Charging by the byte to curb internet traffic: An end to simply web browsing

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switchskier206604

Member
so i cruise around a lot on the internet, whether it be to CNN.com to laugh at lies, newschoolers.com to get my twintip fix, or to my favorite ski area webbys to check snow reports etc. i came across on a website that i frequently find a lot of really interesting solely internet-posted news articles. now i'd heard and even hypothesized about this scenario panning out myself before i saw this article. and it basically just put it in perspective how much smaller and increasingly expensive our world is going to become while it's all for "safety" and fairness purposes, and never considering the amounts of money it would make for companies that manage the internet and its usage. i personally am just tired of hearing about how they want to make the world safer, so we sacrifice our freedoms to be videotaped in public on surveillance cams and apparently are about to give up free reign on the internet. now im not the one hoarding the bandwidth contributing uploads to places like rapidshare.com and other file hosting places like that, but to address basically what IS ALREADY and will continue to be standard for me as i get older, and will definitely be a way of life for children in the future will be overall increased internet usage. but this is definnitely something to deter people from using the internet i feel. i mean for christ sakes, u won't even be able to go to espn.com, seeing as it's one of the biggest websites on the internet with the most data loaded.
http://biz.yahoo.com/nytimes/080614/1194785259060.html?.v=3

so thats that, we're going to all start paying our own way on the internet beyond the monthly rate, which i can understand, they make the point of comparing it to energy, cellular phone messaging and what not. and thats all understandable, it's a far comparison, but i love the internet way more than i love cell phones and electricity lol, THIS would make me wanna stop kickin it on the internet, half the wow of the internet is that it's so free and open, it's about to get a lot less fun to cruise it on the internet.

im just looking for responses from people, not necessarily ones spending all of there time on the internet, but do have a legitament footprint of internet bandwidth usage as we've all grown acustomed to having it been merely a flat rate montly fee. Be it obviously on this website, maybe you play xbox or ps3 online, you're going to stop doing or at least cut down a bunch on that i bet, other websites, maybe you click download on some new microsoft update and have to download 2 gigs overnight. now i'm not advocating for online video game play because we all know it's a waste of time and we should probably cut down anyways in those areas of our lives, but i enjoy playing online too for the social aspect (if you're going to play the game, why not against real people) and i like even more to feel like i don't have to pay 5 cents per headshot in COD4, or 1 dollar to knock someone out in "fight night round 3" or if you have an apple computer, and you need to constantly update your programs with the automatic updating apple does, which is so great and at this point, free. Or you like to actually pay for music on iTunes, which is becoming more and more friendly (at least to me) to do. and now imagine, going onto the iTunes store to buy a CD, and now you have to pay more, all the way down to the byte, to download that cd. this is going to get absolutely ridiculous in here!!! i hate feeling nickled and dimed maybe it's just me that sees our lives becoming more expensive and monitered in ways like this. all responses appreciated, i'm going to be writing a stance paper on this when i get the oppurtunity at uni.

 
per byte? thats like charging cell phones per second. thats ridiculous. or is it going to be like a twentieth of a cent per byte. this is stupid.
 
define big though, because i bet they'll define it to include a significant amount of users to favor the internet companies. and with their reasoning of needing to build their infrastructure up, but we'll never know how much profits they'll need for that and itll settle in just like oil profits for the fucks upstairs like that.
 
Like 30-50 GB per month. Do you use that much bandwidth? I know I may very very rarely use 20, but never more than that. I don't think it's much to worry about. The companies even said they aren't going to really affect the average user. They are doing it to stop those people downloading and uploading hundreds of gigabytes per month.
 
30-50GB is only gonna hurt you if you're downloading a lot of movies / you watch a lot of porn. And I mean a LOT. So many nerds who spend all their time on P2P and torrents are gonna flip shit though...
 
i just dont see this taking effect on a large, nationwide scale. There are too many high profile sites that depend on high internet traffic. Sites like hulu that are owned by evern larger corporations will definatly make some noise. and you cant forget the millions on x box live that will bitch for months.
 
and if they're going to only go after the p2p users for torrents ettc why would they be concerned with the 5 and 20 gig cap users. why not just cap internet at 50 gigs etc, well well well beyond what the average amount is, so there would be absoultely no infractions made. they're concerned with making money to upgrade the networks etc, money that i garentee the companies already have but no one feel its there responsiblity to pay for to stay in business. why not pass off your companie losses for the customers to cover. they'll have you on the hook for the extra dollar when you go over it. and i bet it WILL take on a massive scale, because thats the only way it would be fair, and that seems to be their primarily concern. it wouldnt be hard for them to implement whatsoever. it doesnt require any new hardware, like this huge deal with anolog cable sets, thats a huge hardware issue. companies are trying to get away from that hassle, ie automatic software updates, shit, even iphone autoupdates all the time new firmwares n shit. all they'd have to do is send out a letter at the end of the month, or whenever you signed your contract and in order to reinstate it it'd be based on the new cap levels. but technically it could be a huge redistribution of whose paying for it. could save hella people money at the same time. but the fact that their will be restrictions, they know they will be breeched and charged for accordingly. but hey, worrying is like a rocking chair.
 
This isn't going to change how things work as much as you think. First of all, those sites aren't going to really lose traffic. THEY will have to pay for all the bandwidth THEY'RE using, but the average visitor to their site is a regular old internet surfer who isn't hitting anywhere near the max bandwidth so they're not going to be charged. The only people on XBox Live who will feel it are maybe the top 100 most active users who are downloading all sorts of shit like maps constantly.

The only people who will be affected besides businesses are nerds who upload/download movies, songs and porn constantly like it's their job. The casual internet user hits anywhere between 0.5 and 3GB a month, 30-50 is a LOT unless you're one of the people in the first sentence of this paragraph, in which case it's jack fucking shit and you're going to rage so hard at this news you'll probably enter a coma.
 
And plus, big P2P users are already feeling it. The top ISP's are limiting peoples upload and download speeds for high traffic users. That's worse than having to pay by the byte.
 
the internet is the last frontier for true uncensored freedom of speech hopefully it can be kept that way the internet is a great tool for society as a whole
 
yeah Mutumbo is right. my cap is 20 gigs with rogers, i download a lot of music, movies, and i still haven't hit it at any month. this really isnt gonna affect anybody besides the 1-2% of heavy users. and yeah this is nothing new.

plus 1 dollar per gigabyte? think about it a movie is 700mb give or take, and it costs 20 dollars. 1 dollar for a movie is still a damn good deal.
 
50 gigs isn't that much, say you download The entire final cut studio which is 20gigs, then only 4 full DVDs at 8 gigs each and you're over your limit. Once you have really fast internet and you realise you can download a full DVD in about the same time it will take to walk to the store you start to use it more. I've done about 80gigs in a month when I would download a movie every day or two. Sure, the average user won't be affected but a lot of people really like bittorrent.
 
Pretty much proved my point dude. You did 80GB when you were downloading one or two movies every day, on top of programs and music and all sorts of other shit. That's not normal. That's what this is targeting.
 
Im not too worried about the downloading limit, even if I go over 50gb a month now, it wouldn't be hard to cut back. I am worried about the endless amount of time I spend either playing games or simply being on the internet.

When super high speed internet becomes a standard, games and websites are going be able to take advantage of this and allow more complex operations to occur. Think of a cod4 multiplayer match on a map the size of something found in singleplayer, with every effect found in SP turned on (they disable a lot of effects on MP). If internet capabilities continue to expand (connections of 100 mb/s are already all over china), overall usage is going to go crazy, simply because of what will become available.

Even the casual user, with a 100 mb/s connection will be faced with the decision of weather to start downloading a movie first or start popping their popcorn.
 
If that is the case then they will be forced to up the limit. They will set a limit that 99% of the people won't reach, whether they are gamers or whatever. It's those people that are uploading and downloading on torrents everyday all day. Those are the ones that are using up a large portion of the bandwidth.
 
Yeah, I see. I'm just gonna stand far away from my animae/movie/game downloading friend, who has multiple torrent downloads up 24/7.
 
I hope he's smart about it. If you're a frequent torrent person you'd do yourself a solid getting PeerGuardian, if you get caught your entire life is fucked in half.
 
i dunno how you kick it on torrent sites uploading and downloading all the time. he should consider himself lucky. i spent about an hr downloading casino royale after it came out and a week later i got an email in my comcast inbox saying i was pretty much blacklisted (on their watch list) soo i dont know how well the companies r watching your friend, but for sure at least stand behind his shoulder and not at the desk. torrents rape the internet.
 
Daaaayumn. Dude I've downloaded around 200 movies and countless CDs since I first discovered torrents and I haven't heard a peep. You got very unlucky haha...
 
this won't fly, especially when the next generation of internet based media boxes hits. like the Vudu, and Roku. People are gona be downloading movies(legally) like crazy instead of buying solid state media. 
 
I've always had a download and upload limit on my account (live in Quebec, Videotron) and it fucking sucks. It costs like 30$ if I DL more than 20gigs or UL more than 10, which happens often.
 
I really don't see this happening, there are way to companies soley based online...Time Warner would face extremely detrimental opposition that I think would ultimately lead to lawsuits and fewer subscribers
 
Streamed movies are much lower quality (and thus much smaller) than torrent movies, that's why you're able to stream them.

And to Ice_Coast, torrents are the shit man, that's where it's at. Get uTorrent and PeerGuardian, go to www.thepiratebay.org, www.btjunkie.org, or www.isohunt.com, find your torrent and download. Very few spoofs/fakes, pretty good download speed, and they have pretty much any movie, CD, or program you could want.. shit is hot.
 
yeah definately get peer guardian though if your using torrents. it protects you from getting your IP address caught by any copyright agencies. ive gotten a letter once from ubisoft because i downloaded a game, and now i use this and i so far im safe.
 
You just contradicted yourself. No, the act of streaming does not use less bandwidth than straight downloading. They're still lower quality... so they still use less bandwidth.
 
hes saying it doesn't matter if you stream it or download it. You still have to use the same amount of bandwidth regardless. If you were to download the same low quality movie as the one you just streamed, they would be the same, you just wouldn't have a copy of it after you streamed it.
 
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