Comcast has decided to limit internet usage to 250GB downloads, that is 50million emails or a ton of movies. This won’t effect 99% of users. Anyone can see that a consumer going above this amount would be downloading music or illegal movies. I’m sure we will see other ISPs doing the same. At home I have a 5GB download that we have pushed to the edge because of research on programs and Amanda using the internet 12 hours each day.
Filed under: Technology | Tagged: Internet, isp, News, Technology
This is a horrible practice for Comcast. Yeah, sure, the pirates get all the glory for the justification of a move like this but what about all the people that are legally downloading music and movies from iTunes, Rhapsody, Netflix, etc.?
This is a thinly veiled move towards the business model that Net Neutrality advocates, such as myself, want to avoid. The cable companies want to institute plans based on what websites you can visit. For example, they may have a plan for CNN, Myspace, and Digg and another plan for MSNBC, Google, and Facebook. My examples are, of course, a generalization and simplification of the idea but the concept is the same.
If Net Neutrality fails, millions of websites of small business owners and bloggers will become unreachable by 99.999% of Americans as they won’t be included in these plans. Business decisions like this one from Comcast are designed to lean the public into a sense of complacency over the whole thing and slip one by them before they notice. Before you know it, the Internet is limited to 150 websites (channels) provided by your internet provider and small websites (such as this one) fade away into history, never to be seen again and potentially putting *alot* of people out of a job.
There are hundreds of thousands of professional bloggers and small business owners that make their living through their blog or website. Those people are being overpowered by the media who want to limit what Americans see on the Internet, just like the media limits what Americans see on the television.
People should be aware of what’s going on in the depths of the board rooms of the companies that provide internet service and speak out against it. They’re trying to kill the internet, and in doing so, killing the financial lives of many, many Americans, not to mention destroying access to most of the greatest resource for knowledge the world has ever known.