Comcast Rolls Out Nationwide 1TB Data Cap (theverge.com) 243
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Comcast's home internet data caps are going live for a majority of customers starting November 1st, the company announced today. Called the "Xfinity Terabyte Internet Data Usage Plan," the cap restricts the amount of data you consume in your home to 1TB per month regardless of the speed of your plan. Comcast claims 99 percent of customers use less than 1TB per month, but it does now offer an unlimited option for $50 more per month. Back in April, Comcast bumped its data cap from 300GB to 1TB after consumer backlash and renewed regulatory concern from the FCC. And until today, the plan has been active in select markets for 16 states. But starting November 1st, the list will add 18 new markets, bringing the total number of states with the terabyte data cap to around 30. Notable exceptions include New York and nearly the entire northeast. For a full list of included markets, check Comcast's online FAQ.
What's a data cap? (Score:5, Funny)
No cap for me, I'm using the neighbor's open xfinitywifi for free. Thanks, Comcast is fuckin awesome!
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And when your use pushes your neighbors internet over the cap, Comcast will charge them more. Win-win.
The visitor's data use is counted against the visitor's data cap, not the owner of the hotspot. From this: [xfinity.com]
Re: What's a data cap? (Score:4, Insightful)
I find that extremely interesting, because it means that they must have some way of measuring data traffic other than just counting the bytes in/out of your connection. They must separate your data and visitor data somehow.
I've read a number of stories about inaccurate data metering on broadband lately. I wonder how reliable their system is.
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The login page is easily ignored. ICMP is not firewalled, and you can set up a ping tunnel to get full internet access.
Re: What's a data cap? (Score:5, Informative)
Hans - IP over ICMP [gerade.org]
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Hans - IP over ICMP [gerade.org]
Interesting, but doesn't that just pass the buck? You've got to run the server somewhere else with Internet connection so that it can proxy the ICMP requests. Might be good for making xfinitywifi a part of an anonymizing proxy but not so good for getting free bandwidth.
Good news eveybody! (Score:5, Insightful)
The chocolate ration has gone up to 20 grams a week!
Future-proofing for 4k (Score:4, Interesting)
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2TB per month. Do you and your kids do anything else than use computers and watch movies all day?
That's more than 750 hours of Netflix watched in HD (half in 4k). Send your kids outside to do something more constructive than that!!!
I too have kids and a wife that use Netflix, Facebook. We have yet to push it beyond 600GB.
Wow (Score:4, Interesting)
How much congestion can these people be causing if it only costs at extra $50 to "fix" it?
Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
None. The purpose of caps from cable companies isn't to cover the costs of infrastructure improvements. It is to serve as a disincentive to dropping cable TV service, just as it always was.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Interesting)
Then I'd pay the $50/mo.. still cheaper than cable.
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It is to serve as a disincentive to dropping cable TV service, just as it always was.
Uhhh, what? The fee doesn't change depending on your cable TV subscription or lack thereof.
Now, what I want to know is, what is an "in-browser announcement"? (Yes, I know, but let's be angry about an actual abuse here. Changing the content you get from a website so it pops up a window is deliberately breaking the internet standards. Just like running a defective name server is.)
Re:Wow (Score:4, Interesting)
With a data cap they assume instead of streaming shows people will watch them on TV.
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Exactly. If you watch enough TV that those 4K streams from Netflix put you over the cap, they'd rather you spend $50 on a cable TV subscription than $50 a month for more data, because additional cable customers give them better negotiating power when it comes time to renegotiate their contracts with the networks.
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It is about time.
And it'll take a lot of time for long-term exclusive contracts with professional and collegiate sport leagues to expire.
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Only if you can get it WITHOUT ADS... and things are available for a LONG time (full seasons available for YEARS).
(yes, technically there are still ads via onscreen bugs, and I have to skip the existing ads with 30 second skip or SkipMode, available on some shows.. but it's still far far far far far better than the forced ads on other services.)
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Again, like he said, it's the same "channel bundle garbage." But with pay-per-view movie streaming built in!
Re:Wow (Score:4, Insightful)
Congestion is not related to data caps. Data caps are a way of charging for the amount of data someone uses over a long period of time. Congestion is related to bandwidth.
It's like justifying charging a toll on the only single lane road from place a to place b because there are daily traffic jams. It doesn't matter whether or not you charge a toll, the traffic jams cannot be 'fixed' by a toll booth if you need more lanes. If you hike the price high enough, someone will eventually come along and build the necessary two lane road, but until then, your toll booth just pisses people off even more.
With the Internet it's the same, except that a two lane highway costs almost no money (Netflix and Internet Exchanges have even offered extra lanes at no cost) and Comcast-and-co is conspiring from anyone else building a second lane.
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For that to be true, demand for travel on that road during rush hour would have to be perfectly inelastic, but perfect price inelasticity of demand only exists in theory, not in the real world. Unless and until you can prove otherwise, your claim that traff
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perfect price inelasticity of demand only exists in theory, not in the real world.
What would buyers substitute for the privilege of traveling on a given road?
Besides, market power [wikipedia.org] need not be "perfect" in a theoretical economics sense in order to trigger restrictions under applicable competition laws.
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What would they substitute for (1) driving (2) alone (3) on that particular road (4) during rush hour when the congestion toll is highest? Lots of things, and I just gave you four hints.
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That's not how analogies work. You are defining an Internet that doesn't require electrons, allows bigger packets to require the same bandwidth as smaller packets, has multiple providers and allows you to schedule the necessary packets in advance.
Sidetracked by the analogy much? (Score:2)
You appear to have been sidetracked by the analogy [allthetropes.org], as the implied workarounds don't apply so well to Internet access.
What would they substitute for (1) driving
What alternative to driving were you considering, and what would its Internet counterpart be?
(2) alone
What's the Internet counterpart to carpooling? Visiting a public library that offers Wi-Fi access to patrons and uses aggressive caching proxy to aggregate cookieless retrievals of the same resource?
the only single lane road from place a to place b
(3) on that particular road
The stipulation in this analogy was that no other practical road exists.
(4) during rush hour when the congestion toll is highest?
Comcast does not vary the fact
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What's the Internet counterpart to carpooling?
Sharing your Internet connection with a close neighbor.
Then you can each use only 0.5 TB per month. It's not quite like carpooling, where two people going to the same place in one vehicle use half the road space as the same two people going to the same place in separate vehicles. Or were you referring to the aggressive caching proxy that I alluded to earlier? In that case, it's going to be difficult to get the close neighbor to trust the proxy's root CA. (MITM is required to cache HTTPS connections.)
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For most people though here is only one road. It's the road they HAVE to take to get to anyplace. The problem is physically moving often doesn't help, you'd have to move to an entirely different state just to get better Internet.
The Internet is a perfect example of the relative inelasticity of demand. Demand grows irregardless of an individual's provider. Sure you can try to curb your usage to a point but I'm wasting several GB's in bandwidth on my mobile plan just doing simple things like e-mail. A 2GB dat
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It is if enough people A. threaten to get an apartment on the other side of that road and/or B. demand telecommuting from their employers.
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It is if enough people A. threaten to get an apartment on the other side of that road and/or B. demand telecommuting from their employers.
I remember growing up we had some overused freeways nearby. Every once in awhile, someone would float the idea of adding a lane to reduce traffic congestion, but they would be defeated by the majority "slow growth/anti-development" folks who argued that if the freeways were better, more development would happen and more people would move in.
But in the real world, what we saw there was exactly backwards. Development happens first, because developers know that freeways don't really impact whether people buy a
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It's rare that there's only 1 route to get from A to B. It's more like, you can't afford the toll so you have to take the route that's 10 minutes longer.
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But setting the price at market equilibrium is how we solve the economic problem [wikipedia.org] (too many wants for too few resources) in a capitalist society. How would you solve it?
Realize that there are certain issues, such as public infrastructure and utilities, that are better addressed by just paying for them out of the collective pot than subjecting them to market inefficiencies and the added overhead of profits. (ie, build another lane)
The idea that every need of society has to be used as a vehicle for milking the population by profiteering rent-seekers is just as twisted as the idea that every need can be met though central planning and an overbearing government.
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So our electric bills should be paid out of our taxes instead of charging people in proportion to the benefit they receive? Wouldn't the massive rise in carbon emissions caused by the kind of unscrupulous diner's dilemma [wikipedia.org] situation you're describing accelerate the planet's destruction?
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So our electric bills should be paid out of our taxes instead of charging people in proportion to the benefit they receive?
Not any more than I believe that the gasoline needed to drive on public roads should be paid out of our taxes.
People should pay for the use of finite resources, but the installation, maintenance, and necessary upgrades of essential infrastructure shouldn't be dependent on the expectation of profit by a private entity. The capture of essential infrastructure for extracting profit is epitomized by the robber barons of the 13th century, but the same thing has happened since then and it is never good for societ
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Even if that infrastructure were publicly owned and the tasks you described were contracted out to private, profit-seeking entities?
Actually, data caps give ISPs an economic incentive to upgrade everyone's connections as a way t
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the installation, maintenance, and necessary upgrades of essential infrastructure shouldn't be dependent on the expectation of profit by a private entity.
Even if that infrastructure were publicly owned and the tasks you described were contracted out to private, profit-seeking entities?
Absolutely. The biggest problem is not that profit is added onto the expense of doing the work. The biggest problem is that the work is not done (infrastructure installed, maintained, upgraded) because it is decided that there is more profit in not doing so. See my example about stagnating internet deployments. The decision to invest in essential infrastructure should not rest with entities who may choose that they can profit more from allowing the infrastructure to stagnate or decay.
we see stagnating internet deployments because it's more profitable for the entrenched players to not upgrade the infrastructure
Actually, data caps give ISPs an economic incentive to upgrade everyone's connections as a way to help them hit the cap as quickly and easily as possible.
Data caps are an delibe
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You can already hit data caps in less than 2 days, on mobile connections, you can hit data caps in as little as two hours.
The amount of bandwidth available to an average individual is obviously not the problem or Netflix wouldn't survive.
As I said before, data caps are entirely artificial, they have no grounds in technical reasoning. You can DO data caps correctly, it's called Token Buckets and the only data cap that is not only technically correct but also fair.
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But this only works in competition-free areas because otherwise you could change providers.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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Just hack Redbox
http://i.imgur.com/9OeI8jM.jpg [imgur.com]
Re:That's no more than 10... (Score:5, Informative)
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I'm sure that will come as a significant concern to college students and people working at a "part-time" employees at pizza hut, but as an adult with a full time job, I wish I had that kind of time. I've been "binge watching" Game of Thrones since April and I'm just now getting to the start of season 4 :( I can't imagine what life is like for parents.
Re: That's no more than 10... (Score:2)
While that sounds impressive it is not.
44/4 = 11 movies per week or around 1.5 a day. Yourself, kid, and spouse watching 2 hours per day is 6 hours per day! Now you're over.
Do they run Windows 10? Since updates are cumulative they can exceed 900 megs easily. Last month MS released 3 of them 900 X 3 = 2700 X 3 = 8 GB. Now let's say you are a geek who works in IT? You then probably have VMS each running updates as well and you download Isos right? Most geeks use VMS not just for running Windows but also to e
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Name a single movie that simply must be in 4K to be worth watching.
99+% of movies are not worth watching at any quality.
Good, or great, movies are worth re-watching but after you have watched it once, you don't need to glue your eyeballs to the screen to re-watch it. What you end up doing, more and more with each re-watch, is listen to it.
How high a quality do you need for re-listening? Personally, DVD is more than good enough for anything I like to re-watch, including masterpieces like Lawrence of Arabia
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I came across a deal tonight for a 50inch 4K TV for under $500, in fact I can find them that cheap easily on Amazon. Did you somehow think that 4K TV are reserved for the uber rich or something?
639 GB average? (Score:2)
Guess I better get downloading then (Score:2)
Since I don't have any caps currently, guess it's in my best interest to download all the shit I want now.
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Yup, better download all of the Internets. Then you can just browse what you have local rather than using up your cap.
TB ? (Score:2)
Terabit or TeraByte
Fortunately the area I live in has Charter
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Dear website owners... (Score:3, Insightful)
I am now blocking ALL ads.
Your adverts now cost me money.
I am also going back to ripping BluRays and storing them on a NAS. Screw Netflix and other services if I am now being punished for using it by the ISP.
Comcast is forcing me to do all this, so if Anyone is angry, please call 1-800-COMCAST and complain.
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Are those bastards at Comcast (but I'm repeating myself) still injecting ad code into webpages?
Get paid for the ads, get paid for overages caused by the ads. Nice work if you can get it.
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yes they are.
Ya know, we could just not let them do this (Score:2)
Too late, comcast (Score:2)
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These terms may be altered by Comcast at any time. They are required to give you notice. That notice can be printed on the back of your next statement in grey 5pt type.
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and changes to the terms, in most states, also gives you a way out of the contract, too.
Silver lining? (Score:2)
nice upgrade (Score:2)
Nice upgrade from 300GB/month. 1 TB is much more reasonable. I wonder if the cap will still be hidden deeply in the ToS.
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Data caps are not reasonable. They just started giving you worse service for the same money. If you want your old, uncapped service, your monthly rate just went up by $50.
Thank goodness for TWC/Spectrum. (Score:2)
Not only is my market far from any Comcast territory, they don't do any caps.
That, and having Business Class as an insurance policy is kind of nice too.
Anyone else notice how they avoid capping DC? (Score:5, Insightful)
Even now, after adding most of the USA to this data cap -- they've avoided the entire Washington DC metro area (Northern Virginia and Maryland included). I'm very thankful for that as a MD resident stuck using Comcast for broadband .... but am I the only one who suspects this is on purpose? Comcast probably figures they won't get push-back from angry legislators as long as they make sure all of THOSE folks aren't affected by the changes.
1TB cap makes sense... in the present moment (Score:5, Insightful)
One thing Comcast's plan doesn't cover is that based on current internet usage and popular applications (Netflix, Pandora, etc.) their research suggests 1TB is a reasonable cap for 99% of customers. But what happens when more rich applications come out, video resolution goes up and don't forget that new fangled Internet of Things (IoT). Are they going to adjust the caps based on what "reasonable" is on an ongoing basis? I bet not. That in and of itself is not reasonable. Comcast's PR firm has gone to great lengths to present this in agreeable terms on the basis of reasonableness and they did somewhat of a good job but it still looks like there is an opportunity for an unethical cash grab it's just it will be in the future not in the present.
Fortunately, we have a system that deals with this called free market competition. On that note, Google Fiber/Verizon FioS where you at? I'm ready to switch if you want to become a competitive force in this market space. Get your game on.
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"Are they going to adjust the caps based on what "reasonable" is on an ongoing basis?"
Yes. That's what this is. When "1TB is NOT a reasonable cap for 99%" of their customers, they will look at the stats and adjust according.
How many of those 18 markets had no cap? (Score:2)
And do they actually face any extra costs from the %1 this affects?
Competition (Score:2)
Will be interesting to see what they do in markets with actual competition, like Chattanooga, TN, which has fiber service: http://chattanoogagig.com/ [chattanoogagig.com]
Re:Finally some sensibility... (Score:4, Interesting)
Americans Abandoning Wired Home Internet (Score:2)
What does mobile data pricing have to do with residential wired
The fact that when forced to make the choice in order to make ends meet, people are canceling the latter and relying on the former [slashdot.org].
and how is your response relevant to my OP?
It's a guess, extrapolating the rate of change over time of monthly data usage allowance of cable Internet based on the historic rate of change over time of monthly data usage allowance of cellular Internet.
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Unfortunately it is true, Comcast is the only ISP in my area with speed over 25Mbps i get 75Mbps + basic cable for around $90 a month US through comcast.
Now i have to worry about Data caps???
At my fucking house???
THAT WAS THE WHOLE POINT OF PAYING FOR THE FUCKING CABLE!
I have 5 people in the house who all use Youtube/Netflix/Hulu/Steam/Origin/Xbox/Playstation/Wii/+ 5 cell phones and 5 desktops 1 laptop 1 tablet 2 smart TV's ect...
Plus i contribute to a open source project that requires me to regularly perfo
Re:Big honking black cock (Score:4, Interesting)
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Perhaps your usage is in that top percentile of users that will go over 1tb. If you are really in the top 1% of users, I think paying another $50 a month is justified.
The truth is that the marginal cost of a 1TB of data is on the order of a few dollars. In which case $50 is massive overkill considering that the average bandwidth usage is just 190GB/month. [stopthecap.com]
Here's what wholesale bandwidth costs today:
Bulk IP transit costs: [streamingmedia.com]
10Gbps: $0.85 -- $1.10 Mbps
20Gbps: $0.75 -- $0.95 Mbps
40Gbps: $0.62 -- $0.80 Mbps
75Gbps: $0.55 -- $0.70 Mbps
100Gbps: $0.45 -- $0.60 Mbps
1mbps, running flat-out 24 hours per day for 30 days is just a tad under 1TB.
So multiply by 10 to more than compensate for peak usage and all other overhead.
That works out to $6/TB or less at the kind of wholesale prices that big ISPs pay.
Lets say your
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That's assuming transit costs too, big ISPs will have local caching for many things as well as various peering links, not to mention the fact that a lot of p2p traffic will remain internal to the ISP.
Cost of colo at Comcast (Score:2)
big ISPs will have local caching for many things
Not if the ISP overcharges the "local caching" company. Netflix offered to colo its Open Connect Appliance at Comcast to alleviate Comcast's transit burden, but Comcast refused it on grounds that it could make more money by leasing 4U of space, power, and cooling to another colo customer.
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"Hostage" is a strong word. Customers are free to move to a FiOS-serviced area.
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Imposing a monthly data transfer allowance does not meet the legal definition of extortion because subscribers are not coerced to purchase service from Comcast. They still retain the legal right to cancel Comcast service and either subscribe to a competing service or subscribe to no service at all. Saying this is extortion is like saying file sharing is larceny.
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Legal definitions and common usage often differ. That's why lawyers have specialist dictionaries of legal terms.
When using a non-legal definition is "immature" (Score:2)
Good luck explaining that to opinionated commenters who insist on being technically correct ("the best kind of correct"). See this thread where John Willkie maintains that the legal definition of "extortion" is the only one that matters [disqus.com], and anyone bringing a colloquial definition into the discussion "sound[s] very immature".
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Re: Big honking black cock (Score:2)
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Why people use residential service, I'll never know. Comcast Business is awesome.
Comcast Business Internet cannot be combined in a bundle with Xfinity (home) TV service. I've read that Comcast Business TV service is more expensive than Xfinity TV service and lacks on demand, both presumably due to public performance licensing.
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Yes you can. I've been using my own router on a business connection for almost 6 years now. For the first year or 2 they forced me to rent the modem from them though, but eventually I got them to let me activate my own modem and return the rented one.
However, I do believe they still require you to use their modem/router combo if you're getting a static IP for some reason... I have a dynamic IP, and at least it doesn't change very often (i use namecheap's DDNS service to keep it updated). With my home connec
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We are nine in our home, and we have 5 users on Netflix, one user downloading Linux ISO's and others watching/listening to youtube stuff.
Yes we exceed 20 gigs, but not 1000 gigs. I think Comcast is being reasonable.
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To be honest, a 1 TB data cap should probably be enough for the average cord cutter unless they're watching more than 5 hours of 4K content a day. You might be hard pressed to even find 5 hours worth of new 4K content that's worth watching daily at this point.
I like hating on Comcast as much as the next guy, but these caps seem reasonable for now.
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but these caps seem reasonable for now.
Oh please.
I'm on a 25Mbps DSL and I can easily hit 2TB in a month. Thank goodness Comcast doesn't operate in this area.
H.265 has multiple patent pools (Score:3)
Except almost nobody is actually using H.265 for two reasons. One is devices without hardware acceleration for H.265 decoding. The other is the larger royalty associated with H.265 payable to multiple patent pools [slashdot.org].
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Anyone other than mass copyright infringers using it? Mass copyright infringers likely care little about patent compliance either.
Betamax defense (Score:2)
Something "driving adoption and demand" solely among mass copyright infringers may lack the "substantial noninfringing use" needed for a defense to contributory copyright infringement.
Tomorrow, you're only 20 years away (Score:2)
The future is coming.
That's the unique thing about patents among the disparate areas of law sometimes referred to as "intellectual property": the future is always 2 decades away.
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Probably to keep people from running file servers (legal or otherwise) with a Residential service account.
Re: Interesting list of states they started with (Score:3)
We use about 350g/month. Switching to 4K video might blow 1TB out.
Re: Interesting list of states they started with (Score:4, Informative)
If only that were true: http://arstechnica.com/tech-po... [arstechnica.com]
And the ruling that blocked the FCC from mandating competition? It was a suit filed by NC and TN.
and if you get TV U-verse or DTV then no cap (Score:2)
and if you get TV U-verse or DTV then no cap.
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http://gizmodo.com/after-billi... [gizmodo.com]