On my music discussion blog, I mention the problems of Comcast's new policy for music lovers; here I want to present a more general discussion of the issue. If you unfamiliar with this malfeasance, read Kim Peterson's article on MSN's moneyblog.
I knew that this policy was being discussed for the last couple of months, but apparently Comcast has, in fact, decided to move forward with it. First of all, according to the article, this will limit users to roughly 250 standard definition movies per month or 6000 songs per month. These may seem like huge numbers, but what if you watch a movie every night on Netflix, listen to a couple hours of music a night, download the lastest ISO files for your favorite Linux distribution, watch the news nightly, download updates for you operating system weekly, check your e-mail daily, surf the web for a couple hours every day, and play your favorite online game on the weekends? Taken by itself, 6000 songs or 250 movies may seem like a lot, but combine them and add all of the normal traffic that people use and is if feasible that many people will go over this limit. (ed. Comcast's faq lists 62500 songs, not the 6000 that I read elsewhere.)
So what can the average person do about this problem? For starters, I have contacted several of the DSL providers in my area for price comparisons. I would also recommend either e-mailing or calling Comcast to express your displeasure. Finally, it would not be a bad idea to contact your state and federal Senators and Representatives as this could be an attempt by Comcast to limit peoples' access to media other than that which is supplied by them.
If enough people leave for other services, it doesn't matter what kind of unethical, insane, or potentially illegal policies Comcast comes up with.
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