A friend of mine, an absurdly, almost frighteningly smart guy I will name if he gives me permission, did a really interesting bit of calculating a while back.
During news coverage of a Space Shuttle mission to make repairs to the Hubble Space Telescope a gathering of  geeks chatting about the Hubble were all, coincidentally, lamenting the cost of SMS (text) messaging on our cell phones. I think the connection was that while we were discussing these things, we were also doing some actual work and evaluating the pricing of a few hosting providers for a project we were working on.
My oh-so-brilliant friend did some calculations on the published costs of building, flying and maintaining Hubble and on the amount of data, in bits, it had returned to date and he compared those costs to the then price of SMS messages. How much cheaper have texts gotten since then? How much more data has Hubble sent back?
On a per bit basis, at the time, SMS cost more on your bill than what NASA paid for data from the Hubble Space Telescope. I wish I remembered the actual number he quoted but I recall it being at least one order of magnitude more.
Consider, SMS is actually originally an additional use of the SS7 protocols used to allow the cell towers to set up and tear down the connection for a phone call and to bill you for it. Adding SMS to your cell services demanded the telcos do nothing more than update their software. No extra towers, bandwidth, nothing. It was just a really smart additional use for an existing resource. I’d hazard a very confident guess it costs them a lot more to track and bill you for your texts than to send them.
Think about that the next time you pay your cell bill. Think about that the next time you cut them an ounce of slack for blocking your upgrade of Android to Froyo or your iPhone from tethering without an extra fee on top of the data plan you already pay for.
Front Of House Online, an online magazine and news sight for production professionals (as in event/concert production) has has in introductory piece about how recently released FCC rules seem to set up a serious problem, actually perpetuate an existing problem, of  ‘stump the band’ when it comes to how to use wireless mics, in ear monitors and wireless instrument belt packs without radio interference.
More to the point for most readers of this site though is that the article is also a good starting point for thinking about the net neutrality issue.
Regulating the use of and allocation of radio spectrum is a necessary evil. Consider the following:
- In the US (and elsewhere) radio frequency spectrum, channels, are considered public property the government must license for use. The government defines what kinds of signals occupy particular channels and charge for the allocation of some those channels as revenue for the state. The state, us, we the people and all that.
- How that spectrum is allocated impacts your freedom. We choose to give up some individual freedoms to function as part of a society.
- Federally regulating the use of radio spectrum ensures our car radios work no matter what state we drive in. Insures that our air traffic controllers can be heard by pilots flying planes over our heads rather than being blasted by the local broadcast of Rush Limbaugh who, unregulated, might pick any channel he liked… or all of them.
- Radio frequencies are as much public property as the little patches of land the ugly poles have been rammed into on the street in front of your house.
- Just as the government, local, state and federal, all allow the telcos and cable companies to foul our view with ugly poles and wires, block traffic, or worse, dig and poorly patch holes in our streets to lay the cables, they license the use of radio spectrum on our behalf.
- When our government licenses the use of our property, a balance must be struck to ensure our individual rights are preserved and the needs of the society as a whole are supported.
Net neutrality isn’t just about ensuring free speech, fair rates, balance in media, basic privacy and security. Â It’s about how we demand our property be used when selling us services that rely on access to our resources that we licensed to companies to profit from.
http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/28/are-f-b-i-warnings-on-dvds-really-necessary/?src=tptw
Pogue responds to a reader asking the perennial question about the annoyance known as the ‘FBI Warning’.
Every stupid little uncivilized incursion we tolerate because we just assume an annoying thing has to be that way, we screw ourselves by inches. If we know the real deal, we can make informed choices.
I am not a lawyer. I have authored (programmed though it’s hardly really ‘programming’) dozens of commercial DVD titles you have seen on offer at Netflix, Amazon or your local (if it’s still in business) Blockbuster.
Things you should know:
- The ‘warning’ is not imposed on DVD publishers by the FBI or any other Government Authority.
- The ‘warning’ does not afford the rights holders for the content on the DVD any additional legal protection. Copyright law applies regardless of whether the warning is there or not.
- Sometimes, the person who has presumed to ‘warn’ you doesn’t even own, or need to own, the rights to some or all of the content on the DVD you bought or rented.
- Whether the ‘warning’ is there and whether you can skip it is entirely at the option of the publisher of the disk and the person who authored (programmed) the disk had to go to extra effort to include it and to make it hard to skip.
This means they decided, the studio or producer of the DVD, to treat you like a child and warn you first. To tell you, with the disabling of controls, that you must watch it, even if you paid for the DVD. To invoke the fear of some faceless authority figure as implicitly in control of whether you had to watch it. To cow you into submission to media-big-brother while hiding behind the illusion of some special government stamp of power.
What can you do about it? Complain. Ask for refunds. Bill for your wasted time. Stop buying more of them and tell them why.
Hell, maybe there’s even some fun to be had finding out whether they had permission to use the FBI logo.
