. Then the 14th Amendment came along and gave corporations the rights of an Individual. One thing this did was to make it easier for a company to claim rights to their employees’ works, and they didn't want to give them up.
So about 45 years after the first Mickey Cartoon came out Disney decided that they didn't want their beloved mouse to be free of charge. God forbid they come up with something new. So they had the law changed, so works of art did not become public domain for 75 years. I forget what is up to now but it is jokingly referred to as the Mickey Mouse law. This is stealing art and creativity from the people so corporation can make a buck.
To me intellectual property is a document, a process, an idea that you can build something with. That is what patents are for. Music is art. Art belongs to the people and the Artist deserves compensation for his work.
As Shakespeare wrote so well "First thing we do is kill all the lawyers"
I joke! I kid! I quote a very dead guy and slowly move your thoughts to perceive the past.....
For several hundred years to be a successful artist you needed a patron, who paid your way in exchange for your intellectual fruits. Bach, Goethe, Francis Bacon, Michelangelo, John Dee etc. they were patronized.
I certainly don't want this thread to turn into simple corporation bashing. [This conversation brought to you by Microsoft, Qwest and your friends at Dell. Dell, the fast food in computing.]
The Honourable Elijah Mohammed teaches us that 85% of the populace are the masses, the people, the everyday, humanity. 10% of the population are the blood-suckers, those who live off the blood, sweat and tears of the 85%. The remaining 5% are the Poor Righteous Teachers, those fight for enlightenment and strive to educate the 85% against the Blood-suckers.
Let's take away the Nation of Islam labels and just look at the math.
The North Koreans, during the Korean War, noticed that if they removed the troublemakers and leaders of dissent from the rest of the POW population, they could literally leave the rest unguarded in unlocked cages and they wouldn't leave. The percentage of those taken out and placed in solitary: 1 in 20. 5%. Studies by humanists like Adler and unnamed, um, non-humanists like sociologists in Communist states, correlate this %. Any crowd control expert worth their salt knows this, but still they preferred to teargas protesters at the RNC.
The main problem i've found w/ disseminating The Honourable Elijah Mohammed's math is that as soon as someone hear this theory and understands it, they assume they are part of the 5%, because, well, they are too smart to be common, their mother told them they are special, and everyone has a secret artist inside, right? So those other artists are just like them and should slave for The Man just like Us. Or worse, they are Artists, too busy to create b/c they just have enough time to be Artists.
Sure You Are Special. Your mother must love you. And if she was some crazy bitch crackhead, then i'm sorry. And i Love you. No you cant borrow money, go ask Jesus. i hear he just got paid.
The creative person is just that, creative. They, we, create. I've spent periods of years awash in creativity, it was a incredible time. But playing free jazz, punk shows in basements, laying down drum and percussion tracks for broke friends who were spending their rent on studio time, etc... doesn't pay the bills for long. But as long as you are willing to sleep on couches it's a whirlwind of ideas and concepts, I loved it.
Don't recommend it to anyone. But i'd do it again if i was 20.
If you are a Creative, who have no choice but to create. Encourage those with potential, as Malcolm taught us, "Each One, Teach One".
Everyone should do Guerilla Art at least once.
Math is a living concept, change the percentage. Those who bloodsuck are just jealous. Teach Them how to make joyous noise.
Drucyphr out.
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