Mediacom Using DPI To Hijack Searches, 404 Errors

Verteiron writes "Cable company Mediacom recently began using deep packet inspection to redirect 404 errors, Google and Bing searches to their own, ad-laden 'search engine.' Despite repeated complaints from customers, Mediacom continues this connection hijacking even after the user has opted out of the process. Months after the problem was first reported, the company seems unwilling or unable to fix it and has even experimented with injecting their own advertising into sites like Google. How does one get a company infamous for its shoddy customer service and comfortable, state-wide cable monopolies to act on an issue like this?"

Comments

HTTPS

[The MAZZTer]

Can't touch this!

Re:HTTPS

[Ice Tiger]

Yup, time for the web to go to HTTPS.

Re:HTTPS

[betterunixthanunix]

$10 says that ISPs will encourage their customers to use special "installation disks," which add an ISP's signing certificate to the list of trusted CAs and then start using MITM attacks. It takes more than HTTPS, it takes users who both care and understand what they are doing.

Re:HTTPS

[wlad]

+1: ISPs doing shit like this will speed up adoption of https, which is still not perfectly secure, but still much better than plaintext http.

Re:HTTPS

[Palmsie]

When have users ever cares or understood what they are doing? This is the entire premise of the Apple machine. They assume you don't; look how popular that has become.

Re:HTTPS

[The MAZZTer]

The web will likely need to go IPv6 first. When you connect to an HTTPS server, the certificate stuff takes place BEFORE your browser even tells the server what [sub]domain you are accessing, so you usually need a dedicated IP for each [sub]domain so the certificates can always match up.

Re:HTTPS

[cultiv8]

Yes they can. From SonicWall's Press Release:

SonicOS 5.6 adds a new deep packet inspection (DPI) engine for SSL encrypted traffic, which has increasingly become a blind spot in many firewall, content filtering and data leak protection schemes today. Bad guys have begun using encryption technologies against the very security communities that made them popular, using encryption to avoid the HTTPS protocol to bypass filters and expose networks to malware attacks.

Re:HTTPS

[wlad]

I doubt the legality of that in most free countries. Also, sites don't want their content to be hijacked and modified, it might even be a case of "DMCA circumvention" to pull a MITM attack like that.

Re:HTTPS

[betterunixthanunix]

....and yet, Mediacom is hijacking search queries. Why is adding an MITM attack any more illegal than hijacking the queries in the first place?

Re:HTTPS

[david.emery]

Someone please mod as troll.

Re:HTTPS

[digitalsushi]

Are you going to paypal me or will you cut a check?

Re:HTTPS

[sverdlichenko]

No they can't. HTTPS inspection works only if user installed "trusted" certificate on his computer. This can be done in corporate environment, but not for home users.

Re:HTTPS

[Scott Laird]

That's not exactly true; SNI allows for HTTPS multihoming, and it's supported by the HTTPS on pretty much every modern platform, *except* for Windows XP. Browsers that use Window's HTTPS code (most of them, IIRC) can't cope with SNI on XP, so no one actually uses it anywhere yet.

Re:HTTPS

[Ice Tiger]

Even so it has now raised the bar for DPI and changing incoming HTML, in the days of AOL where you had to have software to use a modem I could see getting ISP signed certs installed on the userbase as very easy but now where a wifi router is the primary interface to the ISP am not so sure. Not to mention that the ISP has to get those certs onto Windows, Macs, iOS devices and Android too.

Also what would the legal implication be of an ISP commiting a MITM attach on a customers HTTPS session.

Re:HTTPS

[Chutzpah]

That's a neat trick.

I suspect that's just marketing speak for it doing heuristic analysis based on the endpoint and possibly packet timings, there is no way to actually do DPI on properly implemented SSL packets without using a MITM attack (for which they would need a locally installed CA).

Unless of course they have managed to find a way to efficiently factor large numbers, though that strikes me as rather unlikely.

Re:HTTPS

[Yold]

Isn't this public key encryption? You DO know how that works right? Even if the eavesdropper has the public key (transmitted across the wire), it won't do jack. Think of it as 1-way encryption.

Re:HTTPS

[wlad]

Well, I guess it's worse because in that case they are circumventing a protection measure (encryption, digital signature), and impersonating some other site. I agree this is a legal grey area too, who knows who'd win if Google/Microsoft decided to sue.

Re:HTTPS

[Technician]

Ad one more step. Use another DNS server or put the Real Google HTTPS IP address in the hosts file so the ISP can't redirect it with a corrupt DNS server.

Re:HTTPS

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

The press release does mention that client proxy configuration is not needed, so clearly those boxes are more sophisticated than the quite-explicitly-and-by-design man in the middle that is the classic proxy server; but they fail to say that no client configuration is needed, which one would have expected, were it the case, to be touted as a feature.

I suspect that doing DPI on SSLed traffic requires that the client be configured to trust certificates generated with a key that the firewall has access to, so that it can catch a client's SSL connection attempt, set itself up as the client to which the remote host establishes a connection, inspect the resulting plaintext, and then encrypt it with its own key so that the client doesn't notice anything amiss.

Because any trusted CA can, without a warning being issued, sign for any domain, the technique comes up as a serious problem with SSL security whenever a CA does something stupid(as with Comodo) or shows clear organizational tendencies toward evil(as with Etisalat). In a corporate/institutional context, pushing your own in-house CA as trusted is fairly trivial, so the bar would be a lot lower than pulling it off in the wild...

Re:HTTPS

[NevarMore]

Think of it as 1-way encryption.

Except completely different from a hash.

Re:HTTPS

[betterunixthanunix]

Not to mention that the ISP has to get those certs onto Windows, Macs, iOS devices and Android too.

Well, without specification regulations (ahem net neutrality) prohibiting this, couldn't an ISP just dictate that only certain operating systems are allowed to be used? That would make the task a whole lot easier. Windows and Mac OS X only? No problem for the ISPs.

On the other hand, they could be a little less aggressive, and only perform the attack on customers who actually make use of the disk that they are given. You would be surprised as to just how many customers actually insert those disks into their computers.

Also what would the legal implication be of an ISP commiting a MITM attach on a customers HTTPS session.

I would like to think that it would be the same as the legal implications of hijacking search queries, since some random hacker would not receive a less harsh sentence for performing such hijacking without an MITM attack than with one.

Re:HTTPS

[erroneus]

No, he's essentially correct.

Those days are essentially behind us, generally speaking, but you can't tell me that you never met someone who proudly stated "I'm computer illiterate" before? The primary draw of Mac OS was "it's so easy!" And it was! It also meant it would take a back seat to most of the newest and cutting-edge stuff, but the "easy" crowd didn't care about cutting-edge anyway... sounded dangerous after all.

Like it or not, "easy" was a primary marketing point for Apple. And seriously, even today, what about Apple stuff is hard, difficult or complicated? You can still "uninstall" a program by removing its icon! (Not true in the case of Microsoft Office, but that's Microsoft ain't it?) Sure you can get "into the tech" with Mac OS X if you want to now, but still.

I'm guessing you are an Apple user and you somehow took that personally. Aren't you an exception to the rule though? After spending time supporting Mac in a business environment, I can safely say that Apple users are less technically sophisticated than PC users. I didn't say "dumber" just less technically sophisticated. To insert the old car analogy, Apple users drive "automatics" while Windows users drive "standards." The result of the difference is that Windows users end up with knowledge like what a swap file is used for or that a DLL is conflicting after a recent installation of software. PC users learn more because they experience more problems.

Now, are you STILL offended?

Re:HTTPS

[GameboyRMH]

Heck why not just inject browser exploit code into the customer's traffic? It's more eco-friendly and they're already MITM'ing customers anyways. There are already viruses out there that do this.

Re:HTTPS

[h4rr4r]

It does MITM. You install sonicwalls CA cert on all the machines in the company to do this. Not something you can do to home users.

Re:HTTPS

[DarkOx]

Right and I you should point out that if you don't install their certificate for the sites they are MITMing you will just get a certificate warning. Unless you can tunnel your traffic someplace else if they are redirecting destination port 443 to Google's net block your traffic is going to hit their proxy. You can accept it or refuse and not get the page.

They can force most users to just live with it.

Re:HTTPS

[mjeffers]

No they can't. HTTPS inspection works only if user installed "trusted" certificate on his computer. This can be done in corporate environment, but not for home users.

That makes it sound like all an ISP would have to do is to put this certificate into an installer that provides it's users with "valuable connection tools and internet utilities". Ship a few CDs to customers and you'll get a large number of people installing and clicking through whatever dialogs pop up because they think they'll need to in order to get online.

Re:HTTPS

[mehrotra.akash]

There would probably be a clause in the subscriber agreement allowing it

Re:HTTPS

[david.emery]

Short answer, yes. When I'm working on software/systems architecture standards, etc, there is a disproportionate number of Macs around the room. The value of the Mac as a platform is that it can be simple, but that it also has the full power of Unix underneath. That makes the platform appealing to both those who don't want to have to mess with their computers (like my mother) and to those of us who routinely use "su" and other such facilities. A lot of what I know about working on Unix machines fully transfers over to the Mac.

Making a machine easy to use is not necessarily correlated with ignorant users. A strong platform should support users at all levels.

Re:HTTPS

[mlts]

If an ISP starts doing that, that is more of an active attack and can be viewed in the courts as "OMG, they have an active backdoor!!!1" as opposed to the MITM spoofing which juries would be hazy on understanding.

Redirecting traffic is one thing. Installing software, adding "backdoor" SSL keys, and modifying a user's computer is something even a hung over Joe Sixpack or Jane Xanax might even understand. In fact, it can just be called "the ISP installs a virus" by the attorneys which gets the point across to almost anyone.

Re:HTTPS

[gstoddart]

When have users ever cares or understood what they are doing? This is the entire premise of the Apple machine. They assume you don't; look how popular that has become.

Well, maybe not fucking around with things like the registry is a really good thing. Every time I see an MS article that starts off with regedit, it's pretty easy to see why the users don't want to care or understand how to do the really arcane shit. That was a crappy system when they introduced it, and it's not really any better now.

If the option came down to a "hand-holding" Apple experience, an annoying and frustrating Windows experience, or an arcane voo-doo experience with Linux ... I'm betting the overwhelming majority of users are going to opt for the simplest possible experience. I'd opt for it, and I've worked in the industry for 15 years or so.

Users just don't care or understand about things like CA's or trying to keep their ISP from being able to launch a MITM attack against them -- for the same reasons that users of the telephone system don't need to know about the PBX and other infrastructure technologies. They treat it like their car -- "skinny pedal go fast".

Like it or not, the ISP is treated like a phone company -- as long as they're free to fuck with your packet streams, it's happening at a level that most users will never understand. The internet has become ubiquitous, and at a certain point, even people with some technical know-how either don't know or acre about all of the details of what's happening at that level.

Re:HTTPS

[_0xd0ad]

And if they're especially devious they'd just block everything that looks like HTTPS traffic until the user installs the certificate.

Re:HTTPS

[gmack]

Just a note for people running PCI-DSS compliant environments: I was told by my PCI auditor that even though PCI-DSS requires the use of an IDS that does DPS and even though it's rendered useless by the fact that all of my traffic is encrypted. I'm still not permitted to setup any sort of decryption on the firewall.

Re:HTTPS

[gmack]

FireFox is the exception. FF on XP uses it's own SSL libs that support SNI. My server config days will get so much easier when XP dies.

Re:HTTPS

[calmofthestorm]

Isn't MITM fraud? and felony computer hacking Or do you consent in the EULA?

Re:HTTPS

[bhtooefr]

Nitpick: Not all FWD vehicles are V6s, especially not GM 90 degree V6s.

Re:HTTPS

[yuna49]

Like it or not, the ISP is treated like a phone company

No, the problem is that ISPs are not treated like a phone company. They're not regulated as common-carriers. The FCC considered re-categorizing ISPs as a "Title II" telecommunications service, but backed away after Congressional opposition. Now the Commission is proposing a "third way" which seems unlikely to satisfy either the ISPs or their critics. Here's a quick summary: http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/06/fcc-outlines-new-third-way-internet-regulatory-plan-will-spli/

To my mind, ISPs shouldn't be able to process traffic based on anything other than packet headers. Their job is to take a packet I create and deliver it to its intended destination. (Yes, yes, QOS, etc. Whatever is in the headers is fine by me.) DPI equipment should be banned. Anything else offers too many opportunities for censorship and manipulation.

Re:HTTPS

[erroneus]

We are talking about marketing and demographics, not about technical merit and features. The marketing and demographic of Apple are those who want to use their computers without necessarily knowing how they work at a deep level. But it doesn't sound like you have been an Apple user for all that long. I've dealt with Mac since it was black and white and with all the improvements since that time. I know the people who were attracted to it and the people who wanted it but couldn't afford it. (The reputation that Apple was too expensive has a strong historical basis in fact!)

I've seen a lot of coming and going in the desktop PC world. Ever code for a 64KB limited machine? I have. Motorola makes awesome processors with logical and consistent instruction sets. Intel didn't... probably still doesn't. Let's just say I see a very big picture and while I am "pro-Linux" and anti-Microsoft and anti-Apple, it is largely because of technical and idealogical merits. But I am prepared to change my opinion of either company when they change their behavior. It's as simple as that.

So, being offended means you draw some sense of identity with your product preferences. I guess that's par for the course -- I have even seen auto mechanics get a bit "weird" about brands of tools they use. (Don't tell anyone I use the Home Depot or Lowe's store branded tools! Someone will laugh at me!!!)

Re:HTTPS

[I(rispee_I(reme]

'encourage their customers to use special "installation disks,"'? More like require. EVERY time there's a power outage in my area, I have to install AT&T's shitware in a VM just to get the DSL working. Of course they swear it's a problem on my end, caused by the power outage, but kicking the power on the surge protector does not reproduce the problem.

The thing that galls me is that unwitting customers are installing the crap because AT&T redirects all traffic to a webpage that says "THE INTERNET NEEDS THIS SOFTWARE TO WORK". To top it off, it doesn't come with a way to uninstall it. And of course the internet works fine without it, hopefully I didn't need to tell you that.

I have spent hours on the phone with their "support" and they all claim that a) the problem is on my end, and b) they can't give me the internet I've paid them for until I install their shitty software. Not "won't", "can't". You can google motivesmart if you are an AT&T dsl user.

Re:HTTPS

[david.emery]

I started using Macs in '84 or '85 and bought an SE in '86, with continuous ownership since then.

Re:HTTPS

[gstoddart]

No, the problem is that ISPs are not treated like a phone company. They're not regulated as common-carriers.

Sorry, yes. Exactly correct ... I meant that to the end user, the ISP is treated the same as the phone company. It's infrastructure, or at least, that's how people think of it.

Heck, in a lot of cases, your ISP probably is the same as your phone company -- or at least your cable. In my case, it's all 3, plus my cell phones.

To my mind, ISPs shouldn't be able to process traffic based on anything other than packet headers. Their job is to take a packet I create and deliver it to its intended destination

I couldn't agree more.

Re:HTTPS

[devnullkac]

The press release is pretty hard to decipher, but the phrase "Bad guys ... using encryption to avoid the HTTPS protocol to bypass filters" makes it appear that the real goal is to block the use of SSL on non-standard ports, so I think the DPI is actually being used to detect SSL, not to open it up and read the encrypted data.

Re:HTTPS

[h4rr4r]

This is a very important and correct thing to note. Thanks for adding it, I totally forgot about that little snag.

Re:HTTPS

[scot4875]

Good for you. You are not representative of the typical Apple customer base. You are not the customer that Apple is trying to capture with its advertising campaigns. You are not the clueless hipster that's been sold on image and says "it just works!" and then does logical gymnastics to justify why it's "just working!" when it clearly isn't.

--Jeremy

Re:HTTPS

[david.emery]

Well, Macs also work quite well for my mother and my brother, neither of whom have any prior computing experience. My mother is definitely of the "turn it on, check her email, check a few websites, turn it off" variety. My brother (carpenter by trade) has become more interested in the technology and is doing a lot more with system configuration including WiFI set up, etc.

I wonder how YOU justify the "when it clearly isn't" remark.

Re:HTTPS

[ComputerGeek01]

I've seen this term thrown around this thread a lot: MITM. This stands for Man In The Middle, a MITM attack is when an entity, a person or group of people, takes your connection to what ever host and forwards it through their machine. As the service provider MediaCom IS ALREADY THE MAN IN THE MIDDLE. Wikipedia doesn't have an informative article on them but they appear to be a Tier 1 provider so you require their infrastructure to use the internet, that means their systems, their cables and most importantly their DNS tables.

They see your IP connecting to some website, they also see the traffic to and from your machine. They don't need to break any kind of code and read every packet they only need to filter out the legit packets and insert their own. You and a hundred other posts on this thread are over thinking this.

Re:HTTPS

[SuricouRaven]

Slashdot is anti-Apple now. It wasn't always this way. They were even seen as champions once, fighting for Unix against the otherwise unstoppable monster of Microsoft. Then they grew, and were no longer the David fighting the MS Goliath - they were just another big company embracing DRM, locking down their technology to keep tinkerers from hacking it, trying to control everything to increase profit and finding new ways to prevent interoperability and keep competitors out. Just another evil empire now. The final straw was when they introduced the app store, but for hardware that was locked down and designed to be incapable of executing any code not explicitly signed and approved by Apple - to a community of open-source enthusiasts, this is one of the worst crimes a company can commit.

Re:HTTPS

[SuricouRaven]

It's not illegal if the user consents. Even if the consent is found in paragraph seven, clause c, page 79 of 115 in the contract.

Re:HTTPS

[SuricouRaven]

DNSSEC should also prevent them from doing that, but it isn't widely implimented. Even if it were, I imagine that if they were to simply block it most clients would fall back to DNS-nonsec by default.

Re:HTTPS

[ThatMegathronDude]

I never let the cable guy touch my machine. Router has an IP address, kthxbye!

Re:HTTPS

[CynicTheHedgehog]

I think this is hilarious. I had exactly the opposite experience. I had DSL installed under BellSouth (whose service was phenomenal) and then initiated a "move" order after they merged with AT&T. As part of the move I was supposed to get a new router (the old one was no longer supported) and a new installation disk.

So 2 weeks later--no router, no disc. I call up, and they tell me my router isn't supported and I had to configure it myself. 8 days and 16 phone calls later they discover it is actually a problem on their end, and to fix it they had to wipe out my entire account (including E-mail) and re-install me. 2 days later its working on my old router (still no new router or install disk) with 75% packet loss and 128 Kbps throughput. Ridiculous.

Anyway, all that to say that with DSL (AT&T at least) all you need to do is reset the router to factory defaults, go to http://192.168.0.1/ and set up NAT. (All DSL modems/routers I've dealt with have the factory gateway IP and admin credentials printed on a sticker with the MAC address, etc.) I think I had to put in PPP username and password, as well, but you don't need a disk for that.

And on cable, once the tech installs the modem (which acts like a gateway/bridge) you can put anything you want behind it.

Such is the beauty of TCP/IP and Ethernet.

Re:HTTPS

[1s44c]

ISPs already install a bunch of crap on your machine when you sign up unless you watch the guy like a hawk and make sure hee doesn't install anything. I don't think they'd have an issue doing this.

Watch the guy? I've never had anyone from an ISP configuring my computer. They ship me a box, and either they or I plug it in. I configure all my equipment,

Re:HTTPS

[1s44c]

FireFox is the exception. FF on XP uses it's own SSL libs that support SNI. My server config days will get so much easier when XP dies.

If XP dies. It's going to be a very long death.

Re:HTTPS

[Metabolife]

The firewall contacts the CA and verifies the identity of the site you're attempting to access. The firewall then responds with its own certificate, claiming to be from the CA you requested. Your browser will never know the difference. The firewall then decrypts the traffic you send out and inspects it. Done.

Re:HTTPS

[Steeltoe]

Your typical knee-jerk reaction is the sole reason I've de-bookmarked /.

Why try to post anything meaningful or interesting if people are not willing to discuss, only moderate down what they already "know"?

Re:HTTPS

[Steeltoe]

Not really. "MITM-attack" may mean many different kinds of attack, and is not usually referred to as a breah of network, but whatever malicious purposes such a position as being in the middle can be abused for. Of course, the "Man" is found in the "middle" of your communication between your hopefully trustworthy partner. However, "MITM-attack" doesn't specify wether the "Man" was already there or not, just that "he or she's in the middle" and is doing somethiing they're not supposed to. The connection being HTTP, well, who can blame them? Who uses HTTP today when there are so many better options? Oh yeah, the entire fuckin world! Who's stupid now?

Basically, an ISP fuckin with your packets, is entirely within the definition of MITM-attack. An ISP doing this is in fact in breach of your trust, and has by doing such, gotten a proven track-record of untrustworthiness.

Re:HTTPS

[celtic_hackr]

Well, that's grand plan, except for a few minor details.

1) The certificate will either have the wrong name and the browser will complain about that, or
2) they will have created certificates in the name of pretty much everyplace you want to go, which would clearly be a huge amount of work and very illegal to boot, or
3) they will create on-the-fly fake certificates which the browser will likely complain about, or you'll have funky behavior when you actually get to the real site, because the certificates won't match and the encryption won't match.
4) If they successfully fool you and take your encrypted datastream that is intended for another site, and decrypt it and send it along and forward the responses back, that would be highly criminal.

In any event your scenario is highly improbable to go undetected.

Re:HTTPS

[celtic_hackr]

Actually, you can use your own DNS servers. I've done it in the past.

Re:HTTPS

[hawaiian717]

I have had the same experience with AT&T DSL and U-Verse internet, in a region that was, once upon a time, Pacific Bell. Never needed to install any special software, even after AT&T's 2Wire DSL gateway died and I replaced it with one I bought at Fry's. After moving and getting U-Verse, the installation tech told me flat out I didn't need to install the software package the web site prompted me to download when I was activating the service through their web site. Using Safari on a PowerBook G4.

Re:HTTPS

[PhunkySchtuff]

I'm sure if they talked to the right person at, say, Comodo if they could have an ssl cert for *.google.com, they'd probably just hand it out...

Re:HTTPS

[Metabolife]

How would option 2 be illegal?

Why would the browser complain about the fake certificates? As far as the browser knows, the CA identity is hard-coded and secure. The server may attempt to verify the certificate, but then the firewall can intercept that as well.

Re:HTTPS

[DinDaddy]

Same here. Been on SBC nee ATT DSL and now Uverse for about 8 years, same situation with my DSL router dying, and never used any ATT software. In fact, at this point, I have bypassed their stupid gateway for DNS lookups as it was sitting in them for up to 1-2 minutes and causing errors for wifi access, going directly to ATT's main DNS machines and everything works really smoothly.

Re:HTTPS

[Jaxoreth]

To insert the old car analogy, Apple users drive "automatics" while Windows users drive "standards."

I would have said that Windows users drive "manuals".

Re:HTTPS

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Given that the product mentioned is marketed as an enterprise firewall setup, and that they explicitly mention no proxy configuration; but not no client configuration, I'd say that a slight variant of #3 would likely be the order of the day.

Installing your own CA as trusted on machines you control is pretty easy, and not legally problematic, and once you do that you can generate certs for any domain, on the fly, that the client will trust without a word of complaint. I'm sure that the techniques for reliably and transparently grabbing the SSL session before it starts, and setting yourself up as the MitM took some doing to get working properly; but generating valid-looking certs for any domain, when you control the clients, is not the hard part(it might well lead to amusing results if somebody tries to use portable Firefox or similar, which won't have the corporate CA as trusted, and suddenly sees an error on every SSLed page...).

Re:HTTPS

[rtb61]

It is straight up copyright infraction. All websites are copyrighted by default. When Medicom intercepts and alters the web site without the permission of the website owner it is committing a copyright infraction.

Truth is ISPs should be bound by common carrier status and be barred from monitoring, intercepting, censoring and, altering the digital communications they carry.

They are also committing trademark infringement by association their content with the trademarks of others companies. Best way to handle it, let it go for a few months and then hit then with a mega copyright and trademark infringement lawsuit for hundreds of millions of dollars.

Re:HTTPS

[nobodie]

We Chinese have this scam totally past you puny westerners. First we block google, facebook, twitter, youtube, any blogs or political sites as well as many other random pages people might want to visit. Then, any failed connection gets redirected to the government "search engine" which makes sure that you can't find anything that might be "pornographic" (like pictures or commentary of pornographic protesters or pornographic political criminals like that Nobel prize pornographer) and then you are protected together with your children because if you are thinking about pornography you will pollute the environment that your children are growing up in and they will become polluted by these pornographic thoughts. We are just trying to protect the mental stability of our beloved people and their precious offspring who are the hope of our future!

More kool-aid?

Re:HTTPS

[Manos_Of_Fate]

Sort of how your mail carrier opening all of your mail is still breaking the law, as being authorized to carry your mail doesn't give them the right to open it.

Re:HTTPS

[Steeltoe]

Correct. However, with law intention and actual consequences matter more than the technical procedure. The mail carrier programs may copy your bits and bytes, they may even include this right in their customer agreement (not EULA) or even generate anonymous "personized ads" However, the moment they start manually snooping in your personal mail for personal gains, they're on thin legal ice.

Usually though, the term "MITM-attack" is used for unconventional attacks, not expected ones such as these. But this doesn't make it NOT a MITM-attack IMHO. Especially so if the carrier is a trusted entity, and has breached that trust. (Trust is not a security feature, it's a security HOLE, most people are not used to thinking in these lines..)

Exactly

[Anonymous Coward]

First, use https everywhere. They can't hijack google when you use ssl. If you want to block ads, use privoxy. You can block ads for the entire family this way, and also force https on many sites without using plugins. For example:

{ +redirect{s@http://@https://@i} }
.google.com
.twitter.com
.paypal.com
.googleapis.com
.amazonaws.com
www.nytimes.com
.googleusercontent.com
.myspace.com
.facebook.com
.wordpress.com
( -redirect }
www.google.com/imghp
cache.pack.google.com/edgedl/chrome/install/
www.google.com/chrome

Finally, use tor. They can't touch anything that goes through tor.

Well also, keep complaining. It does a lot of good to keep shaming them.

Re:Exactly

[Neil Boekend]

Is it possible to use Tor for http and no Tor for https? This would quite effectively protect all important logons (no. I don't count twitter and facebook as important. Your bank should use https)

Re:Exactly

[GameboyRMH]

Is it possible to use Tor for http and no Tor for https?

I'd say that's the opposite of what you should be doing if you're worried about honeypot Tor exit nodes. You should run HTTPS over Tor and use Perspectives to make sure you aren't getting MITM'ed. Don't run unencrypted stuff over Tor that you don't want anyone else to see.

Re:Exactly

[mlts]

https anywhere is an excellent suggestion, as it shuts down Phorm-like attacks down.

I'd recommend some additional items as well:

1: If you can do this on your router, I'd find the IPs for the dodgy ISP's ad servers, and block [1] them.

2: Adblock, Ghostery, and BetterPrivacy are a must. At least Adblock, because this protects against incoming malicious software far more than any AV utility. Until ad rotating sites take responsibility and stop allowing clients to serve up malicious code, blocking ads is a security measure.

3: Consider a VPN service. I use one for my mobile devices when using open wireless networks not just to stop FireSheep like attacks, but to keep my personal traffic just between me and the VPN provider.

4: PeerBlock plus iBlocklist. This isn't just for people wanting to infringe on IP, but there are also well maintained IP lists for malicious sites, ad sites, and nasty stuff in general.

[1]: Drop packets going from your machine to the ad server, reject packets going from the adserver to you. The reason behind this -- the drop sends an error packet back, telling your machine that there is an issue, and not to keep waiting until a timeout.

Re:Exactly

[Savantissimo]

TOR is 86% US government financed according to PGPBOARD Administrator Alan Taylor. ( http://www.pgpboard.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=435 ).
Why? (Aside from SIGINT made possible by their covert control over the software and many of the routers, of course.) http://cryptome.org/0003/tor-spy.htm .

Don't trust TOR too much. Even if all the above were false, it is a very small network with thin traffic running over providers' links that we have known for several years are being monitored by the NSA for traffic analysis.

Re:Exactly

[celtic_hackr]

I simply block any web traffic on port 80 from Mediacom.

File an Anti-Trust Complaint

[techsoldaten]

File an anti-trust complaint and break up the monopoly. That is what those laws are for.

Re:File an Anti-Trust Complaint

[CharlieHedlin]

Most cable companies are most heavily regulated by local franchise agreements. If I had Mediacom doing this in my area I would probably have to start attending city council meetings to speak against them at every opportunity. I have a terribly despised ISP in my neighborhood, but they have recently upgraded their network and have provided me with great service (I believe they do NXDomain crap, but I use OpenDNS. They do it too but I have at least chosen them).

Re:File an Anti-Trust Complaint

[crovira]

Should have been done years ago.

Its to bad we had to wait until Verizon's FiOS and AT&T's battle over data plans duking it out with ComCast & TimeWarner's networks to end up with a duopoly with two children at a time playing badly (and clearly illegally,) with other people's toys.

Re:File an Anti-Trust Complaint

[david.emery]

Find out what jurisdiction awarded/oversees the Mediacom franchise and start with them. For what it's worth, Virginia's State Corporations Commission has been very responsive to my complaint about Verizon service.

Re:File an Anti-Trust Complaint

[corbettw]

Good luck getting them to break up a government granted monopoly.

Re:File an Anti-Trust Complaint

[EvanED]

I believe they do NXDomain crap, but I use OpenDNS. They do it too but I have at least chosen them

Consider Google DNS if that's important to you. They don't do NX Domain hijacking near as I can tell. That's what I use, for that reason.

Re:File an Anti-Trust Complaint

[CSFFlame]

If you make an Opendns acct and link your IP you can shut off the NXDomain crap.

Re:File an Anti-Trust Complaint

[T-Bone-T]

Unfortunately, some things are natural monopolies. If every monopoly was broken up, you'd have a phone line for every phone company, a cable for every cable company, power lines for every electric company, gas lines for every gas company, pipes for every water company, so on and so forth. Sometimes a monopoly is better, sometimes it is abused. The solution is to stop the abuse, not to break up the monopoly.

Vote with your feet

[Anonymous Coward]

The only way companies will truly reform is when they risk losing customers. Stop complaining but cancel your contract and tell them (and the rest of the world) why.

Re:Vote with your feet

[maxwell demon]

The only way companies will truly reform is when they risk losing customers. Stop complaining but cancel your contract and tell them (and the rest of the world) why.

Well, if you are without internet connection, it's a bit harder to tell the world why. :-)

Re:Vote with your feet

[Cor-cor]

That would be wonderful. Here's an anecdote as to why this plan fails for me in particular.

I unfortunately have Mediacom in my area. They've effectively got it made so that you can't do this. First, they charge $20/month more (I believe it was) for a non-contract plan, which adds up, and so now I'll get hit with a $200+ cancellation fee if I try switching. I also pay for an internet/cable package even though I don't want cable because it is cheaper than the same speed internet by itself. A lot of the things they do don't make much sense until you look at it from their point of view - they've got you over a barrel and are going to take as much of your money as they can.

The main problem, alluded to in the summary, is that there really is no other option. When I moved to my current town, I tried finding something else - called their main competitor Qwest up, no service in my area. The only other option was Iowa Telecom, which went under and got bought out within a couple months of when I was trying to set up services. The new company was not in the phone book, did not have a functional website, and I think I finally found their number in a newspaper ad or something. It was going to be about $10 less for substantially slower DSL, and was going to take 3-4 weeks to set up if I remember correctly. Mediacom does take 2-3 weeks to make a house call. And as bad as Mediacom's service had been in my experience, everyone from the area told me Iowa Telecom was worse somehow. In fact there are many who get their internet through a cellular company because a wireless dongle with tiny bandwidth caps and an expensive data plan is superior to Mediacom in many ways.

I live out in the ass end of Iowa in a small town where I'm new without many friends. We are actually too far from every single major city to pick up any television stations, and only get a couple radio stations consistently. I was starved for entertainment before they got my internet hooked up and had a lot more trouble keeping up with friends from school and whatnot. Don't get me wrong, I hate this damn ad page that they're talking about. I hate getting hung up on while on hold with customer service/sales/anybody I call there. I hate getting an envelope stuffed full of ads every month so that I nearly throw away my bill with all of the crap I don't want. I would love to switch from Mediacom, there's just nowhere to go.

Re:Vote with your feet

[lpq]

That's a myth.

Companies don't care about losing unsatisfied customers when they are a monopoly -- the fact that they are monopoly guarantees them replacement customers. This is one reason why cable companies are fighting against broadband neutrality, since it would be possible for customers to get all their needed programs "ala carte" (something the cable company has been claiming is 'impossible' for decades) by paying only for what they want to watch (assuming it wasn't 'free' with ads included). Such an option would provide true competition -- but without that, voting with your feet is an illusion to make you feel good.

Re:Get another ISP!

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

I'd hope Google would sue them for copyright violation, changing their webpage in transit, and collect damages per changed page. Additionally they create confusion by diluting Google's trademarks (and those of anyone else whose page is changed). I mean this violates so many laws it isn't funny.

You could serve them with a DMCA cease and decist notice as a normal website author. Fight fire with fire.

Complain to google

[nedlohs]

Rant and rave about shitty their website is with all the damn flashing advertisements at the top of the screen. If enough people do this, then google might actually take a look instead of ignoring the idiot user complaining about the non-existant.

Then given google is an advertising company they are likely to send the lawyers to stop said ISP from messing with their bread and butter.

Re:Complain to google

[nedlohs]

That's the point.

Sue them

[mangu]

What they are doing is fraud. Sue them and use *AA scales to calculate compensatory damages. Assume each false-404 corresponds to one music download, charge the normal $75000 per song.

Simple

[haystor]

"How does one get a company infamous for its shoddy customer service and comfortable, state-wide cable monopolies to act on an issue like this?""

More regulation, obviously.

Re:Simple

[h4rr4r]

Not more, just better.
Regulation Number 1. He who owns the fiber/copper may not provide service over it.
Regulation Number 2. He who owns the fiber/copper must sell access to all comers for the same price.
Regulation Number 3. He who provides the service may not own media companies.
Regulation Number 4. If anyone gains more than 51% of the market, split the company in two.

Re:Simple

[smelch]

I suggest 76% then you split. Otherwise makes sense.

Re:Simple

[NevarMore]

Lets just implement directive 10-289 while we're at it.

Re:Simple

[maxwell demon]

Regulation Number 1. He who owns the fiber/copper may not provide service over it.

Evasion Strategy Number 1: Make two companies, owned both by you (through sufficient indirections through holdings etc. to make this non-obvious). One holds the fiber/copper, one provides the service.

Regulation Number 2. He who owns the fiber/copper must sell access to all comers for the same price.

Evasion Strategy Number 2: Have that equal price so high that nobody will be interested, except for your service company (which is always on the edge of bancruptcy, which doesn't hurt, because you get your money from that other company; indeed, being at the edge of bancruptcy may even help in exploiting the workers, not to mention that it's probably useful for tax reasons, too).

Regulation Number 3. He who provides the service may not own media companies.

See Evasion Strategy Number 1.

Regulation Number 4. If anyone gains more than 51% of the market, split the company in two.

OK, then have several companies "competing" with each other, both owned by you (see Evasion Strategy Number 1).

Re:Simple

[h4rr4r]

This is why you make duck laws. If it quacks like and duck and looks like a duck, its a duck.

I would also highly suggest the service company be run like the post office.

Re:Simple

[NevarMore]

I would also highly suggest the service company be run like the post office.

By the government, at a loss, slowly, heavily unionized, and prone to losing/breaking the things it is entrusted to move about?

Re:Simple

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean "less likely to damage its trusted cargo than either of the major private carriers"? Sure, why not? I would have used the Interstate Highway system as my analogy, but whatever boats your float.

Re:Simple

[Archangel Michael]

Change #1 to Municipality owned pathways, then you don't need #2 except as preventative measure. Number 3 is punitive to media companies and customers that want media. If a Media company wants to provide service, let them. With #1 (and #2) #3 is not really needed either. #4 won't ever come close to happening if we have real competition at #3.

SO, the real solution is to have each municipality (city, county, perish .. whatever) put in their own fiber, and charge a set fee to provide service across that fiber. That fee goes to maintaining the cable plant and into the general fund. After that, there is no need for #2-4 at all.

Re:Simple

[h4rr4r]

Slow, 3 days across country for a couple dollars is slow?
They are the cheapest and lose/break less than the other carriers.
They only operate as a loss as they are forbidden to raise prices except for with inflation. Since we fudge they inflation number they are stuck in the middle.

I am not sure when Americans decided unions were evil, but I enjoy 40hour weeks and 5 day work weeks. Without unions we would all be virtual slaves.

Re:Simple

[Bucc5062]

See, this is whats great about "crowd sourcing" ideas. h4rr4r tosses out some good ideas (I like em), you play the shady schister business name to poke holes in the rules, the rules get adjusted to limit said shady practice. I am not that good at thinking evil nor business oriented, but my go at adjustment:
  1 - Any owner of fiber must post any and all other company holdings to FCC.
  2 - See 1
  3 - Any owner of service (ISP) must post any and all other company holdings FCC and release media company holdings
  4 - See 1 & 3.

Also, random audits would be applied to all companies including infrastructure, service, and content provider. Any violations results in fines and forced restructuring (splitting) companies.

There was a time when one media company could not hold more the (33%?) of the local market including TV, Newspapers, and magazines. That seems riddled with holes, but who is to say that we can't get similar limits to secure a more competative market.

Re:Simple

[dcollins]

Subsection 5. Regulatory capture will allow a sufficiently successful business to rewrite all the above when it becomes an issue.

Re:Simple

[Even on Slashdot FOE]

I don't know where you live, but I don't have that issue. The only thing vaguely wrong with my mail is that a lot of it wont fit into my mailbox flat. I have received exactly one damaged box, and the contents were intact.

Re:Simple

[scot4875]

You have statistics to back up your anecdotes, I assume? No? You're just spewing bullshit?

Here's the closest thing I could find to statistics that compare the major shipping companies and the USPS:

USPS is actually better.

The rest of the links I could find were all just "U(S)PS/FedEx damaged my package!" bitching.

--Jeremy

Re:Simple

[scot4875]

I love it when people suggest possible fixes to the system and freetards come in and say that the best solution is to do nothing; conveniently ignoring things like child slave labor and exploitive employment practices of the past that were only solved by -- you guessed it -- restricting the free market. (the reply... "But those markets weren't really free! The children and employees weren't free to make choices, and if they had been, they would have never chosen those conditions! The market was already distorted by <insert some excuse> and those conditions no longer exist today!")

The free market is there to solve a problem. It only solves the problem in the way you want if you define the parameters of how you want it solved. It's called a constraint satisfaction problem. It will certainly find a solution. Whether that solution is worth shit or not depends ENTIRELY on the rules we set for it.

--Jeremy

Re:Simple

[sjames]

How about proper regulation rather than sweetheart deals that pretend to be regulation.

Re:Simple

[MoonBuggy]

I'm a little surprised how polarised the issue of regulation becomes - maybe it's just that those with the strongest views speak the loudest, but it always seems to end up framed as a heated debate about near total control vs. little to no control. It seems to me that the real problem is that much of the regulation is stupid and/or disproportionately favours certain groups, and that arguing about the quantity is a little counter-productive.

More or less regulation would be better than what we have now, assuming that 'more' was actually put together sensibly and genuinely designed to benefit the public at large. If we can't have 'more' under those constraints, then 'less' is the next best thing. I guess you would probably reverse that order of priorities, and while I disagree, I see the merits of both sides. I think we'd all do much better to recognise that the status quo sucks and either option would be somewhat preferable, rather than shooting each other down with hyperbole about an FBI agent in every living room/the evil corporations buying our children.

Re:Simple

[corbettw]

I'd actually be OK with "more" regulation if it managed to respect private rights more than our current mish mash, and resulted in lower total costs to businesses, consumers, government, society, or some combination of those groups. I just don't see that as likely, as the more laws you add the less free people must necessarily become, and the greater the cost to the people who are charged with living under or enforcing those regulations.

Re:Simple

[haystor]

Problems caused by bad government decisions can only be solved by additional government.

We'll get regulation done *right* this time, I'm sure of it.

Re:Simple

[suutar]

wouldn't having municipally owned fiber with free access to anyone be a way to enable competition, and thereby lower total costs to consumers/society? Regulation would remove freedom from Comcast, but it would increase my freedom to do whatever I want with the datapipe I'm paying for, no?

Re:Simple

[corbettw]

The history of municipally owned utilities argues against doing any such thing. Whether it's water, electric, gas, or anything else, if a city is running the show you can be damn sure that corruption, cronyism, and inefficiencies will be along for the ride.

Besides which, once a government entity becomes fat and/or dependent on the fees generated from those cables, you just know they'll fight tooth and nail to keep out any competition, like wireless services. And they'll do so with the force of government on their side.

No, it's far better to let private actors, either individuals or businesses, run the show on this one. Besides, as wireless speeds and ranges improve, all of this discussion of last-mile cable is going to be completely moot, anyway. In five years, the idea of having a cable running into your house for phone, internet, or TV is going to be a fading memory.

Re:Simple

[The End Of Days]

You've made the classic mistake of believing Khyber isn't a lying asstard.

Re:Simple

[The End Of Days]

Yeah, it sure is fun to pretend that you're somehow going to have a society of humans who aren't subject to human nature, right?

Re:Simple

[The End Of Days]

Yeah, those boundless optimists keep telling us just how great things would be if you took the human nature out of humans. Not in so many words of course, because that would be tantamount to admitting their ideas are unworkable... but why not let them have hope?

Re:Simple

[Khyber]

You make the mistake of assuming I'm lying. You also made the mistake of calling me an asstard, which shows A. weakness in your mind and B. a personal attack, which pretty much disqualifies anything you say.

Would you like to see the damaged PC case? I'm still using it, since it was the only thing that wasn't utterly fucked up in the move. Expensive reflector, bent beyond usability. The Metal Halide to match it, shattered.

The only thing that came close to surviving was clothing.

Re:Simple

[Khyber]

I still have half of the damaged goods, just to show people and warn them away fro using USPS.

Roughly seven thousand dollars worth.

That's why I chose UPS for shipping all of my stuff now.

However, *THEY* need to learn how to not charge someone for smart pickup when it was never asked for in the first place and you tell them to stop it. UPS loves trying that bullshit game.

Re:Simple

[Even on Slashdot FOE]

Did you pack them correctly? There's more to it than putting it in a box and filling the gaps with packing peanuts.

Re:Simple

[Khyber]

Absolutely. I packed those boxes with the same care that I pack my LED panels.

Remember, my above statement included WET as a descriptive word. That particular word has nothing to do with how I pack things because I'm not stupid enough to ship liquids.

How it works

[ah.clem]

Pay your bill and complain; nothing changes. Quit the service; they eventually notice.

If you really think you have no alternatives then that's too bad because they really don't care. It's all about the numbers, critical mass.

Re:Get another ISP!

[TheRaven64]

Came to this story to post exactly the same thing. If you take someone else's copyrighted work (i.e. any web page that is not explicitly placed into the public domain) and create a derived work (that page with adverts), which you then distribute for profit (ad revenue), then you are committing wilful copyright infringement for commercial gain. You can be liable for a statutory penalty of up to $150,000 per work (at least per site, possibly per page) in the USA.

Re:Get another ISP!

[DanTheStone]

You seem to have missed the last sentence of the summary: "How does one get a company infamous for its shoddy customer service and comfortable, state-wide cable monopolies to act on an issue like this?"

FTC Complaint

[hotsauce]

In the short-term, an FTC Complaint (https://www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov/) works wonders due to their power to impose fines for every complaint.

File early, file often.

Re:FTC Complaint

[BigT]

Watch Mediacom block that site for their customers next. As well as any complaint site for the FCC/franchise authority/state attorney general's office/etc.

Re:FTC Complaint

[Nemesisghost]

Watch Mediacom block that site for their customers next. As well as any complaint site for the FCC/franchise authority/state attorney general's office/etc.

Before all the other hoopla about Net Neutrality became a CNN talking point, it was issues like this that caused me to want stronger regulations on ISPs. How long before other ISPs start doing the same thing? Will Mediacom start blocking /. because we exposed & brought this nefarious practice to light? What if this made it to CNN or some other major news outlet? If you don't already support Net Neutrality, maybe you ought to start thinking about it. It is the Free Speech Issue of our time.

Re:FTC Complaint

[Hotawa Hawk-eye]

The FTC's main site indicates 1-877-FTC-HELP as the phone number to call to file a complaint. Even if they can block phone calls to that number, the FTC's address is listed as:

Federal Trade Commission

600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW

Washington, DC 20580

and I suspect sending a letter to that address re: complaints department would probably get it to the right person.

Re:FTC Complaint

[fbartho]

Nah, if they were devious, they would block or adjust only POST requests. That way it would look like users were going to the FTC to tell them how awesome Mediacom is...

Re:FTC Complaint

[LordLimecat]

Yes, im sure blocking government sites is the perfect way for Mediacom to dodge the bullet on this. A legislator will LOVE seeing that his ISP is tampering with this sort of thing.

How long exactly do you think they could get away with such a thing before being demolished by fines, if they started actively blocking regulatory sites so that users could not read about or exercise their rights?

Re:Get another ISP!

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

It would probably be unethical to suggest arson, so I won't.

Re:Get another ISP!

[ejtttje]

Good luck finding one in your local monopoly. (missed that part?) Even in my major metro area, the next best choice is an also-ran DSL service from Verizon at a fraction of the speed for almost as much money.

This is why we should just give up this free-market farce and regulate the ISPs as utilities, with standards on purity (e.g. not modifying traffic) and equity (not censoring traffic from conglomerate competitors). AKA net neutrality.

Re:Get another ISP!

[betterunixthanunix]

You could make your own ISP. It is not terribly expensive to deploy an 802.11y service, I actually know someone who is doing so in the mountains near where I live. All it would take are a couple dozen people in a small town who are sick of Mediacom's crap to get a few thousand dollars together for equipment and a T1 line (not saying that this is a particularly fast connection for a couple dozen people to share, but it's a start).

Now, depending on Mediacom's situation and just how comfortable it is, these people may face some sort of non-technical issue in executing such a plan, but that is another story entirely.

Slashdot Affected?

[VortexCortex]

So, is this the reason why the Slashdot a banner ad: "Steven Feuerstein: Java Developers Should Know PL/SQL." is stretched to be the nearly size of a full screen, and disproportionately too? <checks source> Nope...

Hey slashdot devs, Here's an ad for ya: "VortexCortex: Web Developers Should Know CSS/Algebra!"

Not once have I disabled ads, satisfied to give Slashdot whatever meager income the ads provide, but this has forced my hand...

Re:Slashdot Affected?

[Khyber]

"Web Developers Should Know CSS/Algebra!"

THIS A THOUSAND TIMES OVER.

Slashdot has totally fucked their site up. When I wish to read my comments, then go check the comments made after my replies, in order to reply any further, I am *FORCED* to click the little black arrow marking where the conversation started, then scroll all the way back down to my text box.

Refusal to do this will make the page jump all the way back to the top the moment you begin typing a response.

SLASHDOT NEEDS TO SPEND MORE TIME STUDYING HOW TO DESIGN A WEB PAGE AND LESS TIME CRAP POSTING STORIES.

Re:Slashdot Affected?

[shutdown -p now]

I am *FORCED* to click the little black arrow marking where the conversation started, then scroll all the way back down to my text box.

Refusal to do this will make the page jump all the way back to the top the moment you begin typing a response.

An alternative workaround is to right-click the edit box instead of left-clicking, and then dismiss the context menu (though you have to be careful to not do so by a left-click anywhere on the comment...). Then you get the cursor there and can type - except, of course, the moment you try to do any text selection with a mouse, that left-click will send you back to the start of the thread again. Grrr...

Re:Slashdot Affected?

[Khyber]

Glad to know this isn't just me having the problem.

report them for providing illegal services.

[GuldKalle]

I'm not sure, but wouldn't this exclude them from common-carrier protections? If so, it should be fairly easy to make them provide you with illegal services (think gambling, not CP - no reason to get FBI on your ass).

Re:report them for providing illegal services.

[ewieling]

USA ISPs are not "common carriers" under the law, no matter how much people wish they are.

Re:report them for providing illegal services.

[Qzukk]

Correct, which is why they have special provisions in the DMCA and such. They fought long and hard to not be common carriers.

People also don't seem to understand that breaking common carrier rules doesn't mean "you lose common carrier status", it means "you go to jail".

Re:report them for providing illegal services.

[jd]

If violating network neutrality (which is a key requirement for common carrier status) is not only not enough to exclude them from protection but is corrupt enough to get illicit protection by Congress prohibiting the removal of that status, don't expect any other form of service violation to be sufficient.

Re:report them for providing illegal services.

[dkleinsc]

ISPs have common-carrier protection, but not common-carrier responsibilities. This was part of the wonderful telecom "deregulation" that was pushed through in the late 1996 (with wild cheering from both Republicans and Democrats).

The quotes around the "deregulation" have to do with the fact that telecom has basically always been heavily regulated, and still is today. The regulations that were removed were the ones that the big telecom companies wanted to get rid of, pure and simple.

Re:report them for providing illegal services.

[Kjella]

They're not common carriers, but YES this should strip them of any protection under USC 17512.

512. Limitations on liability relating to material online

(a) Transitory Digital Network Communications. - A service provider shall not be liable (...) if -

(5) the material is transmitted through the system or network without modification of its content.

I would say they are now liable to be sued by practically anybody. This is the equivalent of placing stickers over the ads in the paper and reselling it, a pretty blatant violation of copyright. No more "but I'm just the paper boy" excuse for them.

Consumer fraud plain and simple

[davidwr]

I'm paying for Internet access not Mediacom's "custom remix" of Internet and its partners.

I deserve a prorated per-day refund for every day that I'm affected by such shenanigans.

Attorney generals in the affected states should be all over this. Assuming they don't play golf with Mediacom executives of course.

Re:Consumer fraud plain and simple

[theghost]

Piss in one hand and hold the other out for that refund and see which one fills up first.

Whine all you want about "should" and "deserve" but without real pressure and real action, nothing is going to happen. AGs don't care about DPI because average Joes and Janes don't care about it. Average Joes and Janes doesn't care about whose ads he sees when he googles for porn, lolcats, or hot dish recipes so long as they gets their results. AGs care about making it look like they are fighting crime (which is different from actually fighting crime) and ISPs are their friends because any time they want to make a headline by busting someone on kiddie porn, the ISPs bend over backwards to help them. (That and the huge campaign contributions they give.)

Re:Consumer fraud plain and simple

[Khyber]

"I deserve a prorated per-day refund for every day that I'm affected by such shenanigans."

You don't deserve anything unless you get off your lazy ass and fight for it.

According to the article...

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

It's not exactly what the submission says. If you enter search data in the address bar it may redirect you to Mediacom's servers whether you opt in or not. However if you use the search bar it won't redirect you. This is considered unacceptable by the person who wrote the giant post in the "deep packet inspection..." link above. I'm not going to debate whether this is unacceptable or not, but there is a workaround - just use the search bar. As someone who does not do searches in the address bar that seems OK to me.

Re:According to the article...

[wikid_one]

The problem isn't just that it intercepts searches... it intercepts EVERYTHING typed into the address bar. If you type in a valid web site address it gets intercepted and takes you to their search engine. When you are using a browser such as chrome, typing into the search box isn't an option.

Re:According to the article...

[ericrost]

Not that its a wonderful option, but you can always use tab to search in chrome. Nifty feature I just read about here: http://www.google.com/support/chrome/bin/answer.py?answer=95655

I use firefox stripped down to the bare interface, so I just ctrl-k to bring up a google search page.

Re:According to the article...

[jandrese]

What if you use Chrome, which doesn't have a search bar?

Re:According to the article...

[Mr. Arbusto]

That isn't the problem.

Being a MediaCom customer I've played with this a few times in the past, complained when the opt out didn't work, and complained about it to people locally. Working for a company that make DPI appliances it was kinda fun to see it in action, but kinda scary to see it on the public internet. CenturyTel also does this exact same thing.

It scans all HTTP traffic looking for 404 errors. So if I go to http://boingboing.net/4in0in4 It will intercept the servers 404 page and redirect to to a mediacom portal site with my 404 URL as the search term and ads all over.

Re:According to the article...

[Vegemeister]

Does wget still return the proper exit code?

Re:According to the article...

[QuantumRiff]

Not all browsers have a search bar. Ever used chrome?

Wire Fraud?

[lobsterGun]

Wire Fraud:

Whoever, having devised or intending to devise any scheme or artifice to defraud, or for obtaining money or property by means of false or fraudulent pretenses, representations, or promises, transmits or causes to be transmitted by means of wire, radio, or television communication in interstate or foreign commerce, any writings, signs, signals, pictures, or sounds for the purpose of executing such scheme or artifice, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both. If the violation affects a financial institution, such person shall be fined not more than $1,000,000 or imprisoned not more than 30 years, or both.

A customer is asking for one web page, mediacom is substituting another for monetary gain. How is this not wire fraud?

Re:Wire Fraud?

[Rob the Bold]

Wire Fraud:

Whoever, having devised or intending to devise any scheme or artifice to defraud, or for obtaining money or property by means of false or fraudulent pretenses, representations, or promises, transmits or causes to be transmitted by means of wire, radio, or television communication in interstate or foreign commerce, any writings, signs, signals, pictures, or sounds for the purpose of executing such scheme or artifice, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both. If the violation affects a financial institution, such person shall be fined not more than $1,000,000 or imprisoned not more than 30 years, or both.

A customer is asking for one web page, mediacom is substituting another for monetary gain. How is this not wire fraud?

Market cap.

Re:Wire Fraud?

[mounthood]

A customer is asking for one web page, mediacom is substituting another for monetary gain. How is this not wire fraud?

Market cap.

I know this was a joke, but I also think it's the literal truth: the justice system is corrupted by money, and big companies get away with things nobody else could. I always wonder if others think the same, and if so, why aren't they outraged about it? Is the US a society where everyone thinks justice is corrupted by money, but nobody wants to say it out loud? We only joke about it because it's too painful?

Re:Wire Fraud?

[dodobh]

Too big to fail?

File a Complaint with the State Attorney General

[fallen1]

that Mediacom, by using this technique to redirect certain traffic, are in fact violating 18 U.S.C. 1030 (Fraud and Related Activity in Connection with Computers) by committing just that -- FRAUD. If I go to Google to search for an explanation of a math problem but all of my traffic is routed through Mediacom's system first and I then get responses from Mediacom that looks like they are coming from Google - that is fraud. Pure and simple. I _trust_ Google (for the most part) to give me the information I am seeking. I don't trust my ISP that is redirecting traffic and injecting their own ads to increase their profit margins. The ISP exists solely to move data, un-accosted except for "traffic shaping", across their wires. If I type in www.google.com and start a search, by all that is holy and unholy my data had better be going to Google and not be redirected to point B before reaching Google -- isn't that, technically, a man-in-the-middle attack? Which is also a violation of 18 U.S.C. 1030 I believe.

I hate that the United States is lawsuit happy but, let's face it, hitting these assholes in their pocketbooks are probably the only thing that will get them to cease and desist. Even then they'll keep trying or buy immunity or something. Until then though, I'm down with cleaning out their ill-gotten and misdirected coffers.

NOTE: I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice.

Re:Get another ISP!

[Neil Boekend]

Can't find it now, but there was an article about someone who did that and got sued by the big bad ISP.

Time Warner Cable does the same thing in NEOhio.

[__aavqan3009]

Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted!
Filter error: You can type more than that for your comment. I can not post,how about that?

Charter was doing this

[gravis777]

Charter was doing this for a while. Really annoying. And the link to click to opt out was at the smallest font they could find. Finally got it fixed. Was not happy - if I go to Google.com, or search google in my address bar, I expect to go to Google!

ISP level redirects should be illegal. What is to stop some hacker from coming in to the ISP and redirecting traffic from bankofamerica.com to a look-a-like site? Worse yet, what would happen if their DNS lookup table (or whatever its called) gets propigated? Or what about other service providers that buy bandwidth from them?

Re:Charter was doing this

[mlts]

It wouldn't really matter. If an ISP redirected a bank to another site, (likely compounded with the SSL CA attack), people would think they were at mybank.com when they were connected to a site in Elbonia. When people would start to get their accounts emptied, the ISP wouldn't suffer anything. In fact, their PR guy will shrug and say, "OMG, those hackers are good", and life will go on. At worst, the ISP with the compromise might have to pay for an ID theft subscription service for people for a year.

Same with someone compromising an ad server and serving up malware, or even more maliciously having it look that only certain sites were having malware coming from them. Lawsuits would be filed, and almost nobody would ever suspect the ISP, much less get anyone who has any sort of oversight or power to do anything about it.

Re:Charter was doing this

[omnichad]

to get around deep packet inspection?

Re:Charter was doing this

[omnichad]

Nevermind - bad context.

Re:Get another ISP!

[Technician]

Does anyone know if dropping their ad server in the hosts file will fix the redirect?

Re:How it doesn't works

[yoghurt]

I have a great solution for reducing spam. Don't reply and it will stop. If you don't buy any h3rb4l V1agr4, they eventually notice and stop.

They won't ever notice. For example, my not buying Sony products over the past dozen years is of no discernible impact to Sony. I haven't bought a Dell, but that isn't due to any problem I have with them. How is Sony to infer that I don't care for them, while Dell I just haven't bought from yet?

Change the Law

[King Louie]

The problem has a political source: government-approved monopolies for cable providers. So the solution must also be political: eliminate the government-approved monopolies. This crap won't happen when there is more than one alternative in the marketplace. Many locations are only served by one provider because the government has granted that provider a monopoly. Get on your state and local legislators' butts about it and get the law changed.

Solution: Use a different DNS server

[level_headed_midwest]

I have Mediacom's internet service and the solution is to use a different DNS server other than the ones Mediacom provides. I use Level3's DNS servers (4.2.2.2 and 4.2.2.3) for my DNS lookups and I do not get any redirects. You can either manually set the DNS servers on your computer or set them at the router.

Re:Solution: Use a different DNS server

[Rob the Bold]

I have Mediacom's internet service and the solution is to use a different DNS server other than the ones Mediacom provides. I use Level3's DNS servers (4.2.2.2 and 4.2.2.3) for my DNS lookups and I do not get any redirects. You can either manually set the DNS servers on your computer or set them at the router.

The Mediacom DNSs are a double-whammy -- or rather avoiding them is double-plus-good. I get a lot of 404s from Mediacom -- and the resultant redirect -- even for valid URLs ("http://www.google.com not found . . ."). I kind of have to wonder if the "DNS problems" are intentional or just a happy coincidence for them.

Re:Solution: Use a different DNS server

[Frozen-Solid]

This doesn't work. I'm on Mediacom and use Google DNS. None the less if I type in http://validsite.com/invalidurlgoeshere/ rather than being served a proper 404 I get forwarded to Mediacom's private search engine. They're using deep packet inspection to hijack any default apache or iis 404 response from a website and redirect it to themselves. Level3 DNS, Google DNS, and Open DNS all work to fix the issue of my failed DNS queries being hijacked, but it doesn't fix 404s.

Re:Solution: Use a different DNS server

[Jellodyne]

Google's DNS servers at 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 are also good free, standards compliant DNS servers.

Re:Solution: Use a different DNS server

[Anonymous Coward]

Using a different DNS avoids Mediacom's NXDOMAIN poisoning, but does nothing to avoid the packet injection they use to intercept 404 errors and search requests.

If you visit http://www.shatters.net/404 from a Mediacom connection, I can almost guarantee you'll get Javascript that attempts to redirect your browser to the Mediacom Assist page rather than the 404 error you should receive.

Re:Solution: Use a different DNS server

[Anonymous Coward]

Level 3's servers, although widely used & abused for their extremely memorable address, are only really authorized for use by Level 3's customers. At one point, if you tried to reverse resolve all the IPs 4.2.2.1-4.2.2.5, you eventually hit one that said please-do-not-steal-dns-service.whatever.domain.at.the.time

Google's public servers (8.8.8.8 & 8.8.4.4) are advertised for the public's general use.

Re:Solution: Use a different DNS server

[level_headed_midwest]

Ah, I forgot, you also need to add "127.0.0.1 assist.mediacomcable.com" to your /etc/hosts. assist.mediacomcable.com is the server that does the page display for their NXDOMAIN hijacking. Adding the line to /etc/hosts and not using Mediacom's DNS servers results in a "page not found" error when having a 404 error.

Re:Solution: Use a different DNS server

[Telecommando]

I used to get a lot of 'site not found' errors until I stopped using Mediacom's DNS servers entirely. This was for sites that I KNEW existed and were up and running.

Once I switched to Google's DNS servers the problems disappeared.

/ Yes, I know DNS server is redundant. Sometimes clarity is more important than pedantic accuracy. Sue me.

Re:Solution: Use a different DNS server

[Khyber]

"I have Mediacom's internet service and the solution is to use a different DNS server other than the ones Mediacom provides. I use Level3's DNS servers (4.2.2.2 and 4.2.2.3) for my DNS lookups and I do not get any redirects. You can either manually set the DNS servers on your computer or set them at the router."

The most recent changes (almost across every ISP) allows them to modify any device hooked up to their network.

That includes your router.

Your solution has already been worked around in contract/EULA.

Re:Solution: Use a different DNS server

[Khyber]

"Unless you are a Level3 customer, please stop using them. They exist for network admins (and the public at large) to configure systems and to confirm connectivity ONLY."

Then the worthless ill-educated Level3 nimrods need to protect their network from unauthorized access on a consumer level. Failure to do so only shows how useless they truly are.

Re:Solution: Use a different DNS server

[LordLimecat]

Fixing the symptoms is the worst thing you could do. Most slashdotters rail about the fact that normal users will never know whats going on, and will therefore lack the ability to raise a complaint; and here all the slashdotters are trying to figure out how to create a technical workaround for this.

Heres what you do, you call them, and tell them youve opted out. When they say theyll work on it, you give them a week, then call again. And again. Then you elevate to a supervisor.

Depending on how much of a principled stand you want to make, you could take them to small claims court, asking for several months worth of service credits; im sure a reasonable attorney could come up with a reason why thats not out of the question, and perhaps get attorney fees as well.

Or, you know, you could spend hours on workarounds, and hope that someone else takes care of it.

Mediacom... Gulf Coast Region

[irving47]

Not seeing it.
http://search.mediacomcable.com/prefs.php

Disable, Disable, Disable...

Re:Mediacom... Gulf Coast Region

[Frozen-Solid]

Assuming you're on Mediacom try going to http://freenode.net/asdfasdfasdfasdf You will not get freenode's default 404 error. You will get redirected to Mediacom even if you're opted-out. This is exactly how it works for me. I've been complaining to them for months.

Re:Mediacom... Gulf Coast Region

[CronoCloud]

I'm on Mediacom and I have not opted out and I got the 404.

Re:Mediacom... Gulf Coast Region

[Verteiron]

Really? And you're certain you're currently connecting via Mediacom?

Do you mind disclosing the state you live in? I think they may only be practicing this in certain areas.

Re:Get another ISP!

[erroneus]

It is usually not "their" ad server. Advertisers do not trust content providers and prefer to count the hits themselves. This means that it is most likely that the ads being inserted are not on the ISP's servers. The ISP's server are inserting code that directs the client to download ad content which, in turn, generates revenue for the ISP.

Would "adblock" work? Yeah, probably.

DMCA - copyright violation

[RichMan]

Get a content provider to file a DMCA take down request against Mediacom. Or file with our friends the *AA

The content provider creates a copyright protected page representation. Mediacom is violating the copyright by modifying the representation on the fly.

The DMCA notice to Mediacom should say "stop this or be forced off line" and "Have a nice day"

Changing DNS Servers Helps Too...

[bleys2112]

I was a Mediacom subscriber for years and recently switched to Centurylink which is just as bad, if not worse on 404 redirects. The solution, changing DNS servers. Many options are available here and some even offer filtering for sites that are know to host viruses and even pron. A great little benchmarking utility is available at http://www.grc.com/dns/benchmark.htm that can offer many options and show you just how crappy your ISP's DNS server can be.

I'm surprised nobody has suggested the obvious...

[Vrtigo1]

Switch to a different ISP. There must be at least one DSL or wireless provider that can service your address. After you switch, make sure you call Mediacom and let them know that you're cancelling your service because you find their traffic molestation practices unacceptable. Write them a letter to the same effect...sometimes a letter will actually get to someone who cares. Seriously though, voting with your wallet is just about the only thing that has a chance at making them change their ways...

Anyone at Mediacom, run Netalyzr please...

[nweaver]

Anyone using Mediacom, please run Netalyzr ( http://netalyzr.icsi.berkeley.edu) and post the results link, this might be able to detect whatever manipulation is ongoing.

Thanks!

Re:Anyone at Mediacom, run Netalyzr please...

[j-beda]

Hey, that's a pretty neat tool.

Re:Anyone at Mediacom, run Netalyzr please...

[Sardak]

Unfortunately, I'm a subscriber to Mediacom with no other alternatives in the area. What has most annoyed me about all of this is that their "service" appears to periodically forget that I've opted out of it and will re-enable itself periodically.

I actually ran this before when I first noticed their redirection a few months ago, but I've rerun it now to relay the results. Here's the interesting bits:

Major Abnormalities

• Your DNS resolver returns results even when no such server exists

Minor Aberrations

• Certain TCP protocols are blocked in outbound traffic
• Network packet buffering may be excessive
• Not all DNS types were correctly processed

DNS results wildcarding (?): Warning
Your ISP's DNS server returns IP addresses even for domain names which should not resolve. Instead of an error, the DNS server returns an address of 67.63.55.33, which resolves to mediacomassist.infospace.com. You can inspect the resulting HTML content here.

There are several possible explanations for this behavior. The most likely cause is that the ISP is attempting to profit from customer's typos by presenting advertisements in response to bad requests, but it could also be due to an error or misconfiguration in the DNS server.

The big problem with this behavior is that it can potentially break any network application which relies on DNS properly returning an error when a name does not exist.

The following lists your DNS server's behavior in more detail.

• www.{random}.com is mapped to 67.63.55.33.
• www.{random}.org is mapped to 67.63.55.33.
• fubar.{random}.com is correctly reported as an error.
• www.yahoo.cmo [sic] is mapped to 67.63.55.33.
• nxdomain.{random}.netalyzr.icsi.berkeley.edu is correctly reported as an error.

Re:Anyone at Mediacom, run Netalyzr please...

[nweaver]

Thanks. If you have the interest, please email netalyzr-help@icsi.berkeley.edu, we may have some new tests soon that we'd like help testing that may detect additional manipulations.

Re:Get another ISP!

[shentino]

TDS v. Monticello perhaps?

Complain to Public Utilities Commission

[Attila Dimedici]

There are actually several courses of action available to you. As others have mentioned, lobbying your state legilators to get the law changed is one (this will probably require that you become politically active and get other people to support your position). Another option is to complain to your state Public Utilities Commission (or whatever your state calls the body that regulates the behavior of state granted monopolies--every state that I know of has one). Contact your state legislator and complain. Be prepared to explain why this is a serious issue. Among other reasons that this is a potential problem is that they can use this same approach to redirect you from websites that compete with services they sell . Also explain to your legislator that it indicates that they are tracking the sort of searches you make. Finally, again as others have suggested, complain to the state Attorney General's office.

Re:Get another ISP!

[tripleevenfall]

The February 2010 issue of Consumer Reports ranked Mediacom 15th of 16 in TV service, 24th of 27 in Internet service, and 23rd of 23 in phone service, based on surveys.

Re:Cancel Your Service

[PPH]

They are not a monopoly (by the twisted logic of our legal system) because you can always cancel them and use a 56K dial up connection.

The actual argument should be that they have a franchise agreement to maintain their system in the public rights of way. And then complain to the appropriate political entity having jurisdiction.

Re:How it doesn't works

[shentino]

Try fining the credit card co's every time they knowingly process a payment for a spam email, and bar spamvertizers from accepting credit cards for their products.

The credit cos might not be directly involved but they're profiting on transaction fees from the whole thing, so they can darn well help police the thing. They are in an amply good position to help out with the problem.

Re:How it doesn't works

[samjam]

You personally are not a "critical mass"

When lots of people don't buy from Sony but buy from the various other vendors, then it will be noticed.

Snail mail equivalent

[Mojo66]

Isn't DPI equivalent to opening a snail mail envelope and reading and possibly changing the content? At least here in Germany, that would be illegal. Plus, when it comes to file sharing, aren't the ISPs arguing, that they only carry the data, i.e. they are only the messenger and therefore not liable?

Re:Get another ISP!

[Anonymous Coward]

How many times does it have to be pointed out that the reason there is no competition is BECAUSE of government regulation?

You know why you're stuck with two monopolies? Because it's illegal to compete with them. No one else can run wires, no one else can offer service.

This is the reason startups are trying end-rounds around government regulation with wireless-based solutions. Of course, that's also a regulatory minefield, so I wouldn't expect much out of that.

But if you wanted a choice between more than one ISP, well, you should ask your local government why they refuse to allow anyone else to compete. (As it's generally local city or state government laws that forbid anyone else.)

More regulation is not the answer here. We already saw what happened when members of Congress took up "network neutrality" - somehow it became a new fairness doctrine, with riders on it for increased government surveillance, and none of the actual "neutral net access" stuff survived. Funny, that.

Re:Get another ISP!

[erroneus]

Incidents like these are simply ammunition against those who oppose net neutrality. And yes, I most definitely agree that internet service should be considered to be and regulated as a utility just like POTS. But before changes can be made, "news" has to get out that without regulation in place, opportunistic ISPs will do anything, illegal or other, to abuse their resources for additional profit.

Re:Get another ISP!

[santax]

I would suggest to just kill it with fire.

Follow the example of BSA and Scientology

[coats]

... and show up with a federal marshall and an ex parte seizure order allowing Google to seize all the relevant hardware !!

IMNHO, copyright law gives the copyright holder far too much power in this matter, but that's the way the law is written.

Re:It doesn't look like packet inspection

[Frozen-Solid]

It's definitely DPI. The DNS aspects are simple DNS redirection. The 404 aspect takes any default 404 error page from IIS or Apache, and redirects it to mediacom. It even does this on my own domains and my own hosting services outside of Mediac

Re:Get another ISP!

[darkwing_bmf]

Mediacom high speed Internet in my area is $20 per month. This is much cheaper than their competitor Cox, who charges $50 per month. I don't care about the 404 redirection. It's a damn page not found page, who cares if they put a search engine there. I'm not about to spend $30 per month just so I don't see a search engine when I don't find the page I'm looking for. I'm surprised as many of you care as it seems. How often do you type in the wrong url anyway?

Re:Get another ISP!

[theghost]

I'm not sure you really want them to open up that can of worms. Can a procedurally generated page be protected by copyright? It's not a static work and who exactly is the author? Trademark certainly seems to be the cleaner way to go here. Also, what would this line of attack have to say about things like AdBlock?

All the retards have thier hands in the air

[the_hellspawn]

All the retards will say; "vote with your wallet". Problem is you can't with a monopoly if one still wishes to have what the monopoly has to offer. The only solution is; to move or fire bomb the facilities and yell REVOLUTION! That is really about all one can do. Either way your boned with prison or slave to the monopoly. The choices are; die on your feet (prison) or live on your knees (slave).

Click Fraud?

[mistralol]

What about getting anyone who is aware of it to click on all the adverts every time they see them? This would mean that their pages would have $0.00 worth of valid advertising. There must be some point of abuse that could be given back to prevent them from doing this.

Contact senator & FCC

[Midnight Thunder]

If there is indeed a monopoly situation that is being abused, then you should probably be sending complaint letters to both your representative and to the FCC.

If enough people do this, then it should potentially trigger an investigation. What this ISP is doing is part of what net neutrality aims to avoid. They could also be accused of censorship.

Re:Get another ISP!

[jandersen]

This is why we should just give up this free-market farce and regulate the ISPs as utilities, with standards on purity (e.g. not modifying traffic) and equity (not censoring traffic from conglomerate competitors). AKA net neutrality.

Why not go the full mile, and decide that the internet is essential infrastructure and should be provided by the state? I know all the usual arguments, "the government is evil per definition", and "all public efforts are big, bumbling wastes of time and money". Both are disingenious, bordering on fraudulent - the state is NOT the government, just for one thing, and most of government is not the politicians; and even politicians are not all thoroughly evil, believe it or not.

And, as a matter of fact, most state driven projects are not all that bad - some are even highly succesful. It's just that bad news sell better and of course, it mets the expectations of the readers that "governments are evil and useless" - why else would they ask us to pay tax?

Re:corresponds

[TaoPhoenix]

Distribute "converter code" which by itself does nothing but when merged with the false 404's it produces a song!

Re:Get another ISP!

[Hazel Bergeron]

Considering how many of Google's offerings involve taking someone else's work and creating a derived work with adverts, Google would be pissing in their own cornflakes to consider this.

"Oh, but people who put stuff on the web implicitly consent to indexing, caching, image thumbnailing, page thumbnailing, ..." Do they? OK, then they also implicitly consent to all the other bullshit.

A asks for a copy of something from B via C, and B gives the copy to C to pass to A. The copy has been made. I don't see what copyright has to say about whether C can modify that particular copy. Think of a book. If you buy a book from a book store, there's no copyright infringement if the book seller decides to white out a page in the book and replace it with a crudely drawn penis, is there? Otherwise every second hand textbook bought with notes pencilled in the margin is a copyright infringement.

Although, at the rate things are going, I'm sure it will be soon.

Re:Get another ISP!

[Nethemas the Great]

Most people have one particular ISP or another for a reason. Typically it is because the alternatives are worse, or none exist.

Re:Get another ISP!

[slackergod]

Regarding Google - actually, yes, there is implied consent. robots.txt and nofollow links can easily be added to any website, to tell Googlebot and others to go away. And they will - or then they probably would be wandering into (c) infringing - or at least some form of illegal use of resources (for trawling the site).

Re:Get another ISP!

[JThaddeus]

I dunno what areas Mediacom serves, but in some places there is only one available high speed ISP. (And please do not suggest satellite internet as an alternative. It was my only alternative for 3 years, and it's a joke.>

Quitessential Network Neutrality example

[MobyDisk]

has even experimented with injecting their own advertising into sites like Google

This is the most blatant example of why we need network neutrality. Telecom companies cannot inject ads into voice conversations. Shipping companies cannot modify parcels in transit. But somehow we think it is okay to modify a digital transmission in transport? And this is somehow controversial...?

I hope they actually implement this just so I get to see Google sue them when their advertisements don't get displayed. Then I can't wait until someone who has MediaCom as their ISP does a search for information about the lawsuit, and mysteriously gets no results....

Re:Get another ISP!

[Hazel Bergeron]

Couple of things:

(1) robots.txt isn't a legal protocol. Computers don't form contracts, particularly not implicit ones by virtue of the absence of some data associated with a private convention. A lot of what Google does is understood as technically contrary to the law in some countries, to the extent that in some places (e.g. UK) the government has been lobbied by Google to extend the notion of fair use;

(2) Even if robots.txt had some force, the absence of robots.txt conventionally allows for crawling and indexing. I don't see why this can be reasonably understood to extend to all the caching and thumbnailing Google does.

Re:Get another ISP!

[Sloppy]

Can a procedurally generated page be protected by copyright?

Good point. Beats the hell out of me.

I bet Pixar has an opinion. ;-) (Yeah, yeah, I know that's not really analogous.) Apple definitely has a certain opinion on the matter, though I think their current strategy is along the lines that you suggest (trademark).

Also, what would this line of attack have to say about things like AdBlock?

AdBlock doesn't redistribute the modified work; it is entirely on behalf of the reader. If MediaCom distributed a browser that pulls these shenanigans, or gave users a proxy to install on user machines instead of running their own customers-can't-opt-out proxy, then they would likely be in the clear.

And what AdBlock does do, isn't for commercial gain.

(Err... that's all traditional copyright-related reasoning. There might be a DMCA angle here, but I haven't worked it out. My hunch is that anything a blocking plugin or proxy does, isn't any more DMCA-illegal than the browser itself is. But that reasoning is probably flawed, else software couldn't be illegal without its underlying hardware being illegal.)

Re:Get another ISP!

[bhtooefr]

Well, the second amendment was intended to be the last check and balance against a failed government...

Re:File a Complaint with the State Attorney Genera

[Fnord666]

The ISP exists solely to move data, un-accosted except for "traffic shaping", across their wires.

While you may wish for this to be the case, it probably isn't what you agreed to in your contract. I'm sure that, buried somewhere on page 245 or so, is a clause that allows them to do exactly what they are doing. They will of course tell you that you are free to go with another provider if you wish.

LinuxMint\MediaCom

[YesDinosaursDidExist]

Linux Mint uses a custom search to generate ad revenue. Removing the "branded" results from showing up when you're using the "awesome bar" in FF4 was a pain....but there was a pretty easy way to do it...this might work for the MediaCom problem too..... First, do a generic search on Google (or your search engine of choice): Copy the url up to the ="Your Search Terms" Second, go to about:config in FF Third, Filter for browser.search.searchenginesURL Fourth, modify the string to be the one you copied to the clipboard....now all your searchs thru the awesome bar will be routed directly to the search engine. Does this fix your issue?

Re:Get another ISP!

[Ferzerp]

Your lack of understanding of what the word lien means is showing.

Re:Get another ISP!

[KDR_11k]

Yes, more regulation is the answer. These companies have been granted a monopoly and should be restrained to the point where they can't do any damage. Deregulating would just cause trouble with laying wires.

Who is next?

[forrie]

I half-expect(ed) Comcast to do the same thing. Reading their TOS, they clearly state they can analyze your traffic to determine what products you use, etc. etc. I just use a simple SSH proxy to an external system and bypass that.

Re:Get another ISP!

[_0xd0ad]

I think he meant easements.

Re:Get another ISP!

[Khyber]

Actually you're wrong. There's a difference between a legal frame injection and illegal redirection.

http://attackvector.lescigales.org/2009/05/06/178/

Go educate yourself. And yes, there IS a law against it.

Comcast

[bradgoodman]

Comcast does this too - sort of. It doesn't actually scrape returned pages for 404 errors - but if you do a DNS lookup which fails, you get directed to some ridiculous Comcast page. Net result is the same - enter a bad URL - get a Comcast page.

Re:Comcast

[lolcutusofbong]

on that connection, open this (bogus) url: http://our-ass-with-both-hands-and-a-m.ap/

Re:Get another ISP!

[postbigbang]

I say: open the can. Of course I don't have the lawyers fees in my bank account-- but wait-- Sony released my information, so maybe someone else can be found to have it.

In all seriousness, the work and the author can be established, and if you're robbing the author of revenue, there will be hell to pay.

Sue 'em.

[TheMCP]

Wait till they insert their own ad into a web page and then get the page owner to sue them into the ground for violating their copyright by altering the content.

Or sue them for violating your privacy by monitoring your communications with other parties. Would that constitute wiretapping? Perhaps you could report it to the FBI, and maybe after they go to jail they'll stop interfering with your net connection.

Have not noticed

[flappinbooger]

I have Mediacom So-Called Cable So-Called Internet and I have not noticed this happening - of course I use ABP and No-Script.

Makes me want to use something like Ultrasurf which reportedly encrypts traffic anyway.

The tv service is "whatever" and the internet is 10 Mbps peak and sometimes bogs down to nearly nothing at always the wrong time. Up speed is 1.0 to 1.5 Mbps and is crap - meaning if I monitor a large upload via FTP it will constantly be breaking and resuming connection. Uploading to Youtube is very difficult due to broken connections.

The alternative is vanilla and overpriced DSL over crap AT+T copper. Do not want.

Common Carriers

[nog_lorp]

... are obligated to abide by the international standards of operation for their industry. Breaking the protocol stack intentionally should make you no longer a common carrier.

Re:Common Carriers

[Even on Slashdot FOE]

Good thing they aren't common carriers, then.

Re:Installation disks

[b4dc0d3r]

I got Bellsouth DSL, because cable was not laid on my side of the street. I got the modem and an installation disk. I called and said I was not running an installation disk, please tell me what I need to do special for your connection, if anything.

They said they understood, and I can do it at this web address. The website was basically blank. Are you using internet explorer? No of course I'm not. Well the site only runs in IE. I should have been suspicious, but figured they are idiots.

ActiveX did exactly what the install disk would have done as soon as I opened the page in IE. I'm still finding bits of things. Motive*, MCCI*, att-nap. Of course, bellsouth was bought by ATT, and I was not pleased about finding that out either.

Get a cheap VPS, tunnel everything through OpenVPN

[gpuk]

That's the short term fix. Near term: initiate "Streisand effect" and hope that's enough to get Mediacom to change their ways. Long term: agitate for net neutrality laws!

How about changing DNS?

[Lorien_the_first_one]

Google and a variety of others (I like OpenDNS myself) have come up with a good alternative to the DNS service offered by the telcos and cable companies.

Re:Government created this monopoly

[Even on Slashdot FOE]

No, the alternative was to regulate the monopoly as if were a monopoly, as opposed to pretending there were free market forces affecting the company.

Re:Get another ISP!

[mrchaotica]

Also, what would this line of attack have to say about things like AdBlock?

Adblock is applied by the end user. There is no distribution, and therefore cannot be any copyright infringement.

Re:Get another ISP!

[mrchaotica]

It's a damn page not found page, who cares if they put a search engine there.

If the ISP puts content there, it's not actually a 404 error anymore. That means the client HTTP software -- which may not be a browser -- can no longer tell the difference between a page that exists and a page that doesn't exist. This breaks things!

Re:File a Complaint with the State Attorney Genera

[dkleinsc]

The other government agency you can at least send a complaint to is whichever state government body is responsible for granting the monopoly (likely a public utilities commission). If you want to hit them in the pocketbook, losing their access to the state's market is a pretty big hit.

Oh, and if your commissioners and attorneys general aren't responsive, find out how they are selected / appointed / elected, and respond accordingly at election time.

Re:Get another ISP!

[camperslo]

I'd hope Google would sue them for copyright violation, changing their webpage in transit,...

It's very much like a kid sitting on the curb slapping a bumper-sticker on every car at a particular stop sign. Vandalism for profit sums it up pretty well.

Don't Google and Bing have a case?

[rickb928]

Is this so simple? If Mediacom is intercepting a request to Google Search and rewriting it or diverting it to their search engine, doesn't this sound like fraud? And if they offer the opt-out, that's just incompetence or fraud also.

Incompetence doesn't shield you from liability. Fraud speaks for itself.

Cox intercepts a lot of 404s and DNS lookup problems, but not all, and it give you a big Cox logo on the page with their 'helpful' referrals. So far they don't seem to be rewriting search pages.

But if they did, why won't Google et al sue to tell them to leave my request alone, if I wanted to opt-out? Mediacom is playing with fire here, I think, though so far no one seems to have lit the fuse.

Re:Get another ISP!

[NotAGoodNickname]

No, there is no law against injection of html in a stream which is what we are discussing in this particular thread. If you believe there to be please show us the law that says it is illegal for a service provider to inject packets in a packet stream. I'm not sure why you made the comment about difference between legal frame injection and redirection - I certainly never mentioned that. Thank You.

Re:Get another ISP!

[firex726]

Plus there was a town that setup their own community ISP because the local one (Comcast) simply refused to provide the service they were wanting. And I think in Minnesota where they passed a law banning community ISPs, by saying they needed billions in assets before being given a license.

Re:Get another ISP!

[Savantissimo]

And major telecom companies, particularly AT&T and the remaining unreassimilated Baby Bells are essentially government agencies anyway. The cable monopolies are even worse - all the power, none of the responsibility. The wires have been paid for by the public several times over, the equipment cost per Mbps has been falling exponentially, yet the monopolies and oligopolies still charge the same exorbitant, abusive rent-seeking weregeld as they did 8 or even 10 years ago. (look at your state tariffs on an OC-3, for example). Meanwhile their service standards have gone to shit, with no one able to actually fix problems - and that is intentional. Having real techs with the power to actually fix stuff costs more than setting up overseas call centers with myrmidons runing half-assed scripts, and as a monopoly on an essential service the telcos know you don't have any real choice anyway. Plus, they feel that providing better service without them getting paid more is just wrong, even if their expenses are falling, and would be falling more if the buyers weren't colluding with the equipment vendors.

I say nationalize the wires, fibers, and spectrum we've already paid for, buy the equipment out at the depreciated rates they've been listing on their taxes, hire away the best techs to run the core, open up the network at nominal prices for small resellers, make the tariffs more transparent than E-bay for pricing and let today's telco executives either start competing at actually providing service or be pureed by the market and fed to their shareholders through straws. The positive externalities of eliminating the robber barons with their tolls for every last mile of data transport will grow the economy by orders of magnitude more than enough to pay the modest setup and subsidies.

Re:Installation disks

[scot4875]

What version of IE were you running? You know that no IE released in the last 5 years just runs ActiveX controls off of the internet without asking, correct? Why did you grant it permission? Why would you even run it from an administrator account?

When the cable guy comes over and needs to "install" his stuff, I give him a limited account on a VM on little-used laptop. He installs his stuff there so that he can mark the checkbox on his sheet that says "I verified that everything was installed", I wipe the VM and we're done.

--Jeremy

Re:Get another ISP!

[SuricouRaven]

A T1 line is 1.5mbit/s. It's less than almost all consumer broadband connections. There was a time when it was really impressive though, which is where the reputation comes from. They still get some use in situations where a user wants a low-latency, zero-contention link between two points. 11y maxes out at 54mbit under ideal conditions. You've also got to include the cost of physically connecting your base station to the internet - chances are it's going to involve laying fiber, which means right-of-way costs and crews actually burying it. It's not infeasible, but the business case is stacked heavily against the small guy. The only way I can see it working would be if you could get enough customers together in advance who were all fed up with the current options and willing to pay a high premium plus a significent startup cost for a better service.

Re:Get another ISP!

[AK Marc]

If the person doing it wasn't paid by the person, then there'd be a pile of federal felonies against them already. What do the TOS say? If they don't give permission to intercept and modify any and all communications, then this is a violation of piles of laws that have seen individuals locked up. If the TOS says they can intercept, modify, and discard any communication they feel like, then I'd argue that the TOS is invalid (you are paying for nothing, thus there is no sale, thus there is not valid TOS - or more simply, you can't sign away things in a contract that the state doesn't allow you to sign away).

So, if there isn't a copyright issue, I'd still expect to see the feds involved for the hacking charges, the FCC involved because of the communications issue, the DOJ involved because there's likely an oligopoly in that area, etc. Make a stink. Call your congressman and demand net neutrality. Call your DA. Call the FBI. Don't sit there and whine to Slashdot. You'll get sympathy, but not action. Go do something, anything, then do something different.

Re:Get another ISP!

[SuricouRaven]

You're both right, actually. In the US anyway. It is a natural monopoly, yes - that is why competing cable companies rarely serve the same area. Once the first gets established, the second has no incentive to chase the same customers. The very high initial investment of cables makes it non-viable to enter a market unless the customers have no other alternatives. But it is also a regulated monopoly: Many local authorities (And I'm taking county or municipal level here, not state or federal) do grant service monopolies.

Re:Get another ISP!

[SuricouRaven]

There was an incident some years ago when one of the ISPs (I forget which) started redirecting name-not-found DNS queries to it's own ad-filled error page. An incidential effect of which was to crash HP printers - some obsolete models were trying to connect to a disused update server to fetch updates. When they were instead directed to the ad-page, they did as they were programmed and tried to update. Fortunatly they didn't go so far as to install an ad-banner in place of their firmware, but it still resulted in very difficult to diagnose printer failures. I've been trying to find details on google, but can't seem to dig it up any more.

Re:Installation disks

[Urza9814]

Wow. For once I'm glad I use Comcast. They installed a jack, I bought a modem, called and gave them the modem's MAC address, and everything worked. None of this installation disc BS. Wonder what they would have said to someone like myself, who doesn't have a Windows machine at all....

Re:Get another ISP!

[darkwing_bmf]

You always have the option of using a different DNS server, or changing your client software to interpret the search engine page as a not found page.

Re:Get another ISP!

[1s44c]

Regarding Google - actually, yes, there is implied consent. robots.txt and nofollow links can easily be added to any website, to tell Googlebot and others to go away. And they will - or then they probably would be wandering into (c) infringing - or at least some form of illegal use of resources (for trawling the site).

Surely consent is opt in, not opt out. Robots.txt only forbids things, not allows them.

It's understood the web is public but I could place text under any copyright on my server. Why does google get a magic right to redistribute it without my permission?

Re:Get another ISP!

[lgw]

It's a really bad idea to let the government get its hand on content. Physical infrastructure, on the other hand, seems to work out OK most of the time in government hands.

If anyone were interested in a rational solution, we'd have a government-run "last mile" infrastructure providing an even playing field for any ISP who wanted to offer service - from the big guys to local/community shops.

But no one is really interested in a rational soltuion, as far as I can see.

Re:Get another ISP!

[mrchaotica]

What are you, an idiot?

First of all, the HTTP 404 error is a response by the server indicating that the particular file isn't found. Since you've already necessarily connected to the server, DNS has nothing to do with it.

Secondly, are you actually proposing that everyone on the entire Internet modify every bit of software to work around the fact that some assholes at an ISP decided to maliciously break a perfectly good protocol?! My mind boggles at the ridiculousness of it!

Re:Get another ISP!

[theghost]

AdBlock isn't for commercial gain, but it could be argued to cause financial harm.

Copyright law is just such a huge clusterfuck and so ripe for abuse that it's better just to avoid it completely until sane, comprehensive copyright reform happens...so...probably never. Trust me - it is not friendly to the little guy. As soon as you figure out a way to use it to your advantage, the *IAAs will find 10 ways to fuck you with that same method.

Re:Get another ISP!

[theghost]

I don't think the work can be established because it changes from minute to minute. Copyright is about protecting specific expressions of ideas. Trademark or just plain old fraud statutes are much more likely to address this.

Re:Get another ISP!

[theghost]

Take the WoW vs. Glider case from a little while back. There was no distribution there either, but Blizzard was able to take the Glider makers to court and win via DMCA and whatever other Frankenstein case they cobbled together. Right or wrong, it's another crack for the weasels to slip through. Best to avoid that area entirely and pick another battlefield.

Re:Get another ISP!

[postbigbang]

We disagree. I write a page, it has a static ad. You change the ad, you rob me of my revenue. My site has no ads, in reality. If you change it on the fly before it reaches my readers, you've in fact made a subsidiary work from my work, and you owe me.

That said, that's also if I give a shit, and want to sue you.

Re:Get another ISP!

[Hardolaf]

Fair use as long as they stay within the legal boundaries of it. Most of what google does is list a hundred or two hundred words from your site and then send people to your site. It's a lot different from taking copyrighted search results and a copyrighted page and advertisements, and changing them mid-stream claiming them to be google's.

Re:Get another ISP!

[ChrisMaple]

Why not go the full mile, and decide that the internet is essential infrastructure and should be provided by the state?

One word: censorship.

Re:Get another ISP!

[rjstanford]

AdBlock doesn't redistribute the modified work; it is entirely on behalf of the reader. If MediaCom distributed a browser that pulls these shenanigans, or gave users a proxy to install on user machines instead of running their own customers-can't-opt-out proxy, then they would likely be in the clear.

AdBlock also doesn't change the work itself (where work is defined as the HTML file). It alters the display of the work on your screen, sure, but then again so does changing the size of your monitor. Big difference, legally.

Re:Get another ISP!

[rjstanford]

Its the same problem that you get with AmTrak (which is also set up exactly backwards to other countries' systems), in which a private company owns the infrastructure and government, if it plays at all, is running on top of it (as a 2nd class citizen).

When there are truly limited resources, you have local government own the conduits and allow businesses to compete to provide services. Its how the electric grid works, as well, in most places.

Re:Get another ISP!

[Hazel Bergeron]

Pretty sure those small whole page previews you see when you click on that little magnifying glass are just JPEGs of the rendered page. You can't get more "taking [...] a copyrighted page and advertisements" than that. Although instead of changing them mid-stream, you've probably cached the JPEG for most pages long ago, so the image might not even be up-to-date and many hits of the preview only correspond to one page / ad view / whatever.

Meanwhile the Google image preview is high enough quality for the majority of the web's images that it's effectively making a library of everyone's images and adding your own adverts.

The only thing Google does right is not try to give the impression that this stuff was produced by Google.

Re:Get another ISP!

[Golddess]

Can a procedurally generated page be protected by copyright?

IANAL, but as I understand it, facts (the search results themselves) cannot be copyrighted. The layout of those facts, as well as the placement of the Google logo, search textbox, etc, might be copyrightable.

In addition to this...

[southlander]

We use them at work and they are the absolute WORST in terms of reliability. They have not a clue. The support people claim there are no issues even though they drop packets like crazy. Then you get one of the actual techs out on site and talk to them, and they let slip how faulty equipment does not get replaced, etc.

Re:Get another ISP!

[theghost]

To be clear, we agree that it's bad form, probably even fraudulent in some way - i just don't think copyright is the right tool for the job. You writing a page and a search engine generating a list of results on the fly are two fundamentally different things. Even so, if you have an ad service serving ads to your page or even if you didn't create the ads yourself, then i'm pretty sure you can't claim any sort of copyright protection on them. Even the creator of the ad can't claim copyright protection if the ad just gets stripped out and disappears.

Re:Get another ISP!

[Cramer]

*cough*WIRE TAP*cough*

Do the same thing to a radio broadcast, TV broadcast, or phone call and see how long your door stays on it's hinges.

Re:Get another ISP!

[theghost]

Arguing with someone's sig is a fundamentally silly thing to do, but i'll indulge you. Our nature gives us the capacity for culture. Our culture is a product of environment and history. If nature produced culture then we'd have world peace, one language, and we would have committed suicide out of boredom long ago. The quote itself has to do with our culture's obsession with fame and money and the truly shitty things we do to each other in pursuit of those - abuse of intellectual property laws, trademarks, and copyright being tangential examples of that.

That whole segue into pedophilia thing was pretty non-sequitur, so did you know that birds are probably descended from dinosaurs?

Attack the source of the money

[Mike Van Pelt]

Complain to the advertisers whose wares are being touted on these bogus pages. Let them know that Mediacom's fraudulent search pages reflect badly on them.

Re:Get another ISP!

[theghost]

Isn't it trademark that covers the whole wishy-washy "look and feel" thing, or is that patents? I often get my Imaginary Property laws mixed up.

Re:Installation disks

[celtic_hackr]

You can do the same thing with Mediacom. I bought my own modem, called up mediacom tech support, gave them my account number and they queried my modem and got the MAC address off it and that was it. But if you don't have your own modem you have to deal with all the Mediacom crap. Even before I had my own modem, I only had Linux and everything worked fine. But that was ages ago, before they started pulling all this stupid stuff. Now, I just block Mediacom from transmitting to port 80. So, when the 404s come down they tell me they can't find some wonky Mediacom url. At least I don't see the damn Mediacom pages, although Mediacom is regularly blocking some sites or just has a broken DNS., so I get some bogus 404s sometimes.

Re:Get another ISP!

[david_thornley]

Ever heard of natural monopolies?

Suppose I wanted to start an ISP with my own fiber connection to my customers. How do I run it? I'm not going to be able to construct my own network on my own poles, because there's going to be limits as to how many poles people are willing to accept. I'm not going to be able to go underground in my own tunnels, since that involves digging ditches across either streets or private property, inconveniencing tons of people. The only practical way I can connect is to piggyback on a current system, or to get a government mandate that allows me to use public property and go over private property to get to my customers.

Current systems have capacity limits. Not everybody can string up fiber or something like that. To preserve existing infrastructure, there has to be some sort of separation. This caused problems for cable companies early on, as it was hard to find reliable pole space with adequate separation.

Fundamentally, then, there are limits on the number of connections that can go into individual houses. Government regulation allows more connections, not fewer, as it can allow companies to create new connections on public property and with rights to do things on private property that would otherwise count as trespass and possibly vandalism. Without government regulation, we wouldn't have three cable providers available to everybody, and lots of people would simply be unable to get cable. The same is true of power, water, sewage, natural gas, and telephone connections. It's also true of internet connections.

We've had a solution to this, called regulated monopolies. The people who handle my water and sewage are city employees. My power, natural gas, and telephone connections are all owned by regulated monopolies. My cable TV would also if I had it. In all of these cases, There's really no other way to do it.

Therefore, Internet access needs to be through regulated monopolies. The regulators can establish mandatory policies (like no discrimination) and establish required levels of service. It's not tremendously efficient, and it does cause problems, It does allow me to get electricity on demand, water when I want it, and it allows me to count on natural gas for my furnaces.

Re:Get another ISP!

[postbigbang]

Fraud might be the same. Tampering is good, too. Messing with it at all is the problem. Whatever becomes the most painful legal deterrent works. If I expect someone to get X information, and they get some formulaic representation that I didn't intend, then they've messed with expectation, and perhaps revenue, too. If the ad is part of my copyright, then I'm injured. If there's a theory that the copyright holder is injured, then the tort grows. What if they substitute (heaven forbid) THE WRONG KIND OF AD for my site? Then I'm slandered.

However, while an engineer believes that the right tool for the job is absolutely mandatory, in this case, I believe that whatever is most painful is the best remedy, so as to deter others. Make it an example. Did you hear that, Las Vegas Sun?

Utility

[nurb432]

In time this will happen, if nothing else to enable the government to have more control over content and increased monitoring ability.

Keep in mind that not all utilities are owned/run by the government, as many are now private. However, they do have to live under quite draconian regulations that are designed to protect the public. ( by intent at least.. actual results may vary )

Dish Network

[orgelspieler]

I have Dish Network, and I've noticed they will "inject" advertisements on top of the advertisements that come from Comedy Central or other cable-type networks. Isn't this sort of analogous to that? I don't know about bogus search results, but injected ads and redirects seem like one of those things a company like this can get away with. Few of their customers will notice; it's probably not illegal; the risks are low; the payoff is high.

On the other hand, doesn't this mean they're not entitled to 512(a) safe harbor status? The law is explicit on this point. Time for **AA to sue Mediacom!! Who's bringing the popcorn?

Re:Dish Network

[enilnomi]

Those slots are made available to operators and affiliates (such as Dish, or a cable company) to fill with whatever they can sell. If the operator can't sell that time, then the network's ad appears onscreen. Same kind of setup with OTA TV networks and local affiliates. Same kind of setup with NPR and local broadcasters (except the time is for local announcements and promotions, not ads). Same kind of setup that pretty much everybody uses; nothing to see.

(This is one of the reasons cable operators hate to hear about a la carte cable -- most of the cable channels are part of "networks" of cable channels, and the more channels you carry from the same network, the better your ad insert deals become.)

Re:Installation disks

[springbox]

This is why I always run untrusted software in a virtual machine.

Re:Get another ISP!

[mug funky]

simple.

do you want your site to be found by others?

or do you want to be a cranky webmaster with no traffic?

note that google image search now shows the image in the page's context by default (albeit shaded dark and with the image sitting on top in an ugly-ish box thing). i think this is evidence of google attempting to do the right thing while maintaining it's effectiveness as a search engine.

i wonder what the wayback machine would have to say? but then imagine if the wayback machine planted ads on old sites you dredged up.

Re:Get another ISP!

[mug funky]

shows are made to spec. the spec comes from the network that shows the show.

they specify the number of commercial breaks per program length, whether there's a fade to black and a fade up, how much mute audio should be in the tops and tails of the program segments, etc, etc.

syndicated shows are licensed and adapted as required. the licensing discussion involves all parties. nobody is having ads inserted without their knowledge or against their will.

you have a precedent in baloney.

Re:Get another ISP!

[WorBlux]

The truth is that the monopolies were created decades before the theory was formalized by intervention-minded economists, who then used the theory a s a n ex post rationale for government intervention. Atthe time when the first government franchise monopolies were being granted, the large majority of economists understood t h a t large-scale,capital intensive production did not lead to monopoly, but was a n absolutely desirable aspect of the competitive process.

The theory of natural monopoly is also a-historical. There is no evidence of the "natural monopoly" story ever having been carried out-of one producer achieving lower long-run average total costs than everyone else in the industry and thereby establishing a permanent monopoly. As discussed below, in many of the so-called public utility industries of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, there were often literally dozens of competitors.

There is no evidence a t all that a t the outset of public utility regulation there existed any such phenomenon as a "natural monopoly." As Harold Demsetz has pointed out:Six electric light companies were organized in the one year of 1887in New York City. Forty-five electric light enterprises had the legal right to operate in Chicago in 1907. Prior to 1895, Duluth, Minnesota,was served by five electric lighting companies, and Scranton, Pennsylvania, had four in 1906. . . . During the latter part of the nineteenth century, competition was the usual situation in the gas industry in this country. Before 1884, six competing companies were operatingin New York City . . . competition was common and especially persistent in the telephone industry . . . Baltimore, Chicago, Cleveland, Columbus, Detroit, Kansas City, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Pitts-burgh, and St. Louis, among the larger cities, had at least two telephone services in 1905.14

https://www.mises.org/journals/rae/pdf/RAE9_2_3.PDF

Plus you argument if we were to accept it, would only really hold for the last mile. Over the long distances railroads will gladly rent their right of way to cables, and there are several methods of laying cables deep enough underground that you would never notice it went under your property unless you were told it did. Especially with TCP/IP where redirection, NAT, and proxy can be done almost transparently. The last mile could even be a cooperative based on wireless mesh making clever use of directed antennae charging a small fee to cover equipment cost, and then charging per gigabyte (based on competitive bidding of high level providers), perhaps even offering credits for opting into certain types of advertisement . And even then without government intervention you would see homes and neighborhoods built in such a way to minimize cost of infrastructure. Perhaps a single meta-conduit which would be rented by utilities for space or whose cost would be split according to how many systems you had running into your home, how far each had to run to a source or hub, and how much space each service took up in the big pipe. It's just one possibility of several and perhaps dozens. There are plenty of solution if those damn bureaucrats would just let it lie.

Your criticism of damage to public property such as roads, is an argument against public roads, not against direct competition of utilities. It's only a problem because there is no good way to internalize the the costs and delays of adding such infrastructure over and on public property.

Once AT&T's initial patents expired in 1893, dozens of competitors sprung up. "By the end of 1894 over 80 new independent competitors had already grabbed 5 percent of total market share . . . after the turn of the century, over 3,000 competitors existed.55In some states there were over 200 telephone companies operating simultaneously. By 1907, AT&T's competitors had captured 51 percent of the telephone market and prices were being driven sharp

Re:Get another ISP!

[The End Of Days]

I don't know one way or the other, but if they still return 404 in the status line, things should be okay.

Re:Get another ISP!

[Intron]

[rwhois.mediacomcc.com]
%rwhois V-1.5:003fff:00 rwhois.mediacomcc.com (by Network Solutions, Inc. V-1.5.9.5)

97.64.128.0/17

I say we take off and nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

Re:Get another ISP!

[Intron]

I've been trying to find details on google, but can't seem to dig it up any more.

Maybe something is affecting your search results.

Re:Installation disks

[Hyperhaplo]

Good to see you tried with another browser first.

This is exactly why:
1) Don't use IE as primary browser
2) Always have several browsers handy (Opera, Firefox, Chrome at a minimum)
and
3) Have your IE Security settings set to not trust or install automatically. ... so you don't get hijacked with activex driveby installs like this.

Preaching to the choir here, I know, I was whacked by activex installs several times before learning how to take the cautious path.

At least has been somewhat address in the latest versions of IE. Too little too late unfortunately with IE6 still looming large in the wild.

Some software can be very useful for identifying and preventing a driveby install. I've found Adaware and comodo to do a decent job.

Re:Get another ISP!

[darkwing_bmf]

Fine just change ISPs then. If 404 means so much to you lease a T1.

Re:Get another ISP!

[Khyber]

Wiretapping

Unauthorized Access/Use of a Computer

Invasion of Privacy

Shall I keep going? I can do it and even start breaking it down by country.

Re:Get another ISP!

[jandersen]

One word: censorship.

But they do that anyway, don't they? What I am talking about is taking the profiteering out of the equation - this whole thing about privatisation making things cheaper and more efficient has by and large turned out to be a myth fueled by ideological tunnel-vision. Closing your eye to reality is always a bad idea, whether it is based on grand ideas about socialism, capitalism or religion.

Re:Get another ISP!

[Jaxoreth]

Isn't it trademark that covers the whole wishy-washy "look and feel" thing, or is that patents? I often get my Imaginary Property laws mixed up.

Neither. Apple claimed that Microsoft, by copying their "look and feel", was infringing their copyright.

Re:Installation disks

[AmiMoJo]

Why did you click "yes" when the big warning messages about installing an ActiveX appeared? I know for a fact that every version of IE down to 6 has them. Were you using Windows 95 perhaps?

If you don't want their crapware don't install it.

Re:Government created this monopoly

[imric]

Yes! My god, a reasonable poster! *SMILE*