Mike Masnick ✅Kinda hoping that Netflix's new "we'll ban you if you watch the Netflix account you paid for outside of your home too much" story turns into a "New Coke"-style business school case study in how to do something totally stupid that pisses off your most loyal customers, and leads Netflix to reverse course quickly.
Lauren Weinstein@mmasnick Kinda reminds me of how in early public Internet days some big ISPs tried to charge separately for every device hooked to the Net, and even tried to ban NAT.
Kevin@lauren @mmasnick The phone company did this too. First you had to rent phones from them, then pay for each device connected. One of the ways they found "illegal" phones was the voltage drop from the number of phones that rang for an incoming call. So phone makers added a switch to turn off the ringer.
First phone mute button was for pirate phones.
Petrichor ᚄᚔᚅᚐᚁᚆᚃᚒᚔᚂ@sinabhfuil @kevin @mmasnick I've never heard of an operator initiating the howl. For sure many systems would run a howl for a relatively brief period if a phone was left off hook. Maybe some even kept it going until the handset was hung up again. Though smaller systems certainly could vary in practice.