Idea du Jour: Bandwidth Credits

January 18th, 2008, 10 Comments »

Plenty of American geeks are in a tizzy over Time-Warner Cable’s recent announcement to test usage-based billing for bandwidth in Texas. Like, say, water or electricity, you’ll pay based on how many gigabytes you use per month. This seems pretty reasonable, actually–I’m not sure why everyone’s got their panties in a twist. Mark Evans has some reasonable commentary on the topic.

Plenty of bandwidth goes unused each month. Wouldn’t it be cool if big downloaders could, like polluters buying carbon credits, buy unused bandwidth from people who weren’t using it? It could be automated, based on some kind of auction model. Maybe such a system already exists?

I expect there would be some technical barriers, as well as some very disinterested cable companies. Still, I like the model. If we’re going to treat bandwidth like a resource or utility with scarcity, then there ought to be a marketplace for it.

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Thom Yorke and David Byrne in Conversation

December 19th, 2007, No Comments »

I’m currently listening to a really fascinating conversation in Wired between David Byrne and Radiohead’s Thom Yorke. It’s an unedited, roving chat about Radiohead’s new album, their unusual release strategy, the industry and so forth:

Yorke: The way we termed it was “our leak date.” Every record for the last four — including my solo record — has been leaked. So the idea was like, we’ll leak it, then.

Byrne: Previously there’d be a release date, and advance copies would get sent to reviewers months ahead of that.

There are text excerpts of the interview, but the audio files are way better. You get to hear them thinking about and stumbling over and revising their answers. They both seem quite unguarded–they’re just two musicians chatting about their work.

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