[72502] in North American Network Operators' Group
RE: Crackdowns don't slow Internet piracy
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Michel Py)
Thu Jul 15 01:27:38 2004
Date: Wed, 14 Jul 2004 22:27:01 -0700
From: "Michel Py" <michel@arneill-py.sacramento.ca.us>
To: "Patrick W Gilmore" <patrick@ianai.net>, <nanog@nanog.org>
Errors-To: owner-nanog-outgoing@merit.edu
>>> Fergie (Paul Ferguson) wrote:
>>> "The popularity of file-sharing is costing the largest
>>> Internet service providers $10 million per year each
>>> in bandwidth and network maintenance costs, CacheLogic
>>> said."
>> Michel Py wrote:
>> $10 million a year for the largest ISPs is a drop in the
>> sea; _if_ the figure is accurate (sounds reasonable to me)
>> what's the point anyway? The largest ISPs serve directly
>> or indirectly millions of users that each pay $20/mo which
>> is $240/yr, 10 million bucks a year is nothing.
> Patrick W Gilmore wrote:
> I don't care if you are Microsoft, $10MM a year is a large
> enough sum that the company should not spend it if the
> company can avoid spending it. The hard part is the caveat.
> If you block customers from sharing music on your network,
> will you still have customers? If not, then maybe the
> $10MM is COGS?
That's what I meant, thanks for rephrasing. $10M a year is definitely
something that any size company will try to save; I remember posting
here not that long ago that a $500k line card is definitely something I
do not buy without a good reason.
That being said, the speed that allows users to download faster large
(and pirated, mostly) files is the #1 selling argument for broadband
providers (look at their add campaigns). If you are a residential
broadband provider and if you block customers from sharing music on your
network, you will not have customers.
Michel.
