May 07, 2008
This, on the other hand, is a terrible idea
Apparently BioWare, producer of such genius games as
This is a fantastic idea. Reasons it will succeed:
- Though most people do have broadband, not everybody does.
- People on restricted networks, e.g. college campuses, will be unable to activate as the connection won't have been approved by IT.
- The inevitable keygen will inevitably bork real CD keys.
But the real reason this will fail is that it undermines one big reason people buy software instead of pirating it: it's more convenient. If using a legitimate product is a pain in the ass, people are just going to get the crack off of BitTorrent, and considering that crack will probably take about 12 hours to release. . .
If I do wind up getting a legit copy of this game for some reason, I'll definitely crack it, but the DRM means I probably won't.
Pity. I like BioWare games.
The real answer to net neutrality
In research I've done for a Regulatory Innovation class this semester, I've come to the conclusion that most of the current net neutrality proposals would probably do more harm than good. That being said, I think that the rumor that Comcast is considering metered bandwidth couldn't come soon enough. It's time the ISPs stopped pretending they could deliver unlimited data when they weren't really willing to do it. Choosing ISPs will be easier when you've got a fixed download limit upon which to base a decision.
I use a lot of bandwidth, but even I would have to work pretty hard to hit 250GB in a month. That's 8GB a day. I might do that once a month. I can see myself averaging 500MB a day, possibly even 1GB, as things like YouTube continue to suck bandwidth. Even if my two roommates used as much bandwidth as I do--and they don't--that's still only 3GB a day, a mere 90-100GB per month. 250GB is plenty, today, and though I'm not going to be silly enough to suggest that this will be plenty forever, it should last long enough for more robust infrastructure to be deployed.
