WEBVTT NOTE 7. It’s a Broadband Life 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.000 It's a broadband life. 2 00:00:03.000 --> 00:00:15.000 I'm trying to order a hamburger, medium well, but the cook was involved in a heated argument with the customer who was insisting that DSL is better and faster than cable for a home internet connection. 3 00:00:15.000 --> 00:00:27.000 Man, DSL rocks. You crazy. DSL ain't nothing. Cable's bandwidth rocks. You're paying for nothing. You can't download nothing on cable. And so on. 4 00:00:27.000 --> 00:00:32.360 A few years ago these guys would have been talking about the weather or the game on TV. 5 00:00:32.360 --> 00:00:38.300 Now they talk about their internet connection, using a technical language – well, a few 6 00:00:38.300 --> 00:00:43.860 technical words – that few people could understand a few months back. 7 00:00:43.860 --> 00:00:48.400 As I wait for my burger, which seems to be taking forever, I was able to reflect on how 8 00:00:48.400 --> 00:00:55.680 broadband access is changing the face of middle-class life, especially domestic life. 9 00:00:55.680 --> 00:01:00.180 Before I tell the following story, let me say upfront, I'm really against it when 10 00:01:00.180 --> 00:01:05.300 police bust down the doors of a web domain owner and confiscate its servers on the grounds 11 00:01:05.300 --> 00:01:10.240 that it might be being used as a conduit for illegal downloads. 12 00:01:10.240 --> 00:01:16.920 The report of this gross abuse against thepiratebay.org is wholly egregious and a violation of human 13 00:01:16.920 --> 00:01:18.920 rights. 14 00:01:18.920 --> 00:01:22.720 On the other hand, I get my life back. 15 00:01:22.720 --> 00:01:29.800 For three or four days, my home internet connection was running as slowly as black strap molasses. 16 00:01:29.800 --> 00:01:36.040 It seems that I found the culprit – a laptop managed by a certain young resident in my 17 00:01:36.040 --> 00:01:43.220 home that was set to download the complete Harry Potter movie set and a few Disney adventures. 18 00:01:43.220 --> 00:01:47.220 You can set the software to start a new one the instant the old one finishes, so there's 19 00:01:47.220 --> 00:01:50.220 no telling how many movies were slotted for download. 20 00:01:50.220 --> 00:01:53.140 If I hadn't put a stop to it, my internet connection would have been clogged for the 21 00:01:53.140 --> 00:01:55.760 remainder of the decade. 22 00:01:55.760 --> 00:02:00.860 For those of you not in the know, Pirate Bay specialised in BitTorrent downloads, the newest 23 00:02:00.860 --> 00:02:05.060 thing in web downloading that provides access to movies and videos. 24 00:02:05.060 --> 00:02:10.900 BitTorrents are said to account for 35% of internet traffic. 25 00:02:10.900 --> 00:02:14.660 These downloads take an absurd amount of time. 26 00:02:14.660 --> 00:02:17.900 I used to complain about a 45-second download. 27 00:02:17.900 --> 00:02:22.300 For kids these days, a download of half a day, a day and a half or even three days is 28 00:02:22.300 --> 00:02:24.020 completely normal. 29 00:02:24.020 --> 00:02:28.140 They run in the background and the user hardly notices them. 30 00:02:28.140 --> 00:02:33.220 But everyone else does notice an extreme bandwidth shortage. 31 00:02:33.220 --> 00:02:38.340 I reminded the domestic culprit in question that there is a reason they are called torrent 32 00:02:38.340 --> 00:02:47.460 files, as in Webster's, a tumultuous outpouring, a violent stream of a liquid as water or lava 33 00:02:47.460 --> 00:02:50.980 over, a channel of a mountain stream. 34 00:02:50.980 --> 00:02:54.460 It crushes all before it. 35 00:02:54.460 --> 00:02:59.540 I could see the future, and it looked very much like the dial-up days. 36 00:02:59.540 --> 00:03:03.260 Remember when we used to fight over who got to use the single phone line? 37 00:03:03.260 --> 00:03:07.460 Then we got smart and got two phone lines, made the phone companies crazy with insane 38 00:03:07.460 --> 00:03:12.180 phone number demands, boom times for the baby bells, just before we cancelled not only the 39 00:03:12.180 --> 00:03:17.060 new phone line, but the old one too, because we were all switching to high-speed cell phones 40 00:03:17.060 --> 00:03:19.780 and Voice over IP. 41 00:03:19.780 --> 00:03:24.500 With BitTorrent, I would again be stuck yelling upstairs, hey, can you pause your week-long 42 00:03:24.500 --> 00:03:28.380 torrent download so I can check my email? 43 00:03:28.380 --> 00:03:31.740 So now there are strict household rules on BitTorrent. 44 00:03:31.740 --> 00:03:37.020 They can only be done between the hours of 11pm and 5am, or at times when no one else 45 00:03:37.020 --> 00:03:39.020 is home. 46 00:03:39.020 --> 00:03:43.400 If there is any more clogging the connection going on, two warnings will be delivered. 47 00:03:43.400 --> 00:03:50.660 On the third time, there will be no more, period. 48 00:03:50.660 --> 00:03:53.040 Now that's strict. 49 00:03:53.040 --> 00:03:56.520 Of course, all this could change in a matter of months, given the increased demand for 50 00:03:56.520 --> 00:03:57.520 bandwidth. 51 00:03:57.520 --> 00:04:00.840 It doesn't matter how many people are arrested in Sweden, Germany or the US, or how many 52 00:04:00.840 --> 00:04:05.540 domains are taken offline – there will always be another source and another user willing 53 00:04:05.540 --> 00:04:08.280 to take the risk. 54 00:04:08.280 --> 00:04:13.560 The saga of Bittorrent use and abuse is nicely chronicled at Wikipedia, which is another 55 00:04:13.560 --> 00:04:18.360 venue that was disparaged as ridiculous when it came out, but has since become essential 56 00:04:18.360 --> 00:04:20.700 to modern life. 57 00:04:20.700 --> 00:04:24.760 Can you imagine the Oxford English Dictionary trying to keep up with our vocabularies, which 58 00:04:24.760 --> 00:04:28.360 add new words by the day and hour? 59 00:04:28.360 --> 00:04:33.320 After these endless battles over broadband downloads, it is great to see at least one 60 00:04:33.320 --> 00:04:36.520 company getting smart. 61 00:04:36.520 --> 00:04:41.480 Warner Brothers has decided that if you can't beat them, join them. 62 00:04:41.480 --> 00:04:48.340 It will be offering legal torrents of Star Wars, Revelations and others are on the way. 63 00:04:48.340 --> 00:04:50.500 We can see the future here. 64 00:04:50.500 --> 00:04:55.440 Just as illegal downloads of music paved the way for the spectacularly successful iTunes 65 00:04:55.440 --> 00:05:00.840 revolution, sites like Pirate Bay will deserve credit for alerting mainstream movie producers 66 00:05:00.840 --> 00:05:05.160 to a new and licit way to make a profit. 67 00:05:05.160 --> 00:05:09.660 With Netflix and other providers adding to their stock daily, it will only be a few years 68 00:05:09.660 --> 00:05:14.500 before most movies are delivered on demand. 69 00:05:14.500 --> 00:05:20.040 Isn't it interesting how the criminal class is increasingly shining the light on the direction 70 00:05:20.040 --> 00:05:24.420 that praiseworthy web entrepreneurship will take in the future? 71 00:05:24.420 --> 00:05:28.820 This alone shows that there is something very wrong with copyright law that would lead so 72 00:05:28.820 --> 00:05:33.300 many innocents to be snared while doing something that otherwise seems not the slightest bit 73 00:05:33.300 --> 00:05:41.060 Ah, at last my hamburger is cooked and served the old-fashioned way.