However, EFF disagrees with the basic assumption of “closed wifi” networks asking instead for different protocols. Howsoever, reasonable their demands might sound, I think it’s stupidity to let someone else piggy ride on my network; specially in the prevailing scenario.

Related articles

• Why We Need An Open Wireless Movement (eff.org)
• Lock Down Your Wi-Fi or the FBI Might Come Knocking (pcworld.com)
• Wireless Internet At Sea – Made Easy! (gcaptain.com)
• FBI Porn Raid Gone Wrong (foxnews.com)
• Security Risks of Running an Open WiFi Network (schneier.com)
• FBI child porn raid a strong argument for locking down WiFi networks (arstechnica.com)
• Leaving your Wi-Fi open can leave you on the hook for crime ()
• Multi-protocol wireless router links sensor networks to the Internet (electronics-lab.com)
• Amped Wireless unveils weatherproof 600mW USB ‘N’ adapter (electronista.com)
• Innocent Man Accused Of Child Pornography After Neighbor Pirates His WiFi (huffingtonpost.com)

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The fact that this is 2011 and iTunes customers still can’t use their music purchases freely across devices is rather staggering, especially considering that “buy once, download as many times as you’d like” has become fairly standard elsewhere not only without the world ending — but with great financial success. It’s also amusing that as most news outlets cover Apple’s efforts, they ignore the fact that music pirates have enjoyed this kind of freedom for years. Apparently, you’re not supposed to talk about the fact that legitimate services have to compete with piracy.
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I remember the days of pathetic 56 kbps access on the telephone modem. The dial up access was atrociously expensive, the lines faced frequent disconnections and the overall experience was laced with frustrations. I writhed my hands in despair when I heard about Napster allowing unrestricted exchange of music residing on the hard drives. While I don’t condone this (for legal reasons) but it allowed unrestricted exchange of music one never knew ever existed! Napster died a horrible death due to unrelenting legal challenges by MPAA.

MPAA is a quasi union to protect the interests of the content creators. US has been a test bed of the way this contentious issue has evolved over the years. The MPAA has garnered a lot of bad press from the people who fuel the peer to peer networks. There has been a dissent generated from the ISP’s who claim that this kind of traffic chokes their network and cite FUD campaigns to announce the imminent breakdown of Internet; that the bandwidth would soon run out with the kind of content that is being shared.

In the Web 2.0 arena, interestingly, none of the players are making serious money but follow the basic “Christy” method of “harvesting of souls“. Content is created to dumb down the masses in name of entertainment and people hooked on to the “opium of masses” (based on the loose misrepresentation of Marx). Frankly, content creation involves mega budgets and creators look for perpetual “evergreening” of “copyright” in order to milk whatever is worth it.

In this scenario, it is a double pronged attack on the people who share something that is inaccessible or content that has been blocked because of complex copyright issues. For example, a movie having a theatrical release in US quickly goes through it’s DVD sales and then released “worldwide”. Peer to peer networks (Torrents or it’s variants) has changed the game altogether. The moment a DVD is released, it is “ripped” and uploaded for all. The “seeders” abound for the “leechers” and the cycle continues.

The speeds are an issue worldwide. Primarily, the governments have encouraged faster speeds by tax breaks and other incentives to promote digital lifestyles and the positive spinoffs from that. Asian countries like Singapore, South Korea and Japan have lead the way. Recently, Australia announced it”s grand plan to push rural broadband impetus. US has had an acrimonious debate about the role of FCC (their version of TRAI) and the paltry definition of broadband access at 256kbps. Despite the intensive lobbying, nothing really has come out of it.

Piracy has kept pace with the “increasing” speeds so as to say. Legislation has not kept pace with the attempts to thwart this growth. Europe has seen some activity which led to confiscation of Pirate Bay servers and as a result the public rose in revolt against this “misstep” and formed a “Pirate party”. Interestingly, it even managed to win at the hustings and got a seat in the parliament.

I feel that “rooting” out the piracy is impossible. If Governments find means to thwart Internet access or even “slow down speeds”, there are people to bypass these issues in the name of unfettered access.

I don’t endorse piracy in the present form (to be on the right side of law) but there is an inherent need for people to share. This basic impulse cannot be wished away for times to come.

Broadband is going to change the equations in the way we connect. I don’t have any teary eyed dreams of a “global connected village” though but it’s a good feeling that resources can be shared by one and all.

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Broadband’s fat pipes would ensure this to come true. With the rapid integration of the services, Broadband is slowly moving in our lives and we are truly becoming integrated. While this may be a heavy demand on our resources and short attention spans, I am not going in those details. Imagine a cell phone streaming the live updated messages (possible by Blackberry), the RSS feeds that you have subscribed to (on your cell possible via Opera Mini), free access to the ubiquitous Gmail (on WAP), your own personalised TV channels (on Myth TV) and the power of all pervading Linux boxes powering those nifty details. (While there are many other alternative options to Myth TV, I would ONLY endorse Open Source applications. Opera is the ONLY closed source application that gets endorsed- for one simple reason. They have created a viable model based on closed source while being fully committed to the idea of Open Standards for web as well as software).

The so called next wave of “web 2.0” is for real and would be powered eminently by Broadband; because that is the only way content can be streamed and reached out to you. Arguably, I still have to invest time and resources in setting up a permanent kind of an integrated web page but when I look back, the whole services I subscribe too are way too scattered. I should be able to blog, check feeds, work on word processors et al from a single interface.

Broadband alone has made this effort worthwhile.

Flashback to 1996 when the TCP/IP accounts were first opened up for the public at a princely sum of Rs 10,000. People had fallen over for the “cyber cafe” craze. There were dudes who put up ancient Pentiums in five star hotels, skimpily clad females serving coffee and making some impression on the “clients” who came on in;some lucky guys probably banged them for whatever their buck was worth. (It used to cost over a 1000 bucks per hour-hey to surf online!). Things have changed to an extent that opening up a Cyber cafe isn’t a worthwhile proposition now at all. For all that is worth it, the current slump does not justify for the break even earnings too. No. You would not find skimpily clad females either. Move on with life!

Broadband has clearly changed the rules of the game. I remember the times when couple of my friends used to search around for underground network guys to source their software needs. Or just plain pirated films. Or depend heavily on the “freebies” handed out by the computer magazines. Which incidentally boosted their sales for otherwise totally insipid content. We used to have a massive collection of useless software et al. Broadband has totally changed over the rules of the game. Axxo rules for the movies. Torrents/ Limewire has made the software piracy a nightmare for the peddlers which again is a no brainer. Underground piracy still thrives; nevetheless it has not made much impact in the hinterland where the demand for smut movies is always there.

(The links are only suggestive about the available means for accessing content and I DONOT ENDORSE them in ANY MANNER whatsoever).

Not to mention the “podcasts” and viral videos. They are a swell and we just might be seeing the return of the one minute movie formats. You Tube is powering much of this phenomenon.

In all Broadband would radically alter the rules of the game. However, uninformed as the Indian customer is, it would be time before be could free ourselves from the clutches of the assinine load limits and ISP’s dictating the way we access content/ services. Think about net neutrality(1, 2, 3,4 ); something that I feel needs to be debated across a wider spectrum.

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