A Day in Paradise

I had this weird dream last night. I was in a parallel universe, it was the weirdest thing. In my dream, I was at the park talking to a good friend of mine, we were chatting about this and that and at some point I said

“Hey, I watched this great VDV from NotFlix last night” to which “Steve” said “REALLY?? That has been in my NotFlix queue forever, but it’s got a long wait and I’m not sure when I’m going to get it. Can you make a copy for me?” I agreed and after a bit more chit chat we went our separate ways.

Next thing I remember we’re in the car driving home, and my 7-year-old asks me “Daddy, isn’t it illegal to copy VDVs?” – apparently in this parallel universe they have some really strange laws.

Do I agree and convince my daughter that her father is a criminal, or explain to her the intricate details of copyright law and fair use and turn my impressionable 7-year-old into a budding little anarchist just like her father?

“Steve is paying for NotFlix already, but can’t get the movie because too many people want to watch it. My making a copy of the movie and letting him watch it is not hurting anyone and even saving Notflix postage fees and clearing up the movie for other NotFlix members who are waiting for the movie. Laws are meant to stop and punish people from doing bad things and hurting people, but some laws are pushed into place by big companies who just want to make more money than they are already making”.

I continued with an analogy “When you and your sister go to buy an ice cream, you choose strawberry and your sister likes Chocolate. More likely than not, one of you will ask for a taste of your sister’s ice cream and you’ll share bites. What if the ice cream makers decided that they are losing money every time your sister tastes your ice cream, and they use their money to push through a law that says that tasting someone else’s ice cream is stealing and if you a taste of that ice cream you should buy a scoop of that flavor yourself”. She laughs “That would be silly”! “Yes”, I respond “It would be”.

I wake up thinking about stealing, and think of a scenario which is much more realistic to this universe, and something that upsets me every time I go out to watch a movie (a couple times a month).

I pay from $8 – $13 to watch a movie, with my family that comes out to between $32 and $52. Popcorn and drinks adds another $15 – $20 onto the tab. We arrive early to get the seats we want and wait for the cinema to darken and our movie to start. At the time advertised the cinema darkens, but instead of showing the feature presentation, or even trailers we get “a word from our sponsors” which go on for 10 or 15 minutes. That is hugely offensive to me as a paying customer, but I’m not going to rant.

I bill $180/hr. which means for every minute I am watching a commercial I am losing $3. Lets say I watch a movie on IMAX with my kids ($52) plus drinks and popcorn ($20) plus at least 10 minutes of time watching ads ($30) that brings my tab up to $102.

So to pull this rant together, it costs me $102 each time I go to a movie (enough to buy 5 DVD movies), and then I buy DVDs (I have a shelf of kids movies and old favorites to prove it), and then I have Netflix subscription on top of that. I don’t TIVO, which means I sit through commercials (20 minutes of commercials every hour makes $60 in lost billing time). And then after all of that, each time I sit down to watch a movie I get an FBI warning that if I make a copy (for any reason) I would be stealing and committing a federal crime. How I am expected to explain this logic to my kids is beyond my control.

It’s just silly.

Yesterday I read the an article on Network Neutrality on CNN.com. The article was written by Craig Newmark of Craigslist and was VERY wrong.

Here’s part of what bothered me:

Here’s a real world example that shows how this would work. Let’s say you call Joe’s Pizza and the first thing you hear is a message saying you’ll be connected in a minute or two, but if you want, you can be connected to Pizza Hut right away. That’s not fair, right? You called Joe’s and want some Joe’s pizza. Well, that’s how some telecommunications executives want the Internet to operate, with some Web sites easier to access than others. For them, this would be a money-making regime.

That is a VERY misleading analogy on many levels. Here is my counter-analogy.

Steve runs a Pizza delivery service. When his service started he used to charge per-pizza he delivered. The prices weren’t that high, and since I’m too lazy to go out and get my own pizzas I appreciated the service. I didn’t eat as much pizza as I would like to, because Steve’s surcharge was always in the back of my mind.

Once Steve got enough clients, he expanded his business and realized that he could offer a better service by charging a flat-fee. Using this new business model everyone paid a flat monthly fee, and the cost of people who ate a pizza every night (like me) were subsidized by the people who only ate 1 pizza a month.

Everyone had hot pizzas, everyone was happy.

A couple months ago Gpizza opened, they offer all the regular pizzas, but also offer the GSuper 4-course MegaPizza. This pizza comes in 4 parts which are served by midgets waiters. The midgets waiters need to be transported with the pizzas and then brought back to the Gpizza store.

For the first couple months Steve is happy to provide his loyal clients with Gpizzas, even though it did require substantially more resources for Steve to transport the Gpizzas and midgets. As Gpizzas become more and more famous, people start to complain that their Gpizzas are arriving cold, the midgets were tired from the slow ride and weren’t as enthusiastic with their serving the pizzas.

Ypizza, which has been using Steve for 10 years, sees how much money Gpizza is making and decides to make the Ysuper 4-course MegaPizza and one-ups Gpizza by providing a dancing leprechaun along side the 3 midget servers.

Steve sees that he will not be able to provide any service if more Pizza places start offering MegaPizzas. He has two options:

1.Revert to a Per-pizza business model and charge his clients for the delivery of MegaPizzas
2.Charge pizza places for the delivery of MegaPizzas

Gpizza catches wind of this and prepares the “Pizza Delivery Guy Neutrality” bill which mandates that Pizza delivery guys are unable to charge pizza shops extra for delivering MegaPizzas.

Now with silly analogies out of the way, a bit of mythbusting:

The Network is NOT Neutral
Craig says “So let’s keep the Net as it is now: Neutral, fair and free.” The network is currently NOT neutral, it’s free for ISPs to do what they want. Network Neutrality regulation will not free anything, but will restrict the ISPs in the service they can provide.

Bandwidth / Latency costs Money!
High Bandwidth/Latency applications cost money to transfer. The money has to come from somewhere. Creating laws that stop ISPs from charging the Googles, YouTubes and Skypes of the world mean that YOU and I will be paying for it instead.

YouTube/Google/Skype and Craigslist are making money
They can allocate a bit of money to provide good pipes.

When Google rules most of the Cable in the US
How neutral do you think that will be?

As you may know, it’s a sin for a Taliban male to see a woman other than his wife, naked. He must commit suicide if he does. So this Saturday at 4 P.M. eastern time, all American women are asked to walk out of their houses, completely naked, to weed out any terrorists in your neighborhood. Circling the block for one hour is suggested for this anti-terrorist effort.All men to position themselves in lawn chairs in front of their homes to prove they are not Taliban, and to show support for American women. Since the Taliban also does not approve of alcohol, a cold six pack beside your seat is further proof of your anti-Taliban sentiment.

The U S government appreciates your participation in this anti-terrorist activity.

God bless America!

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