The net neutrality debate rolls on, with little easy access to untainted fact for us, the end-users. While the record industry understandably wants peer-to-peer file-sharing brought to an end because it’s chewing the hell out of their previously lucrative business-model, ISPs have a different argument – they say it’s choking the net to beyond capacity.
Of course, they’re not willing to show us their calculations by way of proof, and all the other reports into the matter seem to come with the tang of dishonesty or the smell of FUD and vested interests. Perhaps they’re telling the truth, and traffic-shaping really is a necessity … but I’m fond of documentary evidence, myself. [image by jef safi]
Perhaps improving the infrastructure would be a better long-term plan, if the web really is running at capacity. But we can pretty much rest assured that those plans to deliver broadband over power lines aren’t going to bear any fruit …
I don’t know about the net being choked, but it’s not helped by the likes of Virgin Media advertising “superfast” broadband… only for their service to prove horribly slow due to stupidly high contention. There’s marketroid smarts for you: fat pipe equals speed, but let’s not mention the fact you’re fighting everyone else for access to it…
Well their business model is chewed to hell all right but it is not because of P2P. The suit just don’t get it at all. How many of them have actually tried to take all the plastic wrappers off and related stickers and cello tape of a CD or a DVD? How about taking it off ten of them? Bet they can’t do it without damage in less then three minutes. Wake up boys I used to buy four or five CD’s a month as well as a couple of DVD’s but don’t anymore unless they unwrap them in the store.
That’s not a complaint I’ve heard often, Clark, but that’s not to say it’s any less valid …