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MUST READ NYTimes.com: Charging by the Byte to Curb Internet Traffic "People seem to be missing the point."
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Sun, 15 Jun 2008 04:53:27 -0700
________________________________________ From: Michael O'Dell [mo () ccr org] Sent: Saturday, June 14, 2008 9:01 PM To: David Farber Subject: Re: [IP] Re: NYTimes.com: Charging by the Byte to Curb Internet Traffic David Farber wrote:
________________________________________ From: Bob Frankston [bob37-2 () bobf frankston com] Sent: Saturday, June 14, 2008 8:13 PM To: David Farber; 'ip' Subject: RE: [IP] NYTimes.com: Charging by the Byte to Curb Internet Traffic I’m going to mull a letter to the NYT – in the meantime I need to shout.
People seem to be missing the point. Since bit *rate*, not bit mass, is the instantaneously-exhaustable resource in packet network, if they were actually worried about network engineering, they'd be going to the burstable charging model which is known to worth both technically and economically. it relates the charges directly to the exhaustion of the finite resource - bit *rate*, not bit mass. but they aren't using charge pushback that does anything useful from an engineering perspective. Therefore i conclude they are doing it for a different reason and the "network engineering" claims are just red herrings to distract them what don't know any better. so what *would* be a reason for limiting bit mass if it doesn't correlate with network performance? hmmmm - charging for mass will obviously provide an incentive to move fewer bits, which means not moving *big files*. why would they care about file size? oops! if it's expensive to move big files, they kneecap downloading "large scale media" (read "movies", "tv", etc) without having to start a fight over some selected types of information being inherently more valuable than others. I conclude this is all about controlling file-sharing, not because of any performance impacts, but because of the sharing, per se. it becomes a crude form of Digital Denial Management. the fact this impacts information freely created and shared as well as some information assumed to be copyright-infected is no skin off their noses. the more publicly-available media, the less people will pay-per-view for studio content, so this collateral damage is actually a feature, not a bug. So we get to this question: how should the public react to bit-moving providers who gerrymander the service offering to the benefit of their Media Masters? If there were any real competitive alternatives, they could vote with their feet. without that alternative, however, are they simply at the mercy of the media giants to bend everything to their will? at what point does this become anti-competitive behavior? does anyone in gubmint care about that anymore? harumph -mo ------------------------------------------- Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/ Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
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- MUST READ NYTimes.com: Charging by the Byte to Curb Internet Traffic "People seem to be missing the point." David Farber (Jun 15)