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Re: [ox-en] Marginalism - the religion



On Tue, 21 Apr 2009 16:19:11 -0300
Diego Saravia <diego.saravia gmail.com> wrote:

you can reproduce a lot of files without  any aditional cost

This is a consequence of the particular pricing models used by ISPs in
certain countries. Here in the UK, many ISPs have (published or
unpublished) caps, e.g. 10GB or 15GB. Australia likewise. If you go over
these limits you face additional charges - which may be outrageously
high in some cases - or even disconnection. You can reproduce a lot of
files, yes, but it depends on how big your files are.

Yes, these caps will be increased in future (if indeed the flat-rate
pricing model remains, which I think it will - it's very popular), and
indeed some UK ISPs have recently increased their caps. But they do
exist, and they do have an effect for many filesharers.

What the pricing model means really, in my view, is that the marginal
costs to the ISP of supplying bandwidth are socialised among its
customers. And customers are mostly happy with this because they do not
want to continuously worry about how much they are using the internet
and how much it is costing them, which was the case under the old
pay-per-minute dialup model in the UK. I do not yet fully understand
why broadband billing has developed differently from telephone billing
in this regard, though, so perhaps I am wrong about this.

What about the electricity?  What about the noise?  What about the
heat?  The pollution?

my machine is always on

Your machine probably has the ability to save power by entering a
lower-power state when it is effectively "doing nothing". Downloading
isn't doing nothing because it needs a hard drive (usually). How much
the additional electricity costs, I don't know, but I would be
interested to find out.

-- 
Robin
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