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"When I first put video on 'the web' I got a really nasty email from one of the backbone maintainers that what I was doing was 'improper use' of the internet"

• jacquesm 11y ago
  Well, look at it this way: at the time the intercontinental backbone was an absolute straw compared to the gigantic capacity that we have today. Within a few weeks of launching I took over a good chunk of that capacity and with the trend being what it was I would have saturated the backbone within another couple of months without even trying. This eventually led to relocating my company to Canada where we had access to a half decent connection to MAE-East and MAE-West through Front 151. It was either that or be seriously penalized. At the time a European start-up getting the majority of its visitors from the US was not a common thing and that start-up being video related was unheard of entirely.
• udfalkso 11y ago
  There's similar behavior today with the Bitcoin network. People are guided by community norms alone to stop doing things that are destructive in the short term but with which there's nothing theoretically wrong (e.g. Tons of tiny transactions). As the network overcomes the technical limitations, people will start to do those currently problematic things again without the need to use the work-arounds they're currently resorting to.