Digital Trends
After howls of consumer protest, Time Warner Cable has—at least for the moment—scrapped plans to place caps on the amount of bandwidth its broadband Internet customers can use, and charge for any overages during a given billing period.
“It is clear from the public response over the last two weeks that there is a great deal of misunderstanding about our plans,” said Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt, in a statement.
In a surprise move, cable operator Comcast has reversed it’s controversial policy of filtering some types of network activity—like BitTorrent and other P2P file-sharing programs—in the name of "network management." According to a company statement, Comcast will treat all types of Internet traffic equally and adopt a new set of network and traffic management tools that don’t discriminate between different types of network traffic.
"This means that we will have to rapidly reconfigure our network management systems, but the outcome will be a traffic management technique that is more appropriate for today’s emerging Internet trends," said Comcast CTO Tony Werner, in a statement.
Heavy downloaders beware, the days of pulling down unlimited movies, music and other content through your cable connection may be numbered. According to Reuters, Time Warner will soon experiment with a new bandwidth-capped method of dispensing Internet access, in which users who exceed their monthly allotments may be hit by fees for every extra gigabyte.
The company will test the new metered Internet access in Beaumont, Texas, to gauge initial customer reaction. While a backlash has been widely predicted in Internet discussions of the plan, infrequent Internet users could actually see savings, depending on how Time Warner structures its fees, so a consumer uproar is far from guaranteed.
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has been very active in filing suits and claiming damages on behalf of its members for illegally downloaded music. But it’s taken on a Texas woman and suddenly finds itself with a legal fight on its hands. Rhonda Crain has filed a countersuit against the RIAA in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Beaumont Division, claiming that Sony BMG Music Entertainment and others in the Recording Industry Association of America lawsuit illegally employed unlicensed investigators and were aware that they were disregarding the laws of her state. According to documents filed with the court, Crain claims that when suit was filed against her, the plaintiffs had “agreed between themselves and understood that unlicensed and unlawful investigations would take place in order to provide evidence for this lawsuit, as well as thousands of others as part of a mass litigation campaign. On information and belief, the private investigations company hired by plaintiffs engaged in one or more overt acts of unlawful private investigation. Such actions constitute civil conspiracy under Texas common law.” Crain also claims that she did not infringe on copyright-protected music. Her lawyer, John Stoneham, has asserted that no-one contact her before the original RIAA suit was filed, and that the only evidence produced has been a screenshot of a peer-to-peer file sharing network and Crain’s account status with her ISP, with no apparent connection shown between the two. Stoneham argues that the $115 million settlement file-sharing network Kazaa has reached with the RIAA should cover all infringements, and that plaintiffs are barred from recovering damages twice on the same alleged infringements. Crain is seeking reimbursement for having to defend the suit. She has asked the court to throw out the case, and to grant her “all other relief as the court may deem equitable and proper including an award of damages.” There was no comment from the RIAA.
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