You might have heard it in the news that Time Warner and Sprint / Verizon are blocking the complete alt.* hierarchy of the Usenet after coming to an agreement with N.Y. attorney general Andrew Cuomo in an effort to fight child pornography on the Usenet. This basically means that roughly 100.000 groups will be blocked [...]

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Innovation usually gets blocked or slowed down by monopolies. A company with barely any competition can make decisions that concentrate more on the profits and less on the satisfaction of their customers. Time-Warner is currently testing metered bandwidth plans for new customers in Beaumont, Texas. New customers have to select a metered bandwidth plan with [...]

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When I accessed the Internet in the early 90s with my superfast 33,6 Kbps modem I had to sign a contract with a company that made me pay per minute that I was online. This put a lot of pressure on me and my bankroll at that time and many companies later gave in to user demand and offered flatrates instead. Unlimited access to the Internet without having to look at the clock or the amount that I have downloaded have since then become an important part of my life and I would never accept to go back to a time or bandwidth limited account.

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