One of the biggest problems with bandwidth theft is that a lot of people don't fully understand just what bandwidth is or the effects of bandwidth theft on the Internet. There are a lot of people explaining it in technical terms, but hopefully this page can explain it a way that may hit closer to home. The analogies I may use are not exact, but are intended to compare bandwidth and bandwidth theft to situations everyone can relate to.

• What is bandwidth?

  Think of it as (here comes the analogy) the amount of electricity used to play sound files and display images on the Internet. In the same way that a 40 watt light bulb and a frost-free freezer use different amounts of electricity, different types of files use different amounts of bandwidth.

  Whenever a music or image file is linked to, the server that houses that file has to supply the bandwidth necessary to get that file to your email page or wherever else you link from. Keep in mind this means the length of time it takes you to write the letter as well as everytime that letter is read by the person you sent it to and by anyone they may have forwarded it to. In the case of newsgroups that allow active html in posts, that server is supplying their bandwith everytime someone reads a post.

• So, what is bandwidth theft?

  Ever go to a gif and midi site and see something like, "Please transload these files to your own server. Do not link to them."? If you ignore that request and link to them anyway, that's bandwidth theft.

• But it says "Free Gifs and Midis" at the site I linked to!

  That means they are free in the sense that there are no copyright restrictions on them. Some websites sell original graphics. When you link to these free midis and images without permission, you are forcing someone else to pay the cost of getting that file from it's home server to your page. If any of us ever discovered that one of the neighbors had run an extention cord into our house to power up his appliances we would most likely take the matter to the police, yet we expect servers to allow us to do the same thing.

• Who "owns" it and who pays for it?

  Back to the electricity analogy: The electric company "owns" the electricity until you use it. Then you are billed for what you use. An ISP charges a server for the amount of bandwidth that is used monthly. The server also charges commercial website owners for the amount of bandwidth they use. Some have a monthly allotment and then are charged extra when they exceed that amount. The servers and commercial website owners pay for the bandwidth and it is up to that them how to use it.

  The way most servers and site owners compensate for their "bandwidth bills" is by charging advertisers for placing ads on pages. The more traffic, or page hits, they have, the more they can charge an advertiser. That's why so many of them offer free personal homepages...more subscribers = more pages = more hits = more advertising revenue. The money made from advertising offsets the money spent for bandwidth. When someone is "remote linking" to a file the server still pays for the bandwidth, but doesn't get the page hits to justify their advertising fees. Advertising revenue decreases, but bandwidth usage keeps rising.

  Remember, .com stands for commercial. These are not non-profit businesses. Many commercial sites have been forced to close because they could not afford to keep paying their increased bandwidth charges.

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