Free - Get Used To It

Media companies must live with charging $0.
If you've read my previous post on getting free music then you know how easy it is to get free music, movies, games, and just about anything digital. Why would you want to pay money and spend the extra time purchasing something that you can get super fast without a penny out of pocket? All these organizations are hoping to put an end to illegal downloading but how? The RIAA tried suing and, although they won a few cases, they also lost a few cases. In Canada, they want a $5 increase on all customers' internet bills to be split between media companies but I'm sure those who just use the internet to send email to their kids won't be too happy about that. Comcast, along with other ISPs, tried to block bittorrent traffic but they're facing heavy backlash from strong torrent supporters. What can they do? As long as you can share information there will always be media file sharing. Radiohead, Nine Inch Nails, and other artists are beginning to embrace the free era by giving their fans the chance to pay or not to pay. And it was a huge success! Now a lot of it was free publicity which attracted customers to check it out and support those who support free stuff, but still, they made money by giving their music away. Joss Stone is cool with it because she wants her fans to listen and share her music and also pay to go to her concert but she's getting the hang of it. The movie industry on the other hand is just plain ridiculous. All the "downloading isn't free" posters are saying that all the people who make the movies lose money from illegal downloads. How much are those actors paid per movie? Fourteen million? Twenty? It's absurd how much they get. Why don't they just severely cut their pay, since most of them make at least three movies a year, and only give them $5 mil for a movie and give the extra they saved to those who worked their asses off to make the movie?! Take a hint from hulu and have every media company release their content online for free and just have a few advertisements. It may not make them the millions or billions of dollars a month that they're used to but at least the customers are happy.

I Hate Comcast

Comcast is incapable of providing good service, prices, and support.
I can't tell you how many times people have told me how much they despise Comcast. My family had Comcast way back when and we just dropped them after they raised their prices by 150%. We only had basic cable through them and they were charging us nearly $100 per month by the time we canceled their service. My uncle has cable and internet with them and he's billed almost $150 per month! I'm glad we switched to WOW (only offered in Mid-West) and now we get cable and internet on as many TVs and computers as we want for only $55 per month. Our friends have Comcast and I nor their own tech guy can get their computers to connect to the internet. Then Comcast practically blocked all BitTorrent (a file sharing system) users by severly limiting their access. They're soon to be sued over this as Threat Level reports. Now I'm reading a slew of horror stories about incredibly aweful Comcast encounters including this one. When a couple tried to transfer their Comcast internet to their temporary residence at the woman's Grandfather's house, who only has Comcast cable, they run into more than just a problem. The Comcast tech guy blew up over the misunderstanding of having a separate bill for cable and another for internet so he accused the 74 year-old Grandfather of hijacking cable, shut off their television service which they still had to pay for, and disrespected the entire family. After an ordeal with other Comcast support, the daughter was able to get through to someone who fixed the situation with minor and insulting compensation. I hate Comcast.