Jeff Jarvis notices that Time Warner cable is trying to bring back metered network service, and chalks it up to greed:

The AP reports (via PaidContent) that TW will charge subscribers in Beaumont, Texas, will be charged $29.95 a month for slow service at 768 kilobits per second and a 5-gigabyte monthly cap up to $54.90 per month for 15 megabits per second and a 40-gigabyte cap; going over will cost them $1 per gig. For scale, the AP points out, a standard def movie is about 1.5 gigabytes and a high-definition movie is 6 to 8 gigs.

So Time Warner could end up charging customers more for watching a movie than the service selling the movie, whether that is iTunes or Netflix. I’m sure that’s quite on purpose. It is TW’s FU to the net neutrality debate: If we can’t gouge both ends of the pipe, we’ll doubly gouge the one that is stuck with us.

Now, I don't want to get into conspiracy theory, but I wonder - Time Warner is both a network company and a media company. What terrifies media companies more than just about anything? The ability to download perfect copies of content. Looked at through that lens, what does this cap do? Well, it effectively prevents the downloading of anything more than a trivial amount of large content (tv shows, movies) without an extra charge. Apple won't charge what the old media companies want, and DRM is too easily bypassed? Fine - they'll find a way to charge you anyway. This looks a lot like a backdoor way to charge old business model prices for stuff that's otherwise being commoditized. IMHO, this has nothing to do with "net neutrality".

Technorati Tags: RIAA, MPAA