Will ISP Web Content Filtering Continue To Grow? 239
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.
Rogers sucks. (Score:5, Interesting)
I know about 3web but I've heard some fairly bad things as well. Can anyone recommend some non-DSL, high speed (5+ MBPS), preferably low-cost ISPs in the London, Ontario area?
On another note, I'm almost certain this is going to cause unforeseen problems for Rogers, or at least their customers. I'm glad I don't do tech support for them...
And as pointed out in TFA, this has some pretty evil possibilities. Barring the obvious censorship issues, who's to prevent Rogers from replacing, say, Google Adsense scripts with their own ads? They already do it with Bell ads on their digital cable. Don't believe me? If you have Rogers digital cable, you'll notice that there are some ads that play on every channel that has commercials. If you look closely at the start of these ads, you'll usually see about a half second of another ad, quickly replaced by the Rogers network-wide one. These preempted ads are usually for Bell ExpressVu, Rogers' main (satellite) competitor.
But, like most cable companies, they remain because they have a monopoly on the cable market. Ultimately, this is the problem that needs to be solved before the rest, and I don't see it happening any time soon.
Hmm. What's to stop (Score:2, Interesting)
Um, use email or texting (Score:2, Interesting)
This corresponds to what Microsoft wants to do (Score:1, Interesting)
In each case, we and our equipment are seen as walking ATMs, providing dollars to the corporate interests. Two things, if there was a "right to privacy", it would block both Microsoft and the ISPs. Net neutrality would be more problematic, but it could be argued that rewriting web pages is interferring with the content providers (Google).
Re:Hmm. What's to stop (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Hmm. What's to stop (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:You've Agreed To It (Score:5, Interesting)
Except that Google (in this case) hasn't agreed to those Terms of Service and isn't bound by them. It'd be interesting to see the response to a statement like this from Google: "We grant an implicit license to ISPs to make unmodified copies of our pages on their cache servers and distribute them. We do not grant any license, implicit or explicit, to create derivative works by modifying our pages beyond the boundaries of fair use. We remind ISPs that making and distributing copies of a copyrighted work, or making and distributing a derivative work based on a copyrighted work, without a license from the copyright holder constitutes copyright infringement. We also remind them of the consequences if the PRO-IP Act currently under consideration in Congress passes.".
Private internet (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:What do you think? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:This corresponds to what Microsoft wants to do (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The moment after this becomes fairly common. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Rogers sucks. (Score:2, Interesting)
ECPA violation? (Score:2, Interesting)
Also as others have suggested, even if the ECPA could be waived by contract, this should violate the copyright holder's copyright. The copyright holder is not a party to any agreement between the user and ISP.
It does and it doesn't (Score:2, Interesting)
This opens up a new marketing tool for low-cost virtual hosting providers:
"Do you want people to see your site as you intended? Use https: and automatically get our ACME SSL certificate."
Put verbage on the web site and the certificate to confirm to end-users it's legit so they don't panic.
https - ssl (Score:3, Interesting)
Also, does their extra crap count towards your bandwidth caps?