NTL Imposes Download Limits

Oh Boy! Here comes trouble! NTL have quietly changed their Terms and Conditions [see section 2 (h)]

As a general principle, you must not use the Services in any way that is unlawful or illegal or in a way that affects the enjoyment of other users of the Services…
(h) in excess of “normal use” bandwidth limits set out in this section…
“Normal use” of the service is defined as up to 1 gigabyte downstream of data transfer daily…

The BBC are reporting the story here.

The company now limits its customers to one gigabyte of downloaded data per day despite advertising that an advantage of broadband is “unlimited surfing”.
Subscribers say the limit amounts to as little as two-and-a-half hours of use a day for a service that says it is “24/7”.

There is a good article about it at The Enquirer

A READER SPOKE TO NTL support today. Here is what he wrote to us on reading our story…
…ntl are going to administer the cap on a monthly basis, so that more than 1Gb/day is ok as long it averages to less than 1Gb/day across the whole billing month, Greater than that amount leads to snotty letters from the AUP department. Greater than that on a regular basis leads to the account being classed as a “business” account and presumably either higher charges or cancellation.

There is already a protest site [update: the protest site is gone now, but you might want to try NTL Hell for discussion.

For a company still hovering around bankruptcy they are really trying to lose customers! As an NTL Broadband customer myself, I will be following this story closely.

Bed

Bleh! It’s been 86 degrees again in the office. I’ve had a doozy of a headache since this afternoon. I managed to fall asleep on the couch tonight which is really unusual for me.
I’m off to bed…

Dear Kids

Carina over at up so close posted a funny ‘letter’ to her kids Dear Kids

Don’t be alarmed, the world isn’t coming to an end. I am simply taking a bath. It will take about 30 minutes and will involve soap and water. Yes, I know how to swim…

While I’m in the tub, I’d like you to remember a few things…. The large slab of wood between us is called a door. Do not bang to hear my voice. I promise that even though you can’t see me, I am on the other side. I’m not digging an escape tunnel and running for the border, no matter what I said a while ago. I didn’t mean it. Honest.

There’s lots more.
Very Funny 🙂

Disney Et Al Win, Everyone Else Loses

It looks like Disney and cohorts have won the case to keep the ‘Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act’ which extended by 20 years both existing copyrights and future copyrights.
From the Eldred v. Ashcroft website.

January 15, 2003 – We have failed in our effort to get the Sonny Bono Act declared unconstitutional.

So, Disney get to keep making money from Mickey for another 20 years and, to paraphrase a line from the eldred site, we won’t be allowed to sing Happy Birthday To You! in public without paying royalty fees!