[musicale]

Business model seems to be broken. I pay a giant internet bill each month, basically insane margins based on what it should actually cost to deliver much faster connectivity than what I get, yet none of that extra money funds the things that I actually use the internet for. (Why does it cost that much? Part of the reason may be that our local cable company is a government-enforced monopoly, that it's next to impossible to get right of way for new fiber, and that wireless is currently uncompetitive. Perhaps 5G may change things, but I'm not holding my breath.)

Moreover, the internet makes distribution nearly free and allows a nearly unlimited number of people to access information and digital media from all over the world, but lengthy (70 years or more) copyright terms make it illegal to do so in many cases. Instead, thousands or millions of person-hours are spent on the impossible task of trying to make bits behave like physical objects in order to satisfy legal and business requirements. When an organization such as the internet archive tries to make a digital library whose collection isn't bound by the constraints of physical libraries, they are sued by publishers for copyright infringement and potentially liable for $150k in statutory damages per occurrence.

[wmeredith]

This is a regulatory capture problem, not a tech problem.

[6510]

> none of that extra money funds the things that I actually use the internet for.

god yes, we even try to pay things with bandwidth.