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Originally Posted by erol
I understand you are happy at 'these peoples' illegal activites, but illegal activites should be dealt with by the _law_. You don't stop shop lifting by charging an 'entrance fee' to shopping centres. You stop it by arresting people.Now you have serious misread and misunderstood me here.
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A civilised society relies not just on the force of law to maintain order; it relies very heavily on pressure from other areas to force would-be offenders to think twice about doing something illegal. The law is of course a valid means of dealing with warez monkeys, but in my view a pricing structure that makes their activities less attractive to them is also a fair and reasonable means of dealing with the problem. You and I would both prefer it if this was not so, but such is human nature.
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Its not that the cost to the customer is fixed, it's that the cost of _provision_ of the service (ie the cost to NTL to provided it) is almost entirely fixed (which is why the vast majority of net connection around the worls are fixed price, btw.)
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I snipped out the bit about reading back through your posts because some of the posts (not just yours) in this thread are so long they are not effective as a means of conveying an opinion. This is a discussion forum, not an essay-writing competition!
However, with due apologies for my loose use of language and terminology, I think you have misunderstood me. Regardless of whether it is cost of provision or cost to customer that is fixed (and I do appreciate the difference), what I am reluctantly advocating is a pricing structure designed to manage usage of the network, not a pricing structure designed to reflect actual costs, whatever those costs may be. As I said in my previous post, this country's tax regime is an example of how pricing can be used to encourage or discourage certain behaviour. I don't like it, but I see no effective alternative. The Law never dealt effectively with widespread copyright infringement pre- the digital age; I see no reason why it should work now, without help.