At Peer5, our customers are the broadcasters who operate streaming services throughout the world. The users are theirs, not ours, and it is up to the broadcasters to decide how they want to message / roll-out p2p services. Some choose to opt people in by default and allow them to opt out. Others choose the opposite approach. Our job is to give our customers the tools they need to create and enforce whatever business rules they feel are appropriate. This includes looking at ASN numbers to identify ISPs that operate metered services and turning off upstream sharing for such users. No one is forced to participate in a Peer5 mesh network. And the value proposition is most definitely better streaming, especially for the biggest / most popular streams as these benefit the most from a p2p solution. We have plenty of data from users all over the world to support this.
Sure, and ad-networks asked sites to use their solutions appropriately on the users browsers.
You're giving your customers tools to abuse the internet commons. You should be called out for it. Afterall your revenue is an exact function of user's bandwidth. Quoting from your pricing page:
> "Only data delivered via P2P counts against your plan."
By this logic, torrents are destroying the internet commons: this is basically running torrents in the users browser, but for content that they are legally allowed to consume. I think you need to step of your hobby horse here.
Presumably, so would Peer5 users by doing things like picking the cheaper streaming host with the superior quality. And by the way - what's so precious in your mind about uplink bandwidth? How does the direction of the bits from my computer make this a moral case for you?
Assuming you're asking in good-faith: it's not the direction of bits that's the concern, it's the number of bits. End users should have the option of opting-in their metered bits towards Peer5's CDN revenue.
You can always opt out my friend. The problem we're trying to solve is a real consumer issue - there is no shortage of stories in the press about how poorly the streaming services perform, especially during the largest events (Superbowl, new eps of Game of Thrones, etc). And this is only the beginning of the streaming revolution.
1. A user visits a website, sees a video player, and watches a video.
2. A user visits a website, sees an article, and reads it.
There may be some confusion about whether your technology will still force Scenario #2's user into your P2P network, and use their bandwidth. I'd argue that Scenario #1 is legit for your purposes, but not #2.
Are there any steps that can be taken to prevent sneaky behavior?
