eclectica
2004-11-24, 19:55
I went to the laundromat today and I noticed on the TV a commercial by Verizon DSL. It was advertising its DSL for $30 a month compared to RIAA / AOL-Time Warner cable's $45 a month, and it also boasted newer faster speeds than before of 3 mbps. I paid close attention to the advertisement for any hint besides pricing of some other benefits of DSL, that it tends to be more p2p friendly, but I saw none. I was thinking that it would be a good promotion for them in their commercial, to say that your DSL would allow you to download music or videos. For the most part it is an unspoken benefit of a fast internet connection, to be able to acquire all sorts of files "on demand". p2p filesharing has been a great benefit to ISPs providing high speed service, as an attraction for new customers. It is the reason many people choose to get a high speed connection. I can understand that the ISPs don't want to advertise that benefit because it would make them responsible in some way, and then when their customers get civil lawsuits filed against them from the RIAA for sharing lame material that it claims ownership to on the hard drives of others, the ISP may then be expected to defend them.
Mac used the theme of "Rip, Mix, Burn" to sell its computers with CD burners in 2001. It was criticized by record companies as advocating what they call "piracy", or p2p filesharing. But the real essence of p2p filesharing is not "rip, mix, burn", but rather SHARING. While no company has used the concept of sharing as a selling point directly, it really isn't necessary as those of us who have been raised with good values know that sharing our stuff is the right thing to do.
The DSL providers Verizon and SBC have done well compared to other ISPs to protect their customers from the thousands of frivolous lawsuits filed by the RIAA, by trying to protect in Court the identity and privacy of their customers. But the ISPs can do more than they've done, by providing some kind of indemnity and support for their customers who are sued. Most people have chosen to settle, not because they are wrong, but because it is financially easier for them to settle than to fight to uphold their innocence in court. I would like to see the ISPs provide paid lawyers and legal assistance for their customers who are sued, so that there would be less incentive for them to settle. There are also some technical things the ISPs can do to help, such as quickly purging their IP logs so that a lawsuit based on an IP address would have no basis.
A pattern emerges when comparing cable companies to DSL companies, in regards to their benevolence towards p2p filesharing. For the most part it has been the DSL providers who have been more benevolent towards p2p filesharing than the cable companies. There are a number of reasons why.
A cable user who uses p2p will slow down the bandwidth with others on the shared coaxial cable. A DSL user does not share bandwidth, except on the DSLAM at the central office, which is easily upgradable. The cable company would have to run more coaxial cable in the field to upgrade its total bandwidth; the DSL company would only have to upgrade its DSLAM capabilities.
Many cable companies are family owned. DSL providers are telephone companies or ISPs, which have as their corporate structure a system of merit and promotion. The family owned structure behind many cable companies is not unlike royalty, lacking oversight or merit. They see their business as a way to "take the money and run" in the short term without any long term commitment or sane oversight. So they have no problem doing what they can in the short term to maximize their profits even when alienating their p2p users.
Service versus disservice: telephone companies by nature tend to provide their customers with services, while cable companies have the mindset of providing a disservice. While both companies typically have a line running to every customer, the telephone company has a unique line for every customer while the cable company has a shared coaxial for the neighborhood. So the telephone company provides you a service but the cable company has those services already working on the coaxial, and has to provide disservices by blocking channels and features from customers who don't pay premium prices or have illegitmate cable boxes. So it follows that in their attitude towards customers, the telephone company will try to give to their customers a service while the cable company will always be seeking a way to provide a disservice and block premium channels. This general attitude affects their other operations to the point where cable companies more likely see port blocking and other crippling things such as ISP p2p traffic control services provided by Sandvine (http://www.sandvine.com/solutions/p2p_policy_mngmt.asp) as desirable and acceptable from a business perspective. They would willingly cripple what they perceive to be a minority of their customers, namely p2p users, for the majority of their customers which they perceive to be non-p2p users. In fact their business model is one lacking vision because they do not want to expand the capability of their network but instead have chosen to do what they can to keep their customers from using p2p services.
"Video on demand" has a different meaning depending on whether you have a cable company or a telephone company as your ISP. The cable company may try to get you to pay extra for a movie, but for the DSL telco, "video on demand" means getting your movie by way of BitTorrent or eMule. A cable company would lose potential sales if people were to download their movies through p2p rather than pay for their own premium services.
Mac used the theme of "Rip, Mix, Burn" to sell its computers with CD burners in 2001. It was criticized by record companies as advocating what they call "piracy", or p2p filesharing. But the real essence of p2p filesharing is not "rip, mix, burn", but rather SHARING. While no company has used the concept of sharing as a selling point directly, it really isn't necessary as those of us who have been raised with good values know that sharing our stuff is the right thing to do.
The DSL providers Verizon and SBC have done well compared to other ISPs to protect their customers from the thousands of frivolous lawsuits filed by the RIAA, by trying to protect in Court the identity and privacy of their customers. But the ISPs can do more than they've done, by providing some kind of indemnity and support for their customers who are sued. Most people have chosen to settle, not because they are wrong, but because it is financially easier for them to settle than to fight to uphold their innocence in court. I would like to see the ISPs provide paid lawyers and legal assistance for their customers who are sued, so that there would be less incentive for them to settle. There are also some technical things the ISPs can do to help, such as quickly purging their IP logs so that a lawsuit based on an IP address would have no basis.
A pattern emerges when comparing cable companies to DSL companies, in regards to their benevolence towards p2p filesharing. For the most part it has been the DSL providers who have been more benevolent towards p2p filesharing than the cable companies. There are a number of reasons why.
A cable user who uses p2p will slow down the bandwidth with others on the shared coaxial cable. A DSL user does not share bandwidth, except on the DSLAM at the central office, which is easily upgradable. The cable company would have to run more coaxial cable in the field to upgrade its total bandwidth; the DSL company would only have to upgrade its DSLAM capabilities.
Many cable companies are family owned. DSL providers are telephone companies or ISPs, which have as their corporate structure a system of merit and promotion. The family owned structure behind many cable companies is not unlike royalty, lacking oversight or merit. They see their business as a way to "take the money and run" in the short term without any long term commitment or sane oversight. So they have no problem doing what they can in the short term to maximize their profits even when alienating their p2p users.
Service versus disservice: telephone companies by nature tend to provide their customers with services, while cable companies have the mindset of providing a disservice. While both companies typically have a line running to every customer, the telephone company has a unique line for every customer while the cable company has a shared coaxial for the neighborhood. So the telephone company provides you a service but the cable company has those services already working on the coaxial, and has to provide disservices by blocking channels and features from customers who don't pay premium prices or have illegitmate cable boxes. So it follows that in their attitude towards customers, the telephone company will try to give to their customers a service while the cable company will always be seeking a way to provide a disservice and block premium channels. This general attitude affects their other operations to the point where cable companies more likely see port blocking and other crippling things such as ISP p2p traffic control services provided by Sandvine (http://www.sandvine.com/solutions/p2p_policy_mngmt.asp) as desirable and acceptable from a business perspective. They would willingly cripple what they perceive to be a minority of their customers, namely p2p users, for the majority of their customers which they perceive to be non-p2p users. In fact their business model is one lacking vision because they do not want to expand the capability of their network but instead have chosen to do what they can to keep their customers from using p2p services.
"Video on demand" has a different meaning depending on whether you have a cable company or a telephone company as your ISP. The cable company may try to get you to pay extra for a movie, but for the DSL telco, "video on demand" means getting your movie by way of BitTorrent or eMule. A cable company would lose potential sales if people were to download their movies through p2p rather than pay for their own premium services.