Crackdowns don't slow Internet piracy

Thu Jul 15 05:12:06 UTC 2004

On Jul 15, 2004, at 12:36 AM, Michel Py wrote:

>> Fergie (Paul Ferguson)
>> "The popularity of file-sharing is costing the largest
>> Internet service providers $10 million per year each
>> in bandwidth and network maintenance costs, CacheLogic
>> said."
>
> $10 million a year for the largest ISPs is a drop in the sea; _if_ the
> figure is accurate (sounds reasonable to me) what's the point anyway?
> The largest ISPs serve directly or indirectly millions of users that
> each pay $20/mo which is $240/yr, 10 million bucks a year is nothing.

I don't care if you are Microsoft, $10MM a year is a large enough sum 
that the company should not spend it if the company can avoid spending 
it.

The hard part is the caveat.  If you block customers from sharing music 
on your network, will you still have customers?  If not, then maybe the 
$10MM is COGS?

-- 
TTFN,
patrick