Verizon Not Antagonistic Towards FIlesharers

As it stands today, people who fileshare are usually hurt by their Internet Service Providers. ISP's usually take steps to slow down or otherwise cripple filesharing, usually with reasons cited such as "slowing things down" and "uploading illegally." Verizon, however, is planning to work with filesharers to speed filesharing up. Verizon is planning on using a system that downloads and uploads more often to people nearby, reducing overall stress on the system and improving times significantly. This P4P, as Verizon deems it, may be ready by next month.

This is important firstly because it's a shift in attitudes towards filesharing. Verizon is the rebel ISP who decided that filesharing is actually a good thing. This could lead the other ISP's to promote filesharing. This will make filesharing much easier, so the average person starts to get into this "filesharing craze." This means that many, many, many new things will be shared. This could revolutionize content as we know it. Of course, Verizon is putting itself out on a limb, a little bit. They're being the ISP that's different. This is bad, because if consumers for some reason decide they're against filesharing, then that would affect Verizon negatively. Additionally, this is not a system that works well for cable-based Internet providers. So if what Verizon is doing takes off, then that could either put cable-based providers out of business or change it. Putting it out of business won't be so cool in the middle of what is practically a recession.

Personally, as someone who is technically invested in filesharing, this sounds very cool. In addition, because I have Comcast as an ISP - a company notorious for being anti-filesharing - this looks doubly appealing. Plus, it's making the whole system more efficient so that more can be done at the cost of less. The good outweighs the bad of this.

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