Rochester Protests Time Warner Internet Pricing Plan

“Just at a time when access to information is driving our economic recovery, Time Warner is moving to stagnate the 21st Century technology needed to rebuild America.” Those were the words of Representative Eric Massa (D-NY 29) in response to Time Warner's plans to implement new charges for Internet service based on individual usage. Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) personally intervened and said that this will not stand in this state. Last Thursday, Time Warner announced that it will not begin implementing the plan in the Fall.

However this is not to say that the plan is dead and buried. This out-of-touch company still thinks its “consumption based” plan is superior, it just neglected to explain it properly. With “customer education” they seem to believe the public will eventually embrace the plan.

Some 40 Rochesterians didn't feel that way. Chanting slogans like “Cut the crap no cap” their planned protest went on despite the company's announcement. The plan was compared to the OPEC oil cartel. Al Gore was quoted as referring to these sort of corporations as the “Cable Cosa Nostra.” When the subject of “re-education” was announced, the crowd broke into a parody of a Pink Floyd song:

We don't need no education
We don't need no tier control
Hey Time Warner leave our bits alone!

What brought this about? Is the Internet really running out of space? Bandwidth is another term for space. We shouldn't be running out of it. The internet was originally developed in the United States, but then it was privatized and neglected. South Korea and Japan are now the most connected countries in the world. The US ranks at number 56. Does this sound familiar? Recall in 2000 the electrical situation in California. All of a sudden the power grid, after years of neglect and under control of a handful of incestuous companies, allegedly could no longer handle the demand. Attempts were made to blame "those greedy consumers" for using too much of what they'd been sold. Rates increased up to 300 percent supposedly to pay for crucial improvements. In the end it was revealed that one large corrupt company, Enron, was creating the crisis to drive up prices.

But what if our system really can't handle the increased load in the short term? Nick Francesco of the WHAM radio show Sound Bytes has a solution that should be familiar to anyone concerned about our environment: Conservation. Much of the content transmitted over the internet is unwanted. Email spam is the most glaring example. This spam used to just be text but now has become graphical and may even contain audio and video. Audio and video consume a lot of bandwidth. A video advertisement may take 100 to 1000 times the bandwidth of a simple text message. Some sites hit you with unwanted video before you can even see the content you came looking for. Our local TV stations are all guilty of that. "Consumption-based pricing would be more fair if the unwanted content were taken into account, and removing the unwanted material would be a truer measure of the bandwidth a person really used," according to Francesco. If all of the waste were removed, there would likely be plenty of bandwidth left to alleviate any shortages.

Unnecessary “improvements” are another source of wasted bandwidth. I already have one of the dreaded “gas gauges,” to measure downloads, as does anyone else with a Linksys router. (RTFM - Read The Fantastic Manual - if you want to know how to do it) Personal experimentation has shown that pages on the “new” Facebook transmit 5 or more times as much data as the “old” Facebook did, in order to display the same content. Google's Flash-enhanced gmail exhibits similar behavior compared to the plain HTML version. At least Google is kind enough to give us the option of using the HTML version. Having used the Internet myself for close to twenty years, I can honestly say that my Road Runner connection today is little or no faster than the 56K dialup connection I had ten years ago. The reason: all of this unwanted content. These protesters had it right when they said “Cut the crap.”

360 people had initially signed up to attend the event, but mainstream media reported the issue dead which likely lowered attendance. This issue is not dead. Keep paying attention and make sure your elected representatives are kept informed. Let's hold Senator Schumer to his promise that this will not happen in the State of New York.