Will ISP Web Content Filtering Continue To Grow?

unixluv writes to tell us that another ISP is testing web content filtering and content substitution software. One example sees a system message that is pre-pended to an existing web page. While it seems innocent enough, is this the wave of the future? Will your ISP censor or alter your web experience at will? There have been many instances of content filtering lately and it seems to be a popular idea on the other side of the fence.

Sue 'em

[Asmor]

There should be no ambiguity here. They have no right to modify that information. What they are doing is tantamount to forgery, perjury and impersonation. Sue the hell out of them until they stop or go bankrupt.

What do you think?

[mdm-adph]

Get ready for the encrypted web.

Sites that don't want to be filtered will go SSL

[davidwr]

Sites that don't want to risk having their ads stripped or replaced will shift to SSL.

When enough big-name sites do that the economic incentive to insert or replace ads will drop off.

Re:What do you think?

[littlerubberfeet]

I would love to see end to end encryption become standard. I know that it creates overhead, and as the admin of several small websites, I know the implementation can take longer, but I would still like it to become standard.

The only way that ISPs could then exert control would be through messing with DNS records and redirects, which has far larger implementations. OpenDNS anyone?

This is almost certainly a copyright violation

[sed quid in infernos]

Adding the header is making a derivative work of the original web page. So is substituting one add for another. I can't think of any reasonable fair use argument that would prevent this from being a copyright violation. The web sites visited by the ISP's subscribers likely have a cause of action against the ISP. And the ad substitution victims likely could prove significant damages.

I haven't fully thought through the contractual implications of this yet (as between the ISP and the ISP's subscribers), but there's almost certainly something there, too.

The moment after this becomes fairly common.

[Vellmont]

Is the moment websites start going to all HTTPS.

I kind of doubt anyone likes their website to have content in it inserted by an ISP. The big sites like Yahoo, Ebay, Amazon, etc, will just turn on HTTPS for all content. The only reason they haven't done it yet is because there's little reason to do so, and it takes some extra processing time.

Re:Um, use email or texting

[rucs_hack]

Its always puzzled me why ISP's won't text you about network outages, filtering and bandwidth limitations.

For the same reason Water companies don't contact you and tell you about all the leaky water pipes in your area, they don't want to be sending negative news to everyone, it makes them look bad.

If they can blame you for breaking their terms and conditions, that makes you the bad guy, but if they sent a text telling you all the latest things they'd decided to not let you do, regardless of whether you were doing them, that makes them the bad guy, and customers would start leaving.

Copyright infringement?

[Anonymous Coward]

Couldn't a website claim copyright infringement because the ISP has basically taken their work and made a derived version of it with new content on it?

Re:Sue 'em

[Bearpaw]

Instead of suing for everything, we could just make a law to prevent this.

Filing suit is part of the process of enforcing certain already-existing laws.

You might just as well say, "Instead of arresting people for everything, we could just make a law to prevent murder."

Re:The market will decide.

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Some ISP's will filter content. The consumer will either accept it, or use a different ISP. The market ultimately dictates policy in these matters.

Do you really believe the free market is at work in the telecom industry? In most places in the US people have zero, one, or two options for broadband network access and that is unlikely to change anytime soon. As a result, we don't have the many competitors required for the free market, we have a cartel, with most major players having been convicted of undermining the free market at one point or another. New players cannot enter because legal restrictions on the use of the last mile, public right of ways, licensed to only one cable and one phone operator. New players are also disadvantaged because while the government ate the costs of the initial telecoms, subsidizing them to the tune of billions, they won't do the same for anyone else, thus making it a very unfair playing field. Finally, peering agreements are great and all, but the free market cannot act though dozens of intermediaries and if filtering is being done by a network operator that has a peering agreement with someone who has a peering agreement with someone who has a peering agreement with someone you're doing business with, your dislike of the practice will never filter back to them through free market feedback and so nothing will get better.

Before you can expect the invisible hand of the market to act, you have to make sure that market meets the minimum criteria to qualify as a capitalist, free market, and the telecom industry is not even close.

And the law makes it a worse idea

[Banzai042]

Actually if anything it'll have the opposite effect on content monitoring and filtering. The SAFE act doesn't [arstechnica.com] require ISPs to monitor everything on their network and get fined if they don't report somebody. Instead it says *IF* they detect somebody looking at illegal images or something else covered in the act, and they fail to report it, then they can be fined. This means that the more monitoring an ISP does of the traffic, the more likely it is that they'll technically see something that should have been reported, and fail to do so, opening themselves up for legal problems. On the other hand, if they don't monitor and filter traffic then they won't be at risk, since they'll almost never "catch" anybody that needs to be reported under the SAFE act. Granted, the SAFE act is still a horrible idea, but it's not something that will cause ISPs to do more monitoring.

Re:Sue 'em

[Colin Smith]

Instead of suing for everything, we could just make a law to prevent this.

Filing suit is part of the process of enforcing certain already-existing laws.

He's a socialist. They believe that you can never have too many laws.

 

All it takes is competetion

[T0wner]

Sooner or later the ISPS will start advertising "We dont restrict your usage, unlike ". The market competition will provide us net neutrality not government intervention

Re:Sue 'em

[calebt3]

Or that people will obey them simply because it's the law. Prohibition worked like a charm, didn't it? ;-)

Re:Hmm. What's to stop

[Hatta]

That would be great. Then everyone would have an incentive to use encryption by default.

Here you go

[pjt33]

Will we see a trend towards major websites being served entirely over https?

Re:Sue 'em

[J'raxis]

That law exists. It's called "copyright." It's typically enforced through lawsuits.

Re:All it takes is competetion

[gallwapa]

Untrue. The cable/telcos will ALL do it because they have monopolies in their respective areas (at least here in the US). There is no competition - there is only collusion.

Re:All it takes is competetion

[Anonymous Coward]

Sooner or later the ISPS will start advertising "We dont restrict your usage, unlike ". The market competition will provide us net neutrality not government intervention

You mean they'll start advertising "We don't restrict your usage. No, really! Your slow downloads are entirely outside of our control, and the fact that 90% of the time when you type www.google.com you get yahoo's site is entirely because your typing sucks!"

After all, the ISPs aren't exactly running out and advertising that they are filtering. Whats a few more lies to go with the rest of the marketing?

Also doesn't help in those places where the government isn't intervening to force cable/phone companies to share the lines.

Re:Sue 'em: we *have* a law

[coats]

Because it is for commercial gain, the act of introducing web advertisements into a third party's web pages is felony copyright infringement..

Whenever you see this happening, do a screen capture and a "save page" to preserve the evidence, and then notify the webmaster of the page whose copyright was infringed, suggesting that this someone is committing this felony infringement of their rights, and that they need to do something about it before the statute of limitations on such action expires.

Re:!Content-Filtering

[Ambiguous Coward]

It matters what you call it because people need to have at least an inkling of what they're talking about. It's happened in other threads, and it will likely happen in this one, that the issue is confused for net neutrality, a completely separate side-issue.

Also, content-filtering and context-filtering are two completely different issues. With the former, I can't see any way you can claim common-carrier status. With the latter, I'm not sure yet. For instance, if I'm a common carrier, I'm pretty sure I'm still allowed to pick what *kind* of things I carry. I am under no requirement, for instance, to support carrier-pigeons on my network. Likewise, I may be under no compulsion to support bittorrent transfers on my network. On the other hand, I *am* supporting TCP/IP traffic, so it seems I should support *all* TCP/IP traffic, provided it conforms to the spec I am claiming to support.

So, by that logic, anyone claiming common-carrier status (i.e. Comcast) should not be allowed to perform content- or context-filtering. The problem is getting them to define what context(s) they carry. I have no doubt that if it came down to that, Comcast would *not* claim to be a common carrier of the TCP/IP context. They would instead claim far more specific contexts, such as SMPT, HTTP, etc.

All of that aside, I think it's bullshit and Comcast should have their feet put to the coals for the fraudulent data they're transferring. They are actively performing a man-in-the-middle attack on those whose traffic they are supposedly neutrally transferring.

Long story short--and I apologize for all the rambling above--it matters what you call it because that changes what bullshit excuse will be used in court.

-G

was there any other outcome possible ?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a business people and bandwidth costs money. You have to assume that the evolution of the internet would follow the same basic pattern as other communication networks.

Where in the world did this belief that you are free to do whatever you want on the internet ever come from ?

If I ran an ISP I would use filtering to prevent bandwidth hogs. I mean, do you guys remember what a BBS was ? When nodes cost serious money you had lots of limitations. As the available bandwidth shrinks filtering becomes more and more cost effective.

Since America does not believe in socialism, this is the future of the internet, corporate America pushes for stiffer patent law, refuses to absorb the costs of communication upgrades and shapes bandwidth by default.

Think about it, if you wanted to run a secure ISP for profit, you'd want bandwidth shaping also.

It's a given ISP's will merege and filter as costs and user increase. We have no national communication structure, just a headless monster that will bite it's own head off as soon as cooperate for the greater good.

Am I wrong ?

Re:Hmm. What's to stop

[piojo]

If I remember correctly a few ISPs were toying with the isea of actually rewriting webpage code, not just inserting a little javascript for flavoring.

Maybe I'm just being naive, but is there a reason that that wouldn't be a copyright violation? Creating and distributing a derivative work?

Re:Google

[CSMatt]

If the "free market" is working the way it's advertised, someone will come along set up an ISP that does NOT filter content or inject their own ads or throttle p2p or whatever, and customers will fly away from the restrictive ISPs and sign up with the "open" provider. It remains to be seen if this actually happens. It's my theory that the "free market" is just some bogus concept taught in econ schools to support the corporate plutocracy, so if I'm correct, there won't be a sudden insurgence of competitors in the ISP space.

The market only fails here because the ISPs (exluding dial-up and satellite providers which will probably never provide a decent alternative) have a local monopoly over their respective area. The FCC's decision to end exclusive cable contracts with apartments helps a little, but ultimately it does nothing for everyone who does not live in an apartment or for cities where there is no competitor at all. I also wouldn't be surprised if the ISPs have their own secret cartel, since for the above reasons there is no need for them to compete with each other.

Re:Here you go

[pjt33]

But is it more expensive to pay for the resources necessary to serve over https or to leave your site vulnerable to ISPs injecting things which might annoy your consumer or remove the ads which provide some of your revenue stream?