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

[SIP]

Doug wrote:
> 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.
>
>
>   

Then I applaud you for doing something most ISPs do not do -- being a 
LITTLE more up-front about the realistic limitations of the service.

ISPs tend to promise the world to grab users, knowing full well they 
can't deliver. And when the users try and use what they've been 
promised, they're blamed for bringing down the network.  And what's 
worse, this clear spin line is propagated throughout even LARGE media 
organisations as an accepted fact.  "P2P Steals Bandwidth."  That's 
reported as a simple and plain fact when, in reality, you can't steal 
what you've been allotted by your ISP. If the ISP said "we only have the 
capacity for X users to use their service ALL the time, so users who 
want to pay basic usage and use little can pay this small sum, or users 
who want to get unlimited but very throttled and pay this larger sum," 
it would go a long way toward fostering trust all-round without relying 
on misinformation and vilifying the users who are using what they think 
they're paying for.

Of course, it would be a marketing nightmare, as the other ISPs would 
say, "But we have UNLIMITED access at much higher speeds" -- clearly 
lying about their capacities for the sake of bamboozling non-tech-savvy 
customers, and then relying on media organisations to propagate their 
disingenuous epithets against the P2P crowd.

N.