In his own special way, the always-provocative Mark Cuban throws down the gauntlet on bandwidth hogs:
When it comes to broadband internet access, you can have speed or large volumes of data transfer. You can’t have both. One certainty in the broadband world is that for those of us with cable or DSL modems connecting us to the internet, there is still a finite amount of bandwidth available. When a user consumes a disproportionate and significant amount of bandwidth, it can and will slow down everyone. I hate that.
If the choice is between your being able to download more movies or other video and my getting the best possible speed from my internet connection, I’m thrilled when you get kicked off. It can’t happen soon enough. Speed is what I need. Take all your P2P downloads and get the hell off my internet.
I have no sympathy for bandwidth hogs. You all are productivity killers for the rest of us. People who are working, people who are trying to play games, people who are in virtual worlds, people who are networking, people who are just trying to watch a Youtube video or their favorite TV show, you all are the reason why we get incredibly annoyed by slowdowns and buffering.
Leave and take your bit torrent client with you.
Well, we’re not quite that hard-nosed about it here, but we’ve written a few things about broadband metering / tiering that you might find of interest: Drew, Cord, Ryan, and me (1, 2, 3, 4, 5).
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.