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In this debate, I often see confusion on, and conflation of, these two things:

- charging a premium on the provider side for amount of data transferred (for which people decry that start-ups will have no way to compete with the Yahoos and Googles, etc.)

- charging end-users not a flat-fee for a certain amount of possible capacity, but charging per the amount of data they actually transfer

But, internet connectivity is a commodity whose price is shaped by laws of supply and demand. If Comcast is selling bandwidth, they have a right to serve all customers. Just because a new technology (in this discussion, bittorrent) comes on the scene and changes demand does not nullify a broadband provider's right to adjust it's pricing model to effectively serve all customers.

For the record, I use bittorrent and am a proponent and user of open-source software. But, frankly, the story of bandwidth needs versus availability has been one of serendipity in that the capacity has luckily been large enough to meet consumer needs. Now that this equation is changing, the economics can and will change.

Don't conflate net neutrality with what people have been used to as end-users, namely that they've been free riders (in the economic sense).

[i]Also, the discussion between legal and illegal BT use is off-topic, take that up with the never-ending discussion of IP rights (and how it applies to Constitutionally ensured Fair Use rights) in the digital age.[/i]

posted 5 years, 1 month ago
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