[asterisk-users] OT: What do you guys think of this?

[Doug]

At 07:00 12/2/2008, SIP wrote:
 >Doug wrote:
 >> At 18:56 12/1/2008, Tilghman Lesher wrote:
 >>  >On Monday 01 December 2008 06:21:33 pm Doug wrote:
 >>  >> We tell our customers that they are not allowed to
 >>  >> download copyrighted material.
 >>  >
 >>  >So your customers are only allowed to download public domain
 >>  >material?  That kind of restricts the amount of information
 >>  >available on the Internet.  Nitpick:  just about everything, including
 >>  >this email, is copyrighted by somebody.  Forbidding the download
 >>  >of copyrighted works is not only a draconian policy, but may actually
 >>  >violate several copyright laws (you're interfering with a copyright
 >>  >owner's right to distribute his/her/their works, and courts are
 >>  >generally not very sympathetic with your position).
 >>
 >> Oops!  Didn't mean to start a fire here.
 >>
 >> I meant to say "illegal copyrighted material".  Also, if they
 >> are using up hundreds of Internet connections, we can see
 >> that.  It essentially causes a Denial of Service situation
 >> for other users on that leg of our wireless network.  The system
 >> supposedly has rate limiting, but seems to get overloaded when
 >> someone goes completely nuts with BitTorrent.  We are working
 >> on ways to limit the number of simultaneous connections.
 >>
 >> When we get a copyright infringment notice from our upstream
 >> provider, we are compelled to reprimand the user.  I don't
 >> think we have sent a customer to the "shower" even if they
 >> had several notices.
 >>
 >> "Net Neutrality" is great in principle.  But ISP's need to
 >> somehow control those few percentage of users who suck down
 >> a huge majority of the bandwidth.  It's dollars and cents.
 >>
 >> Es tut mir leid für das Durcheinander meine Brüder!
 >>
 >>
 >>
 >This is the classic logical fallacy that people seem to perpetuate when
 >reporting news about P2P activity.
 >
 >ISPs oversubscribe. It's a common practice, and reasonably valid. But
 >when you oversubscribe, you use a model based on 'projected' use of the
 >available circuits and bandwidth. If you have a user who pays for a
 >circuit that you've advertised as an X Mb line, and he uses X Mb ALL the
 >time, he's using what he's paying for. If you then proceed to tell him
 >that he can't do that, you're either wrong or you're not being up front
 >enough with your pricing and marketing materials. You can't then proceed
 >to blame the customer for use you did not anticipate.
 >
 >Imagine a farmer who sells tomatoes. He's promised you a bushel, but he
 >gets a harvest of only so many. You walk up to the counter just after
 >he's sold all of his tomatoes to someone and he tells you "Sorry. There
 >are no more tomatoes because that customer before you just 'stole' them
 >all from you. He's abusing his privileges by buying up my whole crop."
 >
 >Now whose fault is it that you don't get the tomatoes you want? Is it
 >the customer's fault for buying all the tomatoes the farmer sold him? Or
 >is it the farmer's fault for selling them?
 >
 >The same works with the ISP vs P2P argument. If the ISPs were up-front
 >about saying that they do not intend for you to actually USE the
 >bandwidth you think you're paying for, I would say they had a leg upon
 >which to stand. However, hiding this information from the customer and
 >then blaming the customer when he does what he believes is well within
 >his rights... it may play well in the media, but it's bad for the whole
 >system and is incredibly divisive.

Yep.  In our contract we say things like "shared", "best efforts",
etc.  If you want a dedicated pipe with guaranteed bandwidth, you
gotta pay a hefty price.