Music publishing companies notched another court victory against a broadband provider that refused to terminate the accounts of Internet users accused of piracy. In a ruling on Wednesday, the conservative-leaning US Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit sided with the big three record labels against Grande Communications, a subsidiary of Astound Broadband.

The appeals court ordered a new trial on damages because it said the $46.8 million award was too high, but affirmed the lower court’s finding that Grande is liable for contributory copyright infringement.

      • NaibofTabr@infosec.pub
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        11 hours ago

        Well the birds still have to link to the main network somewhere to exchange packets… which I assume would still be an ISP, unless all you want is local mesh networking.

        • InverseParallax@lemmy.world
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          1 day ago

          It can cover a one-kilometer radius

          So most of the last mile.

          If we try to have cable or telcos do last-mile they’ll fuck us as hard as they possibly can, make laws guaranteeing themselves a permanent monopoly, etc.

          We need wireless as a backup just to keep those worthless fuckers honest, then we can do a hybrid model with some scattered fiber ONTs terminating into wifi nodes.

          What we really need is to string fiber on the power lines, but the telcos and comcast pay the power companies extra to stop that too.

          Break the monopoly power and this all comes tumbling down.

          • NaibofTabr@infosec.pub
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            11 hours ago

            Someone will still have to install and maintain the wireless access points, physically link them to the local network trunk and negotiate for service with the backbone provider… which would just be an ISP, who would sell you access to the WiFi system like a cellular provider.

            This isn’t a problem that can be solved with technology. Monopolies have to be fixed with government oversight.