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Doctor Four
My other vehicle is a TARDIS
Premium
join:2000-09-05
Dallas, TX
 ·AT&T U-Verse
| reply to karlmarx
Re: The movie thieves will scream Net Neutrality
said by karlmarx  :What planet are you from where you think this system has a chance in hell of working? Hell, just rar up the files and it won't find anything. The planet of denial.
There hasn't been a single anti-piracy technology that
has yet to be defeated. Even Sandvine has been bypassed.
If this cat and mouse game (or arms race if you prefer
to call it that) continues, the logical conclusion is
that there is going to be a p2p protocol that is so
obfuscated/encrypted, etc. that it is going to be cost
prohibitive to implement any piracy filter to stop it.
--
"The trouble with computers, of course, is that they are very sophisticated idiots." - Doctor Who (from Robot)
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DSL Oberst
join:2001-11-29
| said by Doctor Four :If this cat and mouse game (or arms race if you prefer to call it that) continues, the logical conclusion is that there is going to be a p2p protocol that is so obfuscated/encrypted, etc. that it is going to be cost prohibitive to implement any piracy filter to stop it. Eh, it depends.
The problem with any arms race is who controls the medium the arms race takes place in.
With nuclear weapons back in the Cold War, you had two main players (and assorted allies), but no one person owned the playing field. Therefore, MAD was possible to maintain.
In the field of copyright infringement, regardless of whether you consder it right or wrong, the ability to own the backbone changes things. Playing strategy games are fine, but if you're the guy that owns the playing board and you can flip ALL the pieces off and take the game home...well, that sort of trumps anyone playing the game. If you're one of the players AND you can do that, the game can radically become unfavorable to the opponent. | |
lordjim
Premium
join:2004-03-26
Deerfield, IL
| Ah yes ... but you also have to consider that those players are also customers. So it's not so simple: AT&T may control a good chunk of the backbone, but customers control their pocketbooks. That changes things too ... because many of those customers can only justify the cost of broadband as a means to download large files (legit or not.) If AT&T is going to seriously try to prevent that, hopefully the studios will be willing to cough up a share of their profits to make up for all the customers AT&T will lose. If I was still an AT&T Broadband customer they'd lose me for sure. AT&T may actually try playing network cop, but when the screaming starts they will probably quietly drop it. Personally, I don't see what they get out of it ... do the media companies have that much pull in the AT&T boardroom? What are they offering AT&T in exchange for this? Gratitude?
Besides, AT&T was never my broadband provider of choice anyway. I was an original @Home customer for years, until @Home folded and AT&T took over and screwed me out of my 4 mbit/sec symmetric connection, and shoveled 1.5 mbit / 25 kbps in my face instead. Then they had the cojones to raise my rates! And now that SBC took them over, I'm even less likely to ever have AT&T/SBC as my ISP. I'd rather move to another area than be dependent upon those bloodsuckers. | |
NormanS
Premium,MVM
join:2001-02-14
San Jose, CA
 ·Pacific Bell - SBC
| said by lordjim :Besides, AT&T was never my broadband provider of choice anyway. I was an original @Home customer for years, until @Home folded and AT&T took over and screwed me out of my 4 mbit/sec symmetric connection, and shoveled 1.5 mbit / 25 kbps in my face instead. Then they had the cojones to raise my rates! And now that SBC took them over... You skipped a takeover, or three. While ATTBI did take over @Home, ATTBI was also a spin-off from AT&T. Ultimately, Comcast took over ATTBI. And all of that happened well before SBC took over AT&T.
I'm even less likely to ever have AT&T/SBC as my ISP. I'd rather move to another area than be dependent upon those bloodsuckers.
Actually, if you have 'at&t Yahoo! HSI' as your provider (they stopped calling themselves SBC in 2006), you have generally have a number of alternatives, including DSL Extreme and Speakeasy. While AT&T owns the copper to the premises, DSL Extreme and Speakeasy have their own ATM networks from the DSLAM to the Internet, so your service would never touch the ATTIS IP network.
--
Norman
~Oh Lord, why have you come
~To Konnyu, with the Lion and the Drum | |
DSL Oberst
join:2001-11-29
| reply to lordjim
Eh? Those players are the customers? I've never seen it that way; we members of John Q Public are ultimately irrelevant except as cannon fodder on the field of battle. This can best be characterized as a struggle between corporate interests, government law and hegemony, and some few free-wheeling anarchist power groups.
Aside fom all that, most customers of the ISPs are NOT using their broadband for downloads - the main players are corporations using the fat pipes and the average consumer who sends maybe an email or two a day and looks at webpages. Downloading is limited to the narrowly specialized geek population (like what tends to infest the forums here).
AT&T's big issue in it is what they have invested in the media companies. It's rather like what one of my former companies was to Mitsubishi (and by extension, Mitsubishi Bank). Even though the controlling interest of the chain was 4 ladders up, what Mitsubishi wanted my company ended up doing. Look to see who has the big controlling interests in each company and you can follow the money from there. | |
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