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The Five Levels of ISP Evil
schwit1 writes "Recently a number of ISPs have been caught improperly redirecting end-user traffic in order to generate affiliate payments, using a system from Paxfire. A class action lawsuit has been filed against Paxfire and one of the ISPs. This is a serious allegation, but it's the tip of the iceberg. I'm not sure if everyone understands the levels of sneakiness that service providers can engage in."
Most markets in USA have either an effective monopoly or a duopoly when it comes to ISPs. Or otherwise we have options that cost 3-5 times over the fair market rates which do not even try to compete for the residential dollar.
How about, instead of something nebulous like points, we describe an ISP's level of evil by the number of years in prison an individual hacker would get if they got caught doing the things these corporations do to traffic passing through systems they control.
If so, where do I sign on to the lawsuit for fraud?
Too late. The "Open Government" Obama administration has already granted them immunity, including retroactive immunity, for any illegal spying. The one big thing I was hoping for from Obama was to roll back some of the grosser programs put in place in violation of 1st and 4th amendments by the Bush administration. Instead his administration has taken them WAY farther. It's getting to the point of approaching gross violations of the Constitution by Lincoln during the American Civil War. But at least Lincoln had the excuse of a civil war to contend with. Obama and the morons in Congress are doing primarily to line there pockets with money from corporate interest.
Who is John Galt?
The motivation for all 5 is money. That's not what makes it evil. What makes them evil is that they are interfering with the way the internet works. If it were a phone call, they would have been jailed. But for some reason, traffic on the internet is not yet considered private use of a communications network the way the phone network is.
It's not just that it shows ads, it breaks lots of internet services.
People seem to forget that the web isn't just HTTP, and there are quite a few other things that do DNS lookups. And weird stuff happens when a name that doesn't exist resolves, and the connection is directed to an ad server.
Count me out of an armed revolt. Too much bloodshed, and it creates more problems than it solves.
Only because you're still in the comfort zone created by the bread and circuses. But that's ok they are going to erode a little more of your rights every year, until finally you won't care about shedding blood anymore. Revolution happens when the people would rather be dead than live under such conditions. Today people are still willing to live under these conditions - indeed the US is still much better than "those other places". However there are those of us that still remember that it was much better than it is today. It's only a matter of time.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
The problem with that approach is that the network (at least the "last mile" leading to customers' residences) is a natural monopoly. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly for a definition. For a competitor, it is usually not worthwhile to build a parallel network if he can reach only a few customers. Result: The incumbent ISP can like a fuckhead and get away with it.
A way to solve that would be a public network where the customer can choose his provider and the provider can then rent the wire from the customer's house to the next telephone exchange. Germany got that one halfway right:
When the telecommunications branch of the former Deutsche Post (public mail and telecom authority) was privatized, the new company "Deutsche Telekom" also got the network - under the condition that they rent out the "last mile" to competitors if the customer wants to go with one of those. A new regulation authority controls the price for that rent.
As a result, Germany actually has DSL competition in most places. Of course, there is still a lot of bickering between Deutsche Telekom and the competition about how much rent is fair, and the regulation authority is needed to keep the Deutsche Telekom from charging excessive rates. But by and large it works.
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