Big Small Time

Bandwidth Hogs

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  Fresh off of it’s FCC clowning, Comcast has emerged from its room with red, tear soaked eyes and a pouty face. It swears it had its bag packed and had figured out how to run away to New York, but instead it thought better of it and really searched itself. And here’s what it came up with.

   

  WE LOVE P2P! Well actually P4P - a new experimental file sharing system based on the same structures that Comcast tried to chase off their networks with flaming torches and pitchforks. 

   

  The rest of this story is obvious. P(whatever)P is actually a good thing. It will INCREASE speeds and DECREASE traffic - basically the only thing ISP’s should be trying to do. A great example is Vudu, who utilizes a P2P system in their own proprietary way to enhance the user experience.

   

  This is just another lesson in old minds having to creak and crack themselves open to realize that not all technology has to be used for pure evil.  

   

  [Read]

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  Go do that voodoo that you do so well!

   

  Today Vudu announced a “Sumer Special” including $0.99 renewals for expired rented movies. Not sure what they mean by “special” since summer is certainly reaching its last days. 

   

  But the real issue here is the fact that they have to get creative to work within the medieval torture device that is the studios’ short-sighted requirements for their content’s distribution. 

   

  30 days to watch? 24 hours to finish? No matter how many lawyers bark at us, it still makes no sense. We get that there is liability in renting movies digitally. But if we can keep our Netflix rentals basically until we or DVD dies and watch as many times as we want in the meantime, why can’t we have similar capabilities on our Apple TV and Vudu? Clearly it’s WAY harder to do anything nefarious with these devices than oh say, upload our rented DVD of Norbit to BitTorrent.

   

  So what gives?

   

  Mr. (insert studio chairman name here) TEAR DOWN THIS WALL!

   

  So to speak.

   

  We have to go now, we have twenty more minutes to finish half of Lawrence of Arabia. 

   

  [Read]

   

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  “Just keep smiling and everyone will think we have our shit together.”

   

  Are you sitting down? Ok, we don’t know how to tell you this - so we’re just going to tell you. The FCC is being contradictory. We know we know, it’s shocking. But it’s the truth.

   

  In a landmark moment in talking out of both sides of its mouth, the FCC thankfully condemned Comcast’s attempts to slow (i.e. completely block) subscribers’ access to services like BitTorrent…sort of.

   

  According to Comcast, just 6 percent of subscribers use about 78 percent of the company’s bandwidth while participating in (mostly illegal) file sharing. Easing the bottleneck in the network would speed up all customers’ connections. But the implications here clearly do not justify the end goal.

   

  And the FCC agrees, kiiiinda. The dissent was strong in the 3-2 vote, with every voting member submitting their own confounding written opinion. The center of this issue is not a question of piracy, but rather net-neutrality. The idea that a company should not and can not police how its customers use the internet. This is a freedom of speech issue for both sides - plain and simple. 

   

  But guess who doesn’t give two feces about freedom of speech?

   

  Yup, Hollywood. 

   

  Variety reports, The MPAA’s response to the vote was measured. MPAA chairman Dan Glickman said in a statement that the org would have to analyze the FCC’s order to determine its “practical impact on the ability to protect content online.” Glickman emphasized that the MPAA believes “allowing ISPs to address capacity and piracy abuses is the best way of providing consumers with a dynamic, content-rich broadband experience.”

   

  Gee, Mr. Glickman - those are awfully nice BS waiters you got there.

   

  But seriously folks, as pissed as we are that we can’t download our LEGALLY purchased iTunes movies as fast as possible because some over red-bulled jackass is burning up the tubes downloading torrent porn and pirated copies of The Dark Knight in Chinese…we must take a deep breath and remember - freedom should be total and private companies can not be permitted to pick and choose what we get to do and say, especially if we are paying for it.

   

  Luckily the FCC barely made the right choice here, but we’re certainly not off of this most slippery of slopes just yet. 

   

  [Variety and CNet News]