Reader Rod noticed something interesting as he shopped around to compare Internet service providers. Verizon provided a helpful chart that explains to customers how long they could expect an upload or download to take for many mundane things: movies, songs, and photos. He points out that the problem is, the songs magically become half as large when they’re uploaded. Or do they?

“It looks like songs are 5 MB if you’re downloading them, but shrink to 2.5 MB if you’re uploading,” he wrote in his e-mail to us. “It makes for better looking numbers in their chart but it’s completely unrealistic.”

That’s true. It doesn’t make a lot of sense. But do you know what else doesn’t make sense? An Internet service provider encouraging subscribers who aren’t independent musicians with SoundCloud accounts to upload songs. It’s labeled “songs,” but that row actually has a stylized icon of a camera. That’s about the size of a photo from a current consumer-level digital camera. Verizon wants you to upload photos (of your kids) and download songs (only from legitimate music sites.) Got it.

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