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.

Rogers sucks.

Goddamn, I hate Rogers. At least they're being honest with their bandwidth caps now. Unfortunately, I find myself in the position of having to switch fairly soon to a cable-based service as the phone lines in this apartment are horribly old and low-quality. My experience with TekSavvy [teksavvy.com] has been great from a customer service standpoint but it seems any DSL line I get here will be subject to the same problems, problems my landlord is almost certainly not willing to fix.

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

The code being appended breaking websites in some browsers? People disabling javascript?

Re:Hmm. What's to stop

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?

Answer: Yes.

Next Question?

Here you go

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

Um, use email or texting

I would love it if my ISP could just email me or text me to let me know of problems. With 90% of the cell phones out there capable of receiving texts and at least half capable of getting email it seems like the logical choice. Any ISP that dares to intrude on my web surfing will get the boot.

Re:Um, use email or texting

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.

1 Acronym

SSL

Sue 'em

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.

Re:Sue 'em

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."

What do you think?

Get ready for the encrypted web.

This corresponds to what Microsoft wants to do

This corresponds to what Microsoft wants to do: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/14/043200 [slashdot.org]
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).

Is there money to be made?

Or power, for ego stroking?

Answer those, and you have the answer to your question.

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

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.

!Content-Filtering

Just to be clear, what Comcast has been caught at is not content-filtering. They have been breaking connections based on the *type of the connection*, not the content contained therein. Let's call what Comcast is doing by a more descriptive name. I propose Context Filtering. This way, we have QoS (throttling throughput while leaving it operational, etc.), Content-Filtering (watching the data going through and responding to the actual data) and Context-Filtering (watching the type of connection and reacting to that, such as SMTP connections, HTTP connections, BitTorrent connections, etc.) These terms are not interoperable, and shouldn't be treated as such.

-G

Re:!Content-Filtering

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

content substitution

this is the first I have heard of content subsitution.

You've Agreed To It

Each person should review the Terms of Service (ToS) they accepted (and most likely continue accept each time they use their Internet connection) and look to see what is stated there. Also, realize that the ISP's will update it with nearly no notice. Inside of those agreements that you agree to generally through your use of their services you'll find all kinds of interesting things. For example, here is some relevant quotes from Verizon's ToS [verizon.net] in Section 14.4:

"You hereby consent to Verizon's monitoring of your Internet connection and network performance, and the access to and adjustment of your computer settings, as they relate to the Service, Software, or other services, which we may offer from time to time."

Who is to say that "adjustment of your computer settings" doesn't include adjustment of .html files being delivered to you. Oh and just in case that wasn't strong enough, in Section 15.8 you get:

"15.8 You agree that Verizon assumes no responsibility for the accuracy, integrity, quality completeness, usefulness or value of any Content, data, documents, graphics, images, information, advice, or opinion contained in any emails, message boards, chat rooms or community services, or in any other public services, and does not endorse any advice or opinion contained therein. Verizon does not monitor or control such services, although we reserve the right to do so. Verizon may take any action we deem appropriate, in our sole discretion, to maintain the high quality of our Service and to protect others and ourselves."

Similar allowances are inComcast's Acceptable Use Policy [comcast.net]. Basically, folks have to understand what they are signing up for and how often it can change.

There are companies out there today, Phorm [phorm.com] for example, who already are working with ISPs around the world in order to put their gear in the ISP networks to create targeting advertising based on all Internet habits, not just specific sites with specific cookies or the like. So far they all seem to be giving you an ability to Opt Out, but that appears to be a way to create good will for the moment. If there was case law backing them up, who knows if they'd continue the practice.

Re:You've Agreed To It

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.".

Hey, This is America....

... of course they will filter, censor and tell us what to do, think and believe. Thats what Freedom is all about!

This is almost certainly a copyright violation

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.

Dont trash that yet!

I'd wager an underground modern BBS systems would start to popup again, if things get to far out of hand.

Say hello to dial-up all over again!!

Copyright

The reason why ISPs can get away with copying resources into their caches is because they are "incidental copies", where permission for copying is implied for the purpose of normal operation. Web developers can apply Cache-Control: no-transform [ietf.org] to indicate that changes of this nature should not take place. It seems to me that any ISP that alters such pages would be creating unauthorised derivative works and permission would not be implied to copy, thus making them guilty of copyright infringement.

The moment after this becomes fairly common.

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.

The market will decide.

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.

Re:The market will decide.

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.

Not Just a Bad Idea: IT'S THE LAW

Well, it's almost the law, and proably will be soon enough, to require ISPs to spy on your every message, request and download.

The House just passed the "SAFE Act" [cbs4denver.com] to force all ISPs to take responsibility for all content they host or transport, even if they don't moderate it, in direct contradiction of the landmark CDA [wikipedia.org] which let ISPs be like telcos always have. Lots of child molesters trap children in telephone conversations, but the telco has no liability. Because holding them responsible requires tapping every conversation, which is what the SAFE Act (not the one with the same name that sanely deregulated crypto export) now does: forces ISPs to monitor and analyze the content of your every Internet communication.

When the Senate passes it, then the president signs it, every ISP will be forced to spy on your every online move (just like the government does - hi, Dick!). Just the threat of enforcement will be enough to get ISPs to do whatever the government wants.

Mirror of the picture

Mirror of the hi-res picture: http://forum.pigvj.se/uploadfiler/37/rogers-google.jpg [pigvj.se] OK, i admit putting i there mostly to mess with my friends web hotel account. :)

Copyright infringement?

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?

How cool is that?

Will your ISP censor or alter your web experience at will?

What an innovative way to get me to switch to their biggest competitor. It's like anti-marketing, a novel approach to business.
 

I had enough, so I wound up paying more money...

For a VPS. It's a crude/expensive workaround, but it works. It sure sucks to pay an extra $15/mo for a server that I can use to do bittorrent without being throttled, and I ssh to it to establish a proxy connection for my web browsing.

Too bad my area doesn't have non-sucky ISP like Speakeasy.

This reminds me of...

Remember that company that was selling "redacted" versions of movies? I think that they were some very religious Christian group that wanted to give their members a way to watch videos with the guts and gore and swearing edited out. From what I recall, they were rather ethical about it (the copyright side of things), purchasing one new copy of every movie for each redacted one that they sold.

Now I may not agree that censoring movies like this is a good social move, but I am sympathetic to the idea. For persons who do not own the technology or have the known-how to auto-skip over parts of movies they do not want to see (blame the DMCA from banning such tools), such persons should be able to enlist someone else to do this editing (on a personal copy of the movie) as much as they damn well please (Doctrine of First-Sale, where did you go?).

Compare that kind of "filtering" with the actions of these ISPs: With "filtering" ISPs, people are enjoined from receiving original, unadulterated* content from the tubes. It is, without a doubt, more difficult for them to access the uncensored version, and in the case of embedding new content, it could be nigh impossible for the user to sieve the added bits from the original bits.

In the case of the Curse-Curtailing-Christians above (not an actual Hardy Boys title, but it should be), the end user has actively decided that they wish to choose a NEW product -- a derivative work of the original that is more to their liking -- while still respecting the original content producers and paying them the fair market price for the original content. Very importantly, while the consumer may choose the NEW product today, the original content is still available in the marketplace, if they ever wish to see what parts had been removed.

At the end of the day it comes down to the freedom to
1) Not have your communications be censored or filtered
2) Be able to modify (for personal use) any media that you have gainfully acquired

Why is this so difficult an idea? Why have we not yet addressed this issue in America?
As Pepé Le Pew might say, "Le Sigh".

* insert appropriate joke about the Internet being "Adult-e-Rated"...

Isn't there a simple solution to all this?

Encrypt everything. Someone more knowledgeable in the area can shed more light on this, but will any of this filtering software have any discernable effect if we encrypt all communications?

ISP's with bad DNS cache miss pages

My ISP (3web Canada) has taken to throwing up dnserror pages when a site cannot be found.

This seems to happen on misses on the DNS cache rather than failures to resolve to the root DNS server.

I have had the DNS error page appear for worldofwarcraft.com and slashdot.com.

The DNS error page throws up a bunch of ads. So the the failure to resolve to worldofwarcraft.com left me staring at a bunch of goldfarmer ads.

I can see lawsuits starting over this soon. The ISP has a financial incentive in failing to the DNS error page and serving the ad.

That's easy

Yes

Content Substitution...

Once this takes hold, you can bet news and government intelligence apparatuses will exploit this to the hilt. Propaganda, revisionist history, and deception will gradually be used more than ever to manipulate the public (of any country, internal or external).

Just look at how recently we find the current cadge/cabal in the white house has manipulated fact to bring about world disfavor upon Iran, which the UN and other agencies (even US intel agencies) now claim is not so badly outside of the line when it comes to the nukes and nuclear plants the bush administration so scathingly deride.

Capping data volume is one thing, but selective insertion or redaction of material will prove dangerous and render ever more untrustworthy any use the Internet(s) might have for anything other than frivolous entertainment.

Loss of Common Carrier Status

Does Rogers lose common carrier status if they try this?

This is complete bullEXCELLENT

I've really ENJOYED THE SAFETY I GET with web filtering. This sort of stuff has simply gone too NOT FAR ENOUGH. I'm so ABSOLUTELY CONTENT with Comcast, I'm going to go call them right now and VOLUNTARILY INCREASE THE AMOUNT I AM PAYING THEM, and I suggest that everybody else yell about HOW COMCASTIC THEIR SERVICE IS.

Sincerely,

SATISFIED CUSTOMER

End of the internet.

I hope it gets worse. Soon people will begin to say "fuck it" and go play outside, or go strengthen their minds with reading or conversation.

Vote only for politician supports net neutrality

We should send a strong and clear message that we do not want censorship of the internet by electing only politicians who support net neutrality and other anti-censorship and pro-rights measures. Dennis Kucinich is one candidate who does and who has a strong record of voting down other laws such as the Military Commissions act and the "thought crime" bill which is so loosely defined that peaceful protests could fall under its provisions.

This filtering and modifications of internet traffic is no different than what we see happening in china and else where, except corporations are doing censoring rather than the government directly. Many of these corporations have political alignments, often republican, so they could perhaps even abuse the power to manipulate political web pages. Its Really the same thing as what happens in china, the people who do it are different in name only, but they are both powerful elite establishment. The internet can be such a powerful tool of citisen empowerment that for the first time has given everyone free speech and the ability to publish and access information published by anyone else. It has decentralised information flow in a way that no single large entity can control it and thus use media channels for propogandisation purposes. The powers that be dont like this because they sense they are losing their power to meld the public mind at their wish and keep people ignorant and stupid, thus easily controlled. These corporations can easily become defacto government and through this power control what people can say, among so many other things.

If we value free speech, and the values of free expression and free thought, that has made this country great, we should soundly reject this pro censorship position. It is still censorship even if corporations which are sort of quasi governmental do it. ISPs should be considered common carriers, that is what they are, and they should be obliged just like a telephone company to carry data unmodified. They form a communications infrastructure in society, like the telephone network need to respect free speech rights.

Safe Harbor provisions

So, if ISPs begin modifying content that they deliver to their users, what happens in terms of the Safe Harbor provisions of the DMCA? By doing this, will they be opening themselves up to litigation from the MPAA/RIAA, or is it unrelated?

was there any other outcome possible ?

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 ?

On another note

Will the Torrent community start to find more efficient and effective ways of circumventing the content filtering? Something tells me yes they will. And the conflict goes on, and on and on and on.

ISps

Pleas don't be my ISP.

Ummmm look at the image....

The ISP isn't intercepting and modifying google....they are warning their user about hitting bandwidth overage charged. There is absolutely NO evidence presented that the ISP is paying any attention to which page they prepended their info to at all. And if they didn't go out of their way to warn users that they were approaching "you have to pay extra" territory, they would be excoriated for that.

ECPA violation?

Will someone please explain to me why content modification is not a violation of the ECPA (Electronic Communications Privacy Act [gpo.gov]. Clearly to modify content, you first have to intercept it.

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.

Don't see the problem

Okay so this has everyone up in a lather.. They didn't alter the content of the page, I don't think they identified a certain page and then made substitutions. If the user signs on and the first page that gets loaded gets a message added at the top regarding their account that they can opt out of.. what is the problem? Yes they COULD do all sorts of naughty stuff also, but they ALREADY could do that before. Seems like a fairly decent way to get important account messages in a way that can't get lost or missed.

Will ISP Web Content Filtering Continue to Grow?

In a word: Yes.

https - ssl

How about if connections are just switched over to https / ssl encryption technologies. Can you prepend to an encrypted page? How long before there's a FF plug-in to strip any non-encrypted element from a page? That kind of idea could stop this nonsense pretty quick.

Also, does their extra crap count towards your bandwidth caps?

What they're doing is actually a fine idea!

As an ISP myself, I think this is a fine idea. It doesn't change the original content of the page, and it's a great way to get a message to a user. For those of you who are not ISPs, it's important for you to understand that at times it is actually rather tough for an ISP to send a message to a customer reliably and quickly. We've tried e-mail, but some people don't check their mail or change their addresses without notice (often because they have revealed their addresses online and have gotten spammed to death at the one we know). We've tried sending notices via the Windows Message Service (at least when the users ran Windows), but that avenue only lasted until abusers started using it for pop-up spam. We've tried calling, but that's expensive, labor intensive, and time-consuming. Sending the message via the user's browser is not unlike the messages which TV stations superimpose on other material -- and is no more a violation of copyright. But it's far less annoying, because the user can dismiss the message once it's read. (Fortunately, it is not patentable, because services like Juno have been "framing" pages for years.) And warning the user is far more friendly than having an overage charge come as a surprise on the next bill.