Suggested Uses of Broadband
June 30th, 2006 by Christopher HarrisDirect from the broadband network technician who showed up today to help me with some connectivity problems that have plagued me at home this past week. The technician noticed icons on my desktop for Americas Army and other games and we struck up a conversation about gaming and online activities as he worked. The tech (name withheld not only to protect him, but also because I am not sure I ever got it) started telling me about his 19 year old nephew that is living with them right now. It seems Nephew is a big computer user too and has a nice computer with a 400GB hard drive.
What, Tech mused, could Nephew need a 400GB hard drive for? Well, Tech explained, he has a lot of music and movies and tons of games. He continued: “Yeah, he gets all kinds of music and movies…even some that are still in the theatre. He goes online to illegal sites and downloads them.” Downloads them, I am thinking, using your companies broadband access which you should damn well know is fully logged and tracked? That broadband companies broadband which is in your name? Which type of sites where those again? Illegal sites? “We saw X-Men 3 on his computer like two days after it came out. It was crystal clear and everything! I wonder how they get them…”
Well, explains I, there are movie critics out there who steal copies and sell them illegally…like the one who got caught recently.
Being a good librarian, I used this highly teachable moment to recommend NetFlix as a way to have pretty rapid access to movies, Pandora as a way to bypass illegal song downloads, and following the rules as a way to protect your rights.
Kind of hard to keep on pushing the line about following the rules when reps from the broadband companies are actively promoting copyright infringing activities…