http://www.broadbandreports.com/shownews/23727



It's Toledo related. Apparently some folks in T-Town were "uncapping" cable modems to get more bandwidth. Paul Block (owner of Buckeye Cablevision and The Toledo Blade and ABC5 among others) sent in the cavalry (the FBI) and is prosecuting these people to the full extent of the law. Some seem to be pretty harsh penalties for 'bandwidth theft.' Not really sure where I stand on this though; it seems to be a perfect case of over-reaction. Most cable companies just disconnect the users. But the law allows them to be criminally prosecuted. Further, what they are doing is technically stealing property (the bandwidth belongs to Cablevision). However, while they had access to much greater bandwidth, in reality they weren't realizing that benefit. So, one could argue that when they bought their subscription they just bought a right to use the bandwidth;if someone else wasn't using it, they had every right to it. There's considerable law against this for most analogies (water, power, etc.) but it could be argued that this is different because bandwidth isn't 'really' a limited resource like the other two. Further most of the situations that ARE analogous (water, power, etc) have 'pay for use' policies. You pay x/usage. I wouldn't be too surprised to see broadband companies go to this type of fee schedule (i.e., $.01/MB ~$1.00 for 100MB or about 1.00 for every 2 cds' worth of bandwidth you use). This type of schedule would make someone like me who uses a LOT of bandwidth pay more than someone like Erin who uses very little bandwidth (of course, that's not a good example because we both live in the same house); further it would SERIOUSLY impede the amount of illegal copying that goes on. You'd think twice before downloading that cd (while only $1.00 it's still cheaper than buying) or 20. The movie industry would love it. To download a DVD rip is usually around 1.5GB or about $15 under my fee schedule; it's cheaper just to BUY the damn thing. Right now, the more I download the more efficiently I'm using my bandwidth. The biggest downfall would be serious impediment to technology research; no one would provide streaming video because no one would for the service PLUS the bandwidth. Anyway. I got off topic, but I'm tired of typing now.
---Jeff---