Aren't they protected from liability as long as they act as "dumb pipes"? Doesn't his mean they are opening themselves up for liability? Yeah, I understand the ones that own media companies but what about the rest? Seems like a way to lose customers is all.

Everyone should draw a crappy picture in paint, host it on something free like google sites, and spread links that bring people to a second page that says "You don't have permission to click this link" with a link to the picture itself. Then bring copyright complaints to all the ISPs of all the people who inevitably click that and hence download your copyrighted crap without permission. Flood the fuckers.

The fact that the content industry has no problems with having the ISP industry monitoring their CUSTOMERS use of the Internet makes me sick.

Some rights are more important than others. My right to not be spied on by a company I (not the content industry) am doing business with is much more important than the content industries desire to make sure they're paid every dime they think they deserve.

The ISPs should have fought like hell to achieve a common carrier status which would have allowed them to tell big content to pound sand. Oh and as for the content industry owning many ISPs our government should have never allowed that.

I'll say it again. If your business model requires a police state to be viable, you need to fucking go out of business.

Browser hijacking popup?

Noscript says "wat?"

If they can insert content into your data stream in the place that makes it pop up, then they have to be able to look at that stream. Spying!

Not to mention everyone here seems to be missing the point of WHY they were so quick to jump on the bandwagon...does anybody here think these megacorp ISPs give a rat's ass about any copyrights they don't profit from? Fuck no but what they DO care about is customers actually getting what they paid for!

You see folks for years the ISP have oversold the HELL out of their lines, in some cases claiming a good 5 times what they could actually deliver because they counted on so few people actually using what they paid for they could get away with it. Then a funny thing happened....people actually started using their connections. oh they'll SAY its because of piracy, but that is bullshit as I've known plenty of pirates and most are still downloading DVDrips that suck a hell of a lot less bandwidth than somebody like me who doesn't pirate uses. Where is my bandwidth going? Steam, Hulu, YouTube and for awhile Netflix.

See the ISPs don't like this for a couple of reasons. One since they are all now in the content business, an obvious conflict of interest BTW, well they sure as fuck ain't gonna be happy if you are watching Hulu instead of paying them for their overpriced channel packages are they? Not gonna be watching their PPV if you already have netflix, and if you are using Steam or OnLive that is hours you COULD have been giving them money for content that went to gaming companies instead, can't have that. The second reason hurts their bottom line even worse, for years they haven't added shit as far as new lines and capacity and now that even grandma is using YouTube and Hulu that means if they don't find a way to "thin the herd" of those that actually use what they paid for? Good God man, they may actually have to...gasp!....stop handing all the money out as bonuses to the execs! The horror!

So I have NO doubt that the first ones to see six strikes? Will NOT be pirates, it'll be the ones actually using close to the full amount they paid for. The Steam users, netflix and Hulu users, all those that get close to their cap every single month will get a "uh oh, you used what you paid for, you dirty filthy pirate you" and run out on a rail. that way they can keep falsely advertising their have more capacity than they have, keep giving the profits as bonuses, and keep their content making crazy money because that doesn't go against your cap don't ya know.

1. They consider consumer goods bought in the country by traveling foreigners exports (t-shirts, cake, cell phones, etc) I don't think that should count its cheating since those goods were not manufactured here and we are just middle men. Walmart is not an exporter of TV's, they are a retailer.

2. The other factor they add in which accounts for 500 billion of that is software, movie, and TV royalties. These are not physically manufactured goods or property as much as your civil ideology likes to believe they will never be property. The wealth from this industry is even worse distributed then the wealth from the auto and oil industries. It only accounts for probably the top 1000 wealthiest families and is probably immediately exported to tax havens.

So I am going to call $2 trillion exports bullshit, its great that we can use Hollywood accounting there also.

These are the correct accounting definitions of exports - the money used to pay for these items came from outside the country. Semantic arguments like you are making matter little to the accountants. What matters is that the money on both sides of the transaction balance out. And in both these cases, the money used to pay for these goods is deducted from the "other country" column and is added to the "U.S." column. So they are exports.

If you try to classify them as domestic purchases as you are suggesting, the amount of money earned by workers domestically ends up not equaling the amount of money spent domestically (after factoring in money put into/taken out of savings accounts and the like). And the accountants throw a hissy fit.

It only accounts for probably the top 1000 wealthiest families and is probably immediately exported to tax havens.

This is an interesting one. I'll have to ask my account friend about it. But I suspect until that money is used to buy something (whether in the U.S. or abroad), it's still considered U.S. money. Just because they put it into an offshore account doesn't mean they won't eventually use it to buy something domestically.