[ NNSquad ] Re: FCC Hearing tomorrow (Monday, 25-02-2008)

[Warren Kumari <warren@kumari.net>]

On Feb 25, 2008, at 12:57 PM, Brett Glass wrote:
> >

[SNIP]
> I rather doubt that Vuze would be willing to publish my response,  
> because
> its entire business plan consists of attempting to take bandwidth from
> me and other ISPs, without compensation, rather than paying for it.

Can you please explain how Vuze is "attempting to take bandwidth from  
me and other ISPs, without compensation, rather than paying for it."?  
Your users *have* already paid you for their bandwidth, its theirs to  
do with what they like (within the terms of the AUP that they  
(presumably) agreed to when they signed up). If you have not  
specifically excluded something like "servers", and defined servers to  
be something like "providing content to to others", then your users  
are using their bits an a way that seems reasonable to them (and if  
you have excluded them from providing content to others, you will have  
had to write your contract in a very careful way, so that they can  
still post photos to MySpace, video to YouTube and make phone-calls to  
granny).

I am unclear how what Vuze is doing is any different to, for example,  
one of your users automatically checking mail, other than the  
direction and quantity of data. You wouldn't expect Microsoft to pay  
you for letting Anne check her Hotmail, why do you expect Vuze to pay  
you because Anne has decided to donate some of the bits that *she has  
already paid for*? Yes, Vuze has slashed their distribution costs by  
having Anne take over some of their distribution work, but they are  
giving her something that she feels makes things worthwhile.

If you don't like this, you can:
A: Educate Anne on the  evils of her giving away something that she  
has paid for
B: Change you AUP to disallow this activity and enforce your AUP.
C: Impose bandwidth caps on your users and cut them off / charge them  
for going over the limit.
D: Increase your pricing to cover the additional costs.
E: Block access to these services.

I'm sorry, I'm not trying to be confrontational, but I still believe  
that, once your customers have paid for bandwidth, they can sit there  
trolling for pictures of kittens, set up a massive cluster if  
Seti@home machines or trade some outgoing bandwidth for the ability to  
watch streaming video...

W

> > Based on what I'm hearing and reading, the FCC commissioners are  
> > going to be
> > especially interested in the views of small, independent operators  
> > like
> > Brett.
>
> Then why was there not a single one on any of the panels?
>
> > I encourage him to continue to pursue this, but I also warn him that
> > they've heard and will hear plenty of bluster from the big  
> > operators that
> > serve 97% of broadband providers.
> >
> > He will be well advised to focus on his unique observations, needs  
> > and
> > concerns as a wireless ISP, someone who competes with these big  
> > companies
> > without either "open access" or the use of public infrastructure.   
> > While he
> > might mention those problems and views that he has in common with  
> > those
> > large operators, he should focus his efforts on getting them to  
> > understand
> > how they are different.
>
> My filing with the FCC at
>
> http://tinyurl.com/2wf6nd
>
> says a lot of it. But I'm a voice in the wilderness -- literally and
> figuratively -- because most of my peers are too busy actually  
> WORKING to
> get involved in politics. (I'm really too busy to do it as well, but I
> take the time out of recreation and sleep.) Many of them are "lone  
> wolves"
> and are hard to reach. And some may not understand the import of the
> current proceedings.
>
> --Brett Glass

--
However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the  
results.
    -- Winston Churchill