Theonlybob used our newssubmit to tell us about an interesting article on the News.com website. According to the article many of the biggest Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are considering to cap the amount of bandwidth that their subscribers can use per month.
The idea is that if people know they have a limited amount of bandwidth available they'll be less likely to download voraciously or allow people to upload songs and music from their computers.
For the past few years, many broadband ISPs have been frank in saying that file-swapping services such as Napster and Kazaa have been among the most popular activities on their networks. This has led to a small proportion of dedicated file swappers, known as "bandwidth hogs" within the industry, who account for a hugely disproportionate amount of network traffic. |
The tentative moves within the industry toward caps appear to stem from economics, rather than any philosophical or legal position on file swapping. Copyright holders such as movie studios and record companies have asked ISPs to remove subscribers who are identified as copyright violators, but most ISPs have preferred to issue warnings rather than immediately cut off service. Most have strenuously resisted any policy or legal proposals they fear would hold them responsible for monitoring subscriber behavior online.
Some companies are thinking of targeting specific peer-to-peer applications such as Kazaa or Grokster while other companies are looking at the possibilities on capping download bandwidth. Read the complete article here.
Source: News.com
