Sanders Media

As exciting as this new age of technology is for me, I can’t help but be leery as well. Between the MPAA and RIAA’s misguided witch hunts and Comcast’s internet throttling, sometimes I think my head will explode. Time Warner Cable is the new object of my ire.

TWC has been trying to convince the press and it’s customers that heavy downloading is sending it’s broadband bill through the roof. Wired.com’s Epicenter blog refutes that claim. The company’s broadband bill fell 20% between 1st Quarter 2008 to 1st Quarter 2009. That’s the same time period that TWC claimed it’s customers were using 40% more broadband. To me, it seems as if TWC is paying less for the bandwidth it uses, but wants to make money off the discount.

They recently attempted to test market bandwidth caps. They had this to say in defending the program:

Internet demand is rising at a rate that could outpace capacity within a few years. According to industry analysts, the infrastructure may not be able to accommodate the explosion of online content by 2012. This could result in Internet brownouts. It will take a lot of money to fix the problem. Rather than raising prices on all customers or limiting usage, we think the fairest approach is to move to a tiered model in which users pay more if they use more.[...]

We have increasing variable costs and we have to continue to invest in the network itself. [...] If we don’t act, consumers’ Internet experience will suffer. Sitting still is not an option.

TWC only shelved this program after some heavy political pressure. They promised to reintroduce it once they come up with a better PR campaign. Basically, they want to try to manipulate us better.

They don’t seem to understand that people aren’t dumb. Pricing for digital storage, bandwidth and other technologies are plummeting. The less they pay, the more profit they receive. Trying to pile profits on top of the lower prices is just plain greedy.

Thanks to the ongoing litigation of the RIAA and the MPAA, the public at large is acutely aware of copyrights. However, due to a law that is too open to interpretation, many may be innocently violating a copyright. Here are some tips for staying on the right side of the law.

1. First and foremost, try to get permission from the owner of the copyright. You can save a lot of research time by simply asking.
2. Purchase rights to the material from a vendor. An example would be stock photography. I often purchase stock photos from istockphoto.com to use on my sites. TV production studios will purchase music libraries. They are then granted the right to use that music in their productions.
3. Never use anything that you’re unsure of. Ignorance is a difficult defense if you find yourself in litigation.