This is how you treat your fans.
To launch our first single in eight years, AT&T helped us search YouTube for every instance of fans using our music without our permission. And then we rewarded them for it. This film is made out of clips from all those videos. Thanks for being a fan.
AT&T have joined many other telcos in claiming that they are the gatekeepers to the internet and that only they can decide what you can have access to. They have introduced new, ridiculous caps on their customers, many who do not have another choice to turn to for an internet connection. Here are some links to great articles about what is happening and why you should be concerned.
The Secretly Horrifying Implications of AT&Ts Bandwidth Caps. Cracked.com gives several reasons why this is not a good idea. One of the major points is that, while some think 150GB is a lot now, it won’t be in a few years. Online videos and gaming will eat that up in a heartbeat. In less than five years, 150GB in a month will be their low tier and you will pay dearly for what you use.
Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) says that he will monitor the situation and keep a close eye on what is happening. He pledges his vigilance to Americans. The caps don’t address competition at all.
AT&T Puts Broadband Users on Monthly Allowance. Wired’s Epicenter discusses the bandwidth caps and its future implications.
Ars Technica asks if the new caps are justified. This article researches the claims AT&T is making about the cost of bandwidth. It points out AT&T’s profits and how wireline expenses are shrinking.
AT&T data cap explanation invites skepticism is another great article from Ars Technica.
AT&T also admits that only 2% of its customers are “bandwidth hogs.” They are, in essence, freely admitting that they have been overcharging 98% of their customers and intend on continuing to do so. They claim congestion is a problem, but there is very little evidence to prove this.
The thing most people do not know or understand is that bandwidth is being paid for at both ends, sender and receiver. If you are, for example, a Netflix user, a typical movie is around 4GB to stream to you. Netflix then has to pay rates for their servers and the bandwidth required to get the movie to you. Netflix is charging you a rate for access to that movie. That movie is roughly costing you 2GB per hour. Then, you have to pay for access to the internet to view the movie. Now, AT&T is putting caps on your bandwidth and charging you if you go over.
Once you add streaming TV shows, Sports, gaming, Digital distribution systems (Steam, D2D, Amazon, etc.), internet radio, iTunes, skype, podcasts, and YouTube videos, it will be very easy to hit these caps. They are also getting larger in size and, in a few years, that 150GB cap is not going to change and AT&T is going to demand more money from you for more GB. Of course, their own U-Verse offering is exempt from bandwidth caps. That means you can watch as much of what they give you as you want. Just don’t think of watching watch you want to watch, or you’ll pay extra for that.
All telcos also received large amounts of government money in the 1990s to upgrade their services and lines. Most have yet to do that and claim they want more money now to upgrade their lines. Instead of upgrading their infrastructure with the free billions they were given, they just pocketed the money from the government.
Given the fact that the large majority of Americans don’t have a choice in broadband companies, they really have little choice in broadband caps being shoved down their throats. Hopefully, Rep. Edward Markey and others in Congress will keep their word and help the people fighting the caps. A similar plan backfired on TimeWarner. It could still backfire on AT&T. People just need to keep up the pressure.
photo via reddit.
The tear gas and smoke grenade manufacturer Combined Systems, Inc. is based out of Jamestown, Pennsylvania. But its wares have been showing up all over the Middle East as of late. On January 20, a photographer with the Eurpean PressPhoto agency was killed when a CSI tear gas canister struck him in the head at a protest in Tunisia. And throughout yesterday and today, CSI smoke bombs and tear gas have clogged the air and lungs in Cairo.
Also of importance is the connection between the USA and Narus. Narus, is the same company that helped with the AT&T wiretapping several years ago.
A less visible but possibly more important American-Egyptian partnership is that between the tech company Narus and the Mubarak autocracy. A subsidiary of Boeing, Narus sells hyper-complex, slightly creepy mass surveillance equipment. Its most famous creation is Narus Insight, “a supercomputer system which is allegedly used by the National Security Agency and other entities to perform mass surveillance and monitoring of public and corporate Internet communications in real time.”
Narus provides Telecom Egypt, the state-controlled, dominant internet and telephone company, with deep packet inspection (DPI) technology. The specifics are complex, but DPI is essentially a filter that allows network administrators to track and scrutinize content being transmitted via the internet and cell phones. According to Narus’ vice president of marketing, Steve Bannerman, whose company also works with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, “Anything that comes through [an Internet protocol network], we can record. … We can reconstruct all of their e-mails along with attachments, see what web pages they clicked on; we can reconstruct their [Voice Over Internet Protocol] calls.”
Narus allowed Telecom Egypt to monitor the online movements of every plugged-in citizen of Egypt. And when Telecom Egypt (read: the Egyptian government) didn’t like what it saw, it blacked out the nation’s internet capabilities.
This is the America that many foreigners see and experience.
AT&T voluntarily spied on customers for the government when other companies refused to. They were complicit in illegal spying and got away with it. The warrantless wiretapping bill was passed, complete with immunity from civil litigation for AT&T.
Today, it’s legal for any telecommunications company to do this. Since AT&T is a first tier ISP, your internet traffic is likely to be routed through their servers at some point.
Here are some photos of AT&T that I found surfing the web.
From Flickr
From imgur
From imgur
From flickr
From Photobucket
