This entire mess is a public policy problem that grew from several roots.

The main root is that technology changed the game. As has been mentioned before, part of the issue is a broken business model. Enforcement of copyright protection in a digital age of access to anything from anywhere is broken and the laws supporting the business model have been twisted to the point that they no longer work to protect the artist as much as they work to protect corporate control. And more control simply stifles creativity and encroaches on privacy. It's as if in the early 1900's, blacksmiths had passed legislation against car makers in order to protect horse based transportation.

The copyright thistle grew another root with the introduction of the DMCA legislation that for the first time placed a legal requirement on ISPs to assist a copyright holder in the enforcement of their copyright. It legally required an ISP to have a process in place to accept infringement notices (allegations), required the ISP to privately determine which customer was supposedly associated with an IP address collected by the copyright holder (with no consideration of all the flawed logic behind that assumption), and pass along the infringement allegation to the customer. If the copyright holder wished, they could get an administrative subpoena issued by a court clerk with no formal review or judicial oversight and the ISP was legally bound to identify the customer. An appeal required an individual to expose their identity and open themselves up to separate civil action. Then the copyright trolls/attorneys emerged and developed their extortion based revenue model. Public outrage and judicial opposition to clogging the court system with dubious cases pretty well ended any hope the copyright holders had that the DMCA approach would continue to be viable.

The roots branch and twist and intertwine as well. The situation is further complicated because the largest ISPs are also content producers and copyright holders. They have a vested interest on the enforcement side, but whether or not an ISP holds copyrights on content (most don't outside of the top 5), they are still - under current law - required to do something or they become legally liable for copyright infringement themselves. Basically, without some type of copyright policy and procedure in place, they can lose what's known as "safe harbor" or their status as a "simple conduit" provider of communication services with no associated liability for the type of content that traverses their networks. So legally, the ISPs are in a box (in part of their own making).

The point here - remember I'm just talking about existing causes - is that under existing US law, ISPs are forced into the role of assisting with copyright infringement enforcement efforts. Some of the largest ISPs had a hand in creating those laws, but there were many other powerful companies involved as well. So similar laws would have been put into place regardless.

The ISP industry could - in theory - fight back against legislation that forces them into the role of assisting with copyright enforcement. The incentive to do so would be to remove legal liability, reduce operational expense by eliminating notification programs, and avoid alienating their customers. But the biggest ISPs are also media content owners and providers. They need legal access to media content. Unrestricted access hits many of the largest ones on the cable TV, media sales and licensing side. They also face liability exposure from powerful copyright holders that are not in the ISP industry and they don't have unilateral control over lobbing efforts to introduce change. If they pushed hard for legal change, it would help, but the opposition would still be fierce. So they don't try.

The "6 Strikes" effort tries to gain a little improvement on both sides of the issue (from their perspective) by introducing this compromise(d) approach of information and education with no real intent to shut off services or take anyone to court. Sort of an informal version of DMCA Light. But by this time, the public is so jaded by the copyright enforcement fiascoes of the past few years, that all hope of reasoned discussion or acceptance is long gone.

Venting about evil empires blows off some steam, but until there is an organized public effort to educate US citizens (good luck) about the issues, to re-establish "safe harbor" for telecommunications carriers in terms of content transiting their networks, and to mobilize the public to force meaningful legislative change surrounding copyrights, we're stuck with this weed patch.

In my opinion, the public policy goals should be:
- protect individual privacy
- ensure that disputes are dealt with based on the premise of innocent until proven guilty by a court of law
- ensure the artist is able to profit from, protect, and enjoy the fruits of their creativity
- ensure reasonable protections for copyright holders but not stifle creativity and growth in other industries

It does no harm to wish upon a star, but I won't count on this dream coming true.

(Is that last line fair use or infringement ? That there is even a hint of doubt says it all).

Let's try a couple of explanations:

The first option: 1) massive winter snows overload the Ohio and Mississippi River system and cause widespread flooding 2) the Corp holds back Missouri River water to avoid sending even more water downstream and adding to the problem 3) an unusual winter precipitation pattern over the northern Rockies, Big Horns, and the northern high plains does not end as expected based on historical patterns and continues to dump even more rain and snow into an already near capacity system 4) mainstem reservoirs fill to record capacity (over 100% in some cases) and outflows must be increased to match inflows or the integrity of the dams and the associated safety of everything along the river system from Montana to New Orleans is at risk.
OR
The second option: some no-name, no-credentialed wing-nut claims environmental conspiracy based on nothing but opinions and idiot-ology.

Gee willikers mouseketeers, which explanation makes more sense to you? Study Mr. Herrings claims with a scientific mind? I have and they are devoid of fact or applicable knowledge.

Now has the Army Corp managed the river system well ? No, they - and we as a society - are guilty of hubris for thinking we can control a natural force as powerful as the Missouri River over the long haul. But, believing the river was controlled, people from Montana to St. Louis have built out into the flood plain to the very banks of the river. And are now shocked that this flood has come to pass.

But regardless of "why", thousands of our fellow citizens are losing their homes and possessions and in some cases their lives. Some communities will not recover. We should focus our energies towards helping them. We can always debunk wing-nuts later on.

In a cable environment, what's usually measured is the actual bytes transferred to and from your cable modem. The measurement is recorded on the CMTS the cable modem connects through to provide a network connection. The CMTS numbers include bytes to/from devices (PCs, game consoles, smart phones, etc.) as well as a small amount of network overhead that's just between the cable modem and the CMTS. The overhead is typically a few K bytes per day. So the exact usage will never tie exactly to what's recorded on a home router, but it should be within +/- 5% at worst and typically run closer to 2% to 3%. The home router reported usage will be a little smaller than the CMTS side reported usage that the cable company will use for managing bandwith caps, but that can easily be compensated for by implementing a "grace buffer" of a few % over stated cap limits to account for variability. Whether or not this is done is another matter. But either way the actual variance is minimal.

Sort of like where Australia is headed - a common infrastructure that creates a level playing field. They see the internet as a public resource like the highway system.
It has it's advantages. Not that all is well, they love to try to censor stuff too.

The game was hidden even from the campus SysAdmin - first game and my first realization that computer security was a farce.