Proposed: An à la Carte Internet

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
Joined
May 9, 2000
Messages
75,399
How would you like to pick and choose what services you use accessing features on the Internet? If you don’t like the service, simply don’t go back. A new proposal named ‘ChoiceNet’, would make option shopping a reality on the Internet.

End-users shouldn't be “stuck when the service they receive is not consistent with their expectations," the team writes in a brief abstract. "Rather, they must be able to choose a different service provider, to better meet their expectations."
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If this is accurate

The model sounds similar to the unbundling of long-distance phone services that took place a couple of decades ago for landlines. End-users maintain their on-site local ISP service, as they do with local phone companies, and select who they use to complete a call.
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Then the first question I have to ask is, does whoever is proposing this even understand how the internet works?
 
This is actually nothing new; this is how internet service works in the business world.

I had the job of choosing an internet provider for a new office at the company I work for. There are dozens of companies that offer T1 services in our area and there are many more than also offer fiber and DSL. The best part is, they actually compete for your business. I got Time Warner to drop 20% off of the price of a fiber metroe connection by playing them against another prospective ISP. You also deal with a real person, not some phone support representative.

The fiber connection is highly reliable. It is monitored 24/7. Something as minor as the temperature in the equipment exceeding tolerance levels by a degree will set off alarms and they automatically open a trouble ticket. I have a number that I can call 24/7 where I speak with local representatives. I have a guaranteed 4 hour response time to outages with contractually-bound compensations for extended outages; I have guaranteed latency and I have garunteed bandwidth. Granted, it's not cheap (that one office is about $1500 a month for a 10/10) but it would be much more expensive without that competition.

The reason the business internet service world has so much competition is because the government forced the telephone companies (ILECS) to share their lines. This same requirement should be extended to cable companies and to residential phone service.
 
Um, I thought thats what we do now? If you don't like DSL, you go to cable and vice versa? Unbundling the phone companies made sense as the copper line that goes to your house is untouched until it gets back to the neighborhood hub. From there it can be hooked up to the major provider or smaller provider. DSL can do the same thing provided there is another DSL provider in the area, but that can not work with cable modem service as the main line that feeds a house is the same main line that feeds hundreds of houses in that neighborhood. There is no way to share that line.

In essence they are dreaming of a perfect world where everyone has fiber to the curb/house and any company can jack into that fiber connection to provide that house with service. That isn't the case. Reality folks, learn it, live it, love it.
 
damicatz said:
The reason the business internet service world has so much competition is because the government forced the telephone companies (ILECS) to share their lines. This same requirement should be extended to cable companies and to residential phone service.
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Um, residential phone service is the same way. Cable lines can not be shared due to the amount of frequency used up by just one cable provider.
 
Tanis143 said:
Um, I thought thats what we do now? If you don't like DSL, you go to cable and vice versa? Unbundling the phone companies made sense as the copper line that goes to your house is untouched until it gets back to the neighborhood hub. From there it can be hooked up to the major provider or smaller provider. DSL can do the same thing provided there is another DSL provider in the area, but that can not work with cable modem service as the main line that feeds a house is the same main line that feeds hundreds of houses in that neighborhood. There is no way to share that line.

In essence they are dreaming of a perfect world where everyone has fiber to the curb/house and any company can jack into that fiber connection to provide that house with service. That isn't the case. Reality folks, learn it, live it, love it.
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Except that, often times, the local telco (ILEC) and the cable company conspire to screw the customers over.

I would like to see a choice of multiple cable internet providers and multiple DSL providers. Fiber would be nice too and it is something we are entitled to because the US government gave the telcos billions of dollars of taxpayer money, in the 90s, for the purposes of building fiber out to homes. (In reality, they pocketed the money and built none of the promised infrastructure).
 
Tanis143 said:
Um, residential phone service is the same way. Cable lines can not be shared due to the amount of frequency used up by just one cable provider.
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How do you think they share T1 services?

The local cable company would be responsible for handling the "last mile". All cable internet service on the coaxial side would route to the cable company's local facility. Inside the facility would be various access points where the companies offering internet service would have access points to their networks. Data would be routed to the appropriate access point based on what service the CPE belongs to.
 
And this wouldn't add any complexity, rules, and regulations to an already screwed up system and requiring lots of expenses to make this switch with an awkward conversion period and blah blah blah... No thanks.
 
-Dragon- said:
Then the first question I have to ask is, does whoever is proposing this even understand how the internet works?
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Understand? My guess is a big no.
Somehow I don't see this happening since it would impact the monopolies, and if it does happen, I don't see it working out as wonderfully as intended, as it will just confuse Joe End User...unless that's the intention. One question is if being able to change parts of the service will equal a billing nightmare, or if services used will just get a cut from the bill.
Though it would be nice to have the monopolies' territories broken up and end users given more choices, I'm not so sure that this is the right way to go about it.
 
damicatz said:
How do you think they share T1 services?

The local cable company would be responsible for handling the "last mile". All cable internet service on the coaxial side would route to the cable company's local facility. Inside the facility would be various access points where the companies offering internet service would have access points to their networks. Data would be routed to the appropriate access point based on what service the CPE belongs to.
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I think the problem is that with cable, the last mile is shared by everybody on the 'node', so a provider sharing the line is at a bigger disadvantage than with shared DSL (where the incumbent provider always seemed to be able to offer consumers DSL for less than what they charged to lease the line to a competitor)
 
These so called "geniuses" are about as smart as a dumb-a**. They have absolutely no clue how the internet works, IMO.

Why don't they use their brain power and come up with a proposal to make satellite and cable television programming à la Carte. Let the customer pick and choose specifically what programming options they want, and what channels they want. No more being forced to pay for hundreds of crappy channels when a person is only interested in only 3 or 4 of those channels anyway.

Yeah, yeah, I know I'll probably never see that happen in my lifetime, but hey, fella can dream can't he? ;)
 
toast0 said:
I think the problem is that with cable, the last mile is shared by everybody on the 'node', so a provider sharing the line is at a bigger disadvantage than with shared DSL (where the incumbent provider always seemed to be able to offer consumers DSL for less than what they charged to lease the line to a competitor)
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The amount of people with cable internet service wouldn't change. The bandwidth would be the same.

All that would change is that people would have a choice of who ultimately handles their internet traffic at the backend.

This exact system has already been done with the telcos. So it's not a new concept. The telcos managed to implement it. The cable companies can do the same, or, they can start paying for the right to run their infrastructure through people's private property.

In addition, I'd like to see the end of QAM-based digital cable. It is an obsolete technology; IP video is an order of magnitude more efficient. Think of how much bandwidth would be available if every channel on the network was for data.
 
I'm pretty sure that I absolutely do not care one way or the other about this. If it happens...meh. If not...meh. I already have lots more bandwidth and better service than I really need for the little I do online from home at a reasonable price. If it's too expensive or the service stinks someplace else, I'll just go find a dial-up provider and I'll still be apathetic about it. I just can't find a reason to care when a 56k modem is enough to fetch e-mail, check the weather, and post stuff on forums.
 
Geographically a lot of people are limited to whatever provide gives service in that area, and you have no choices. For example, I have no choice with cable internet, if I want it, Charter is my only option. I can't get DSL. And, because I live in an apartment they don't allow you to install satellite dishes. So, I have 1 option, if I want Internet, I use charter, otherwise, I don't have internet. So I would welcome more options.
 
Brent_Justice said:
Geographically a lot of people are limited to whatever provide gives service in that area, and you have no choices. For example, I have no choice with cable internet, if I want it, Charter is my only option. I can't get DSL. And, because I live in an apartment they don't allow you to install satellite dishes. So, I have 1 option, if I want Internet, I use charter, otherwise, I don't have internet. So I would welcome more options.
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Actually, you do have the right to install a dish.
http://www.fcc.gov/guides/over-air-reception-devices-rule
 
damicatz said:
All that would change is that people would have a choice of who ultimately handles their internet traffic at the backend.
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When you say things like that it makes me think that you, like the people in the article, don't really understand how the internet works. There's no magic backend network that connects you to your website, your ISP hands off your traffic to other networks who then may hand it off to other networks until it reaches your destination, then the traffic finds its way back. If your destination site uses a large ISP then it's likely your ISP has some sort of peering arangement with them and you only have to go through 2 or 3 networks to get there, but regardless what network do they propose we get to chose? The one from your local hub to wherever? If so who really cares who carries that traffic, that part is almost never the problem.

Seriously when was the last time anybody complained about their ISP transport? "Yeah my internet connection is awesome, it rarely goes down and I get real unlimited downloads, I just wish their back end transport wasn't so shitty." Nobody says that, ever, because compared to last mile where the REAL problems are, transport is almost never a problem because ISPs generally have 2+ redundant routes to most areas because when non-redundant transport links go down it's not just one person calling in to complain, it's thousands to millions.

We need more last mile options that would actually matter, not this BS.
 
mynamehere said:
Understand? My guess is a big no.
Somehow I don't see this happening since it would impact the monopolies, and if it does happen, I don't see it working out as wonderfully as intended, as it will just confuse Joe End User...unless that's the intention. One question is if being able to change parts of the service will equal a billing nightmare, or if services used will just get a cut from the bill.
Though it would be nice to have the monopolies' territories broken up and end users given more choices, I'm not so sure that this is the right way to go about it.
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from the article:

""A user may be offered different connection services for the purpose of watching streaming video. These connections may differ in their technical implementation (e.g., quality-of-service, use of caching, etc.). The user selects a service (i.e., a complete package of end-to-end connection and related services) and pays for its use. Depending on the user’s satisfaction with the video experience, they continue to use the chosen service or switch to another (i.e., vote with their wallet).""

I think these people understand very well because is a proposal to severely damage the internet as we know it and switch over instead to highly tiered and controlled internet. If you want sports (well for the service provider to goes through the "expensive" process of arranging a connection to and providing the bandwidth to get the data) pay X if you want sports from somebody who does not pay heavy bandwidth fees to your provider pay X+ if you want non-comcast controlled sports info (from a comcast internet user) then pay X+++, particularly if you want any sort of speed or not to have your data downgraded to the lowest priority. We had this sort of debate rather recently, concentrating only on video quality is the middle of the slippery slope.

About the only things that should matter to the end user that affect price are 1) up time (which should be 24/7) 2) the advertised bandwidth (and that actual speed should often be capable of utilizing that bandwidth) 3) data transfer limit (set only by bandwidth and not by any lesser cap) 4) special high speed repair/technical support 5) static / variable IP
 
-Dragon- said:
When you say things like that it makes me think that you, like the people in the article, don't really understand how the internet works. There's no magic backend network that connects you to your website, your ISP hands off your traffic to other networks who then may hand it off to other networks until it reaches your destination, then the traffic finds its way back. If your destination site uses a large ISP then it's likely your ISP has some sort of peering arangement with them and you only have to go through 2 or 3 networks to get there, but regardless what network do they propose we get to chose? The one from your local hub to wherever? If so who really cares who carries that traffic, that part is almost never the problem.

Seriously when was the last time anybody complained about their ISP transport? "Yeah my internet connection is awesome, it rarely goes down and I get real unlimited downloads, I just wish their back end transport wasn't so shitty." Nobody says that, ever, because compared to last mile where the REAL problems are, transport is almost never a problem because ISPs generally have 2+ redundant routes to most areas because when non-redundant transport links go down it's not just one person calling in to complain, it's thousands to millions.

We need more last mile options that would actually matter, not this BS.
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Actually, I have that problem. It's vary difficult for me to stream YouTube smoothly because the transport sucks ass. I know I have plenty of available bandwidth and I'm sure Google does as well. I wish the video player would multithread the download like my download manager so I can utilize my connection fully. Without my download manager I get 240k/s at best, with it I get 1.1MB/s on my 10 meg connection.
 
damicatz said:
Actually, you do have the right to install a dish.
http://www.fcc.gov/guides/over-air-reception-devices-rule
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And the speed of this for an average user would be?

For conventional internet users the only real options (at least in the U.S.) are phone line fiber such as AT&T or Verizon or through the cable company with even Google being a new upstart in the traditional cable arena. Not too many areas have overlapping coverage for both fios And U-Verse or have access to multiple cable companies.

Yes, there are a couple of dish based services but those are ridiculously expensive. Setting up your dish for internet access mainly just seems like last mile access before your personal dish's data is handed off to a major provider's trunk... unless you want to set up your own alternate network like some high frequency traders have done.
 
TeknoMage said:
Actually, I have that problem. It's vary difficult for me to stream YouTube smoothly because the transport sucks ass. I know I have plenty of available bandwidth and I'm sure Google does as well. I wish the video player would multithread the download like my download manager so I can utilize my connection fully. Without my download manager I get 240k/s at best, with it I get 1.1MB/s on my 10 meg connection.
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I have a similar issue as you do. Torrents transfer at as much as 3MB/s and low quality video moves at a like speed. However, if I try to watch streaming 1080p video through a browser my bandwidth for that one data transfer will often mysteriously fall below 100KB/s, particularly if I am accessing a major website that Comcast does not particularly like.

That is simple ISP throttling if its on your end or otherwise the host site, or its provider, is trying to preserve bandwidth by limiting the speed of any given thread. Your download manager just coordinates multiple transfer to spoof either one end or the other or both to saturate your bandwidth.
 
damicatz said:
This is actually nothing new; this is how internet service works in the business world.

...
I got Time Warner to drop 20% off of the price of a fiber metroe connection by playing them against another prospective ISP.

... Granted, it's not cheap (that one office is about $1500 a month for a 10/10) but it would be much more expensive without that competition.
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The point being if you offer a grossly overpriced "business" account that EVERYONE overprices you can afford to drop pricing.

The same model won't work for individuals, why? Because fuck you, $60 on an account ain't going to be shit and because you'll take it like a bitch because we're the only choice you have.

That said this sounds a lot like destroying net neutrality... we'll just call it "a la carte" and have a "cheaper" level of service... that coincidentally costs the same as what you have now, and if you want everything you'll pay more.
 
-Dragon- said:
When you say things like that it makes me think that you, like the people in the article, don't really understand how the internet works. There's no magic backend network that connects you to your website, your ISP hands off your traffic to other networks who then may hand it off to other networks until it reaches your destination, then the traffic finds its way back. If your destination site uses a large ISP then it's likely your ISP has some sort of peering arangement with them and you only have to go through 2 or 3 networks to get there, but regardless what network do they propose we get to chose? The one from your local hub to wherever? If so who really cares who carries that traffic, that part is almost never the problem.

Seriously when was the last time anybody complained about their ISP transport? "Yeah my internet connection is awesome, it rarely goes down and I get real unlimited downloads, I just wish their back end transport wasn't so shitty." Nobody says that, ever, because compared to last mile where the REAL problems are, transport is almost never a problem because ISPs generally have 2+ redundant routes to most areas because when non-redundant transport links go down it's not just one person calling in to complain, it's thousands to millions.

We need more last mile options that would actually matter, not this BS.
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This is how it works with T1s and CLECs. So yes, I do understand how it works and yes, it is already being done. We just need to expand it to the consumer level internet connections.
 
DustMite said:
These so called "geniuses" are about as smart as a dumb-a**. They have absolutely no clue how the internet works, IMO.

Why don't they use their brain power and come up with a proposal to make satellite and cable television programming à la Carte. Let the customer pick and choose specifically what programming options they want, and what channels they want. No more being forced to pay for hundreds of crappy channels when a person is only interested in only 3 or 4 of those channels anyway.
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This.

Instead we have "must carry" laws, so I have to pay for 2 dozen foreign language channels I'll never watch.

This rest of this problem is mostly due to the Media companies who will only sell "packages" of channels with contracts requiring that ALL subscribers recieve certain channels.
ESPN is a prime example as they are the most expensive cable channel at around $5 per customer. They have a policy that requires the cable company to include ESPN in the base channel package for EVERY customer. If the cable company doesn't agree, then no ESPN. Allowing me to drop just this one channel that I never watch would reduce the cost by $5.
 
sfsuphysics said:
The point being if you offer a grossly overpriced "business" account that EVERYONE overprices you can afford to drop pricing.
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Calling it a grossly overpriced "business" account, just shows how little you understand the difference between a business account and a consumer account.

We currently have a 10mb business connection to my office. This is a full 10mb both up & down with multiple static IP addresses and no limit of the amount or type of traffic. This allows us to not only run our own Exchange servers, but also FTP and even web servers. Every test I have run over the years has always showedthe full bandwidth available, unlike my home connection that is suppose to be 18mb, but I'm usually lucky if I see more than 1/2 that speed.

Every 2 years I have managed to either get the price dropped, or the speed increased for the same price. This year we are moving to a 20mb connection. Can't wait :)
 
sfsuphysics said:
The point being if you offer a grossly overpriced "business" account that EVERYONE overprices you can afford to drop pricing.

The same model won't work for individuals, why? Because fuck you, $60 on an account ain't going to be shit and because you'll take it like a bitch because we're the only choice you have.

That said this sounds a lot like destroying net neutrality... we'll just call it "a la carte" and have a "cheaper" level of service... that coincidentally costs the same as what you have now, and if you want everything you'll pay more.
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Let me know what happens if your consumer level connection goes down at 3am on a Saturday morning. With the $1500 fiber, they will have it fixed by 7am or we get automatic credit. With a consumer level connection, they'll just send someone out whenever (probably Monday or Tuesday) and they'll take their sweet time fixing it.
 
damicatz said:
Let me know what happens if your consumer level connection goes down at 3am on a Saturday morning. With the $1500 fiber, they will have it fixed by 7am or we get automatic credit. With a consumer level connection, they'll just send someone out whenever (probably Monday or Tuesday) and they'll take their sweet time fixing it.
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Let me know how much you think that level of service is actually worth, I'm guessing by your response you think $1500/month of "just in case shit happens" insurance is worth it. 4 hours they'll get you back up? Yikes, I'd want a LOT more for $1500 a month, like it'll be up in the next hour level of service. AFAIK, it's not a 1Gbps fiber either, the guy said 10Mbps connection. I'm sure as a business that might rely on the internet connection it's worth it, simply put you can write it off as a business expense as well so the reality is it really doesn't cost your company that much, but still.

Point being though, these ISPs make money hand over fist due to business accounts, fact is their internet connections do not drop that often so they profit greatly from them, which is why they can get away with giving a 20% discount to get you as a customer. Try doing that with Comcast or whatever the next time you see a DSL line for cheaper, see how much they'll budge.
 
damicatz said:
Let me know what happens if your consumer level connection goes down at 3am on a Saturday morning. With the $1500 fiber, they will have it fixed by 7am or we get automatic credit. With a consumer level connection, they'll just send someone out whenever (probably Monday or Tuesday) and they'll take their sweet time fixing it.
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I'd rather pay $40 per month for a residential DSL connection and find a good book to read when there's an outage or maybe go someplace with free wifi if I get that desperate to look at a website. There's lots better things I could think of to do with the $1460 other dollars each month than throwing it away on overkill Internet service to my apartment just for forum bragging rights.
 
SkribbelKat said:
I'd rather pay $40 per month for a residential DSL connection and find a good book to read when there's an outage or maybe go someplace with free wifi if I get that desperate to look at a website. There's lots better things I could think of to do with the $1460 other dollars each month than throwing it away on overkill Internet service to my apartment just for forum bragging rights.
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Who said I had that level of service at home?

I'm talking about what I have at work.
 
Stop it. We don't need choices for what internet "features" we want access to, what we really want are ISPs that don't rape and take advantage of customers. Get rid of the double-payment system (once for your access speed, another for data beyond some arbitrary amount--an amount that doesn't cost the ISP a dime). How about a pay-per-data system, where the cost/data is reasonable.
 
damicatz said:
Who said I had that level of service at home?

I'm talking about what I have at work.
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The point of my comment was that they profit much more off a business account than they do off an individual account, so they have the room (and desire) to negotiate rates to get customers.
 
IMO, the internet needs to be regulated the same way as electricity was done years ago.

It was considered completely unfeasible to have five different energy companies run five different independent electrical grids to your home in order to compete for your business.

So the energy company that laid the wires is compensated, but they no longer have monopolies and you can go to powertochoose.com for Texas for example and shop for the cheapest electricity provider. In my parents case it dropped their rate from 14.2cents/kwh + fees for less than 1K use they had through the major provider, to 8.5cents/kwh with no fees. NEARLY HALF!

It doesn't make sense to have five different fiber connections run to my house, just one is fine.

And then I should be able to shop for whatever ISP I want, same as the energy companies. Luckily I get to choose between Comcast, AT&T, and DSL at my house. At my parents house they have only Comcast and DSL (which is very slow since its so far from their center), so Comcast has a monopoly on TV and internet and they charge accordingly.

Once we see ISPs forced to compete against one another country-wide, we will see far lower internet rates. Competition always lowers prices and improves service, I can't think of any exception.
 
teh_chem said:
Stop it. We don't need choices for what internet "features" we want access to, what we really want are ISPs that don't rape and take advantage of customers. Get rid of the double-payment system (once for your access speed, another for data beyond some arbitrary amount--an amount that doesn't cost the ISP a dime). How about a pay-per-data system, where the cost/data is reasonable.
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AOL has a $10 per month plan for dial-up. It's slow, but inexpensive as long as you already have a land line active in your home and you can run ICS from a Windows PC so that multiple systems can connect through it and share it for outside access.
 
damicatz said:
I'm talking about what I have at work.
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And compared it to residential service...

damicatz said:
Let me know what happens if your consumer level connection goes down at 3am on a Saturday morning. With the $1500 fiber, they will have it fixed by 7am or we get automatic credit. With a consumer level connection, they'll just send someone out whenever (probably Monday or Tuesday) and they'll take their sweet time fixing it.
Click to expand...
 
teh_chem said:
How about a pay-per-data system, where the cost/data is reasonable.
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Because in practice such policies tend to drive progress backward.

Instead of capacity and speed always ramping up and up and up with demand, it creates demand for lower resolution images, videos, text only forums, banner blockers get even wider adoption, shunning massive multiplayer online for single player games, etc all to help reduce consumption and thus costs.

"Buffet" plans, only punishing the top 1% of users encourages people to use as much internet as possible, driving progress.

Really we should just look at what South Korea did and copy then! :D
 
Still waiting for A la carte TV. Internet is fine - Usage Based Billing is ok as long as it's reasonable and expands as technology progresses. Not this regression bullshit that North American ISPs have been pulling.
 
i wish somebody develop one thing to use 2 connections in same time and combine for more speed
 
damicatz said:
The amount of people with cable internet service wouldn't change. The bandwidth would be the same.

All that would change is that people would have a choice of who ultimately handles their internet traffic at the backend.

This exact system has already been done with the telcos. So it's not a new concept. The telcos managed to implement it. The cable companies can do the same, or, they can start paying for the right to run their infrastructure through people's private property.

In addition, I'd like to see the end of QAM-based digital cable. It is an obsolete technology; IP video is an order of magnitude more efficient. Think of how much bandwidth would be available if every channel on the network was for data.
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How do you think they share T1 services?

damicatz said:
The local cable company would be responsible for handling the "last mile". All cable internet service on the coaxial side would route to the cable company's local facility. Inside the facility would be various access points where the companies offering internet service would have access points to their networks. Data would be routed to the appropriate access point based on what service the CPE belongs to.
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You obviously do not fully understand rf transmission. In modern cable plants the last mile is all coax (it actually could be a couple of miles worth, but you get the idea). On that coax you have a set spectrum of frequencies. Take in mind that each analog channel uses 6 mhz of frequency to transmit. Now, the channels are listed as 1 - 158 (frequencies 55mhz through 997mhz), though not in that order. Out of those frequencies, you have x amount of analog channels, another x amount of digital channels, then you have the docsis channels. In docsis 3 plants you can have up to 8 channels being used. In the plant I work in we use up to channel 148 as the higher 900mhz channels do not carry well over distance. Between channel 1 and 148 we have very little room left.

Coax does not work like twisted copper phone lines. Its a different type of transmission. Coax lines simply can not be shared. This is why it has not been done before now. Trust me, if it was at all possible the telco's would have been screaming to have it done to cable.
 
nutzo said:
This.

Instead we have "must carry" laws, so I have to pay for 2 dozen foreign language channels I'll never watch.

This rest of this problem is mostly due to the Media companies who will only sell "packages" of channels with contracts requiring that ALL subscribers recieve certain channels.
ESPN is a prime example as they are the most expensive cable channel at around $5 per customer. They have a policy that requires the cable company to include ESPN in the base channel package for EVERY customer. If the cable company doesn't agree, then no ESPN. Allowing me to drop just this one channel that I never watch would reduce the cost by $5.
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The internet fortunately doesn't work this way. Assuming the data rate is the same, Its no more expensive for you ISP to give you data from Amazon than data from NFL's website.

However, breaking up 'service' between e-mail, video streaming, music downloading, and charging you for each of those 'services' individually will allow them to charge providers for access while nickel and diming customers at the same time.

Its also a wonderful way to selectively make music services and movie/tv streaming cost prohibitive. MPAA and RIAA are drooling as we speak.

Paying for the traffic you use seems fine to me. Paying for the different kinds of traffic I use is a tool to control the kind of content I use the internet for.
 
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