I signed up for an unlimited access - i.e. No restrictions. Without being informed of this change (in writing), I would view this as a breach of contract. Who is to say that a lower limit would not be imposed in the future ?

Regards, Paul.

On Monday 10 Feb 2003 11:25 pm, raph@panache.demon.co.uk wrote:

But so far as NTL is concerened, be reasonable. A limit fo 1GB/day is hardly a limit.

I work from home.

[...]

...I use an average of about 67MB bandwidth a day. I have an NTL 600KB broadband service.

With all due respect, if you are using a residential account for this then you offer an excellent example of the sort of misuse and band-width/contention hogging that NTL are spotlighting.

As for the 1meg/day limit, I have read (Slashdot AFAIR) that this is averaged over a month so there should be no problem in downloading a few ISOs in succession for personal use.

To be blunt, it is difficult to see why a personal home user would need more than 30 gigs a month unless they are downloading an awful lot of music and video files.

Funny thing is, none of the musicians that I know, some of whom are quite successful both artistically and financially, are actually that keen for their music to be given away to people who haven't paid for it - always seem to be the d/loaders who complain most about the musicians being ripped-off by the record companies :-)

Syd

[Long... possibly worth reading]

I do think that one of the difficulties with this whole area of debate (file sharing, ripping copyright mp3's etc) is that there are several different - although related - issues that get muddled together as if one simple opinion is equally relevant to all.

On Tuesday 11 Feb 2003 9:17 pm, MJ Ray wrote:

http://www.unisong.org/ http://www.mutopiaproject.org/ http://pkl.net/~node/ http://www.eff.org/cafe/resources.html etc etc ad inf

Well yes, it's great that there are many musicians who do give their music away but that is a different issue. Many professional musicians do not want to give their work away. It is arguable that they may be mistaken and that their earnings would increase if they did but nevertheless they do not give it away.

Now I don't want to be self-righteous here - like most people I have loads of home-made cassette and CD copies, for example, and if I had broadband I would quite probably d/load other stuff too. I also get involved with some trading of live concert recordings - not all by artists who are taper-friendly!

So - guilty as charged and I admit it. What does annoy me though is the claim by some heavy d/loaders of copyrighted non-free music that they are championing the artists because they (the artists) are being ripped-off by the music biz. I think that is self-justifying hypocrisy.

"To live outside the law you must be honest" (with yourself at least). Bob Dylan c.1969 - and it's still true.

So for example, a good friend of mine (co-incidentally the person who first encouraged me to use linux) spends a lot of his time coding while listening to d/loaded mp3s (i.e. not ripped from his own collection). Yes, he has certainly contributed to free s/w projects as well but he certainly expects to be paid for the commercial work that he does - that's his income.

So to me one of the key elements is choice: he chooses to give some of his work away but does not give other work away. Yet if someone took that commercial work and used it without permission then in my opinion he would be justified in feeling ripped-off. I'm assuming you can see the comparison I'm making here. He doesn't see it though :-)

Funny, it's the artistic freedom activists who seem to be decrying publishers to me. Oddly enough, the musicians in contract to the publishers are quiet about it. I wonder why?

I'm not being sarcastic here but I genuinely do not get the point you are making. My lack of understanding, sorry! Can you explain a little further?

Going back to the topic of download limits - I really do wonder what some people realistically expect for a few pence a day.

Let's just have some common sense here - it's a limited resource, there are contention ratios and if I was consistently getting slow rates because someone down the road insisted on hogging it to themselves I would be pretty p'ssed off with that person, not the ISP.

It's known as The Tragedy of the Commons (that's common land, before the Enclosures, not the palace of westminster BTW :-) Or, to put it another way, there's always a few and it takes all sorts to fuck up a beautiful planet.

Syd (now listening to a stealth-taped concert recording of Ray Charles 1995 :-)

On Tue, 11 Feb 2003 18:36:52 +0000 Syd Hancock syd@toufol.com wrote:

With all due respect, if you are using a residential account for this then you offer an excellent example of the sort of misuse and band-width/contention hogging that NTL are spotlighting.

Not at the figures he was quoting IMHO. The whole point of broadband rather than dialup is that it is higher bandwidth.

To be blunt, it is difficult to see why a personal home user would need more than 30 gigs a month unless they are downloading an awful lot of music and video files.

I think the 30Gb/month limit for a residential user is probably perfectly reasonable, though Paul does have a point when he says that this is not what the company originally promised.

I remember a even bigger fuss being made about people using BT Anytime more than BT had originally expected, some of the them to the detriment of other users, and the way BT handled it. Perhaps it is time that companies didn't promise unlimited use of a limited resource, but set sensible limits right from the start.

On Friday 14 Feb 2003 8:06 am, Ian Douglas wrote: [...] I've snipped out the body detailing the confused variety of 'limits' that have been pulished over the past few days.

They seem to be making it up as they go along now, desperately trying to recover from a PR disaster caused by their heavy-handedness.

Looking at this in practical terms it seems to me to be saying that if I want to download a new multi-CD Linux distro release (such as Mandrake) I *WILL* be classified as a "Persistent Offender" and be cut off if I download more than one CDs ISO per day (two ISOs per day would exceed my daily limit) now turning a distro upgrade into a very drawn out, week long, download job.

I'm going to continue playing devil's advocate here - a mandrake distro is three CDs. d/load 2, wait for a day then d/load the third. 4days maximum instead of three. Or, if you have the bandwidth, download 2 in the first day, wait a day, download the third - 3 days instead of two. Or wait half a day, begin the d/l which will be spread cross over two 24 hour segements ie.e haldf a Gig on dat 2, halg a gig in day 3.

Thankfully I only subscribe to their slowest service so one ISO per day is all I can manage anyway, however this must surely really hit hard those of you on the list who are shelling out loads of dosh for a higher speed service and are used to downloading a complete multi-ISO distro in a day.

At a cost of a few pence a day - what does a pound buy these days anyway - to ntl it is a bargain. If you're in a real hurry get them from linuxemporium by return of post - faster than d/loading but costs a few pounds more.

But - referring back to Steve Fosdick's point in an earlier message - it really is time that companies stopped making misleading claims about internet access just to fool the punters. Hopefully the NTL debacle will lead to some clarification in future.

Syd

On Thursday 13 Feb 2003 10:30 pm, Steve Fosdick wrote:

...

With all due respect, if you are using a residential account for this then you offer an excellent example of the sort of misuse and band-width/contention hogging that NTL are spotlighting.

Not at the figures he was quoting IMHO.

Steve, you are absolutely correct, which is why I immmediately retracted the statement with a public apology for my lack of accuracy. I had completely missed the point that was being made.

Perhaps it is time that companies didn't promise unlimited use of a limited resource, but set sensible limits right from the start.

100% agreement. There is an awful lot of bullshit about in advertising. Caveat Epmtor.

Equally, I think it is for the consumer to recognise that the whole thing is a big game and to learn to play the game. If we are sophisticated enough to know that what is offered is unrealistic then not to complain when it doesn't occur. Leave that to the people who are foolish enough to believe everything they are told.

Regards Syd

Syd Hancock wrote:

Laurie,

Public apology for completely misunderstanding your message - been a long day and I cannot either think or do simple sums.

I shall shut up now.

No worries! As you eventually spotted (arf!) I was trying to illustrate, whilst ignoring peaks over 1GB a day, that even a fairly heavy user (ie me at 67MB a day) is going to struggle to use 1GB a day.

Cheers, Laurie.