Last night as I was happily posting away here in the Forum, enjoying the benefits of my broadband connection, a message popped up on the screen- " Please don't cut me off!". I IM'd back and discovered that I was talking to a guy(?) in Tunisia. He had been trying to dl a Stan Ridgeway song for weeks and was continually cut off because of his extremely slow speeds and inability to show shared files. Apparently, IPS policies in North Africa are very restrictive and this poor guy was suffering the consequences of appearing to be a "leech".
He got his file- it took almost an hour!- and was profusely grateful.
Just a note to all the generals of the "I hate Leeches" Brigade... the collateral damage in your war may be more extensive than you imagine. It seems to me that the desire of the more fortunate to eradicate the "problem of leeching" may , in fact, be a form of technological elitism. Discrimination against those who, for whatever reason ( legal, hardware, ISP policy), don't measure up to your standards of "sharing". It might be beneficial to put yourself in their position every now and then and learn what it might feel like to be cut off from the advantages that many of us take for granted.
My new Tunisian friend will be dl'ing the K-Lite program today- it will probably take hours- and hopefully will come to the forum where he can explain what Internet usage is like in his part of the world. Maybe folks will see that the "plague of leeching" is in part simply the attempt of the less technologically fortunate to access the network that we play in.
Isn't this sandbox big enough for them too?
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