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Comcast Wants To Charge Broadband Users More For Privacy (dslreports.com)
Comcast believes it should be able to charge its broadband users who want to protect their privacy. FCC, on other hand, has indicated that such practices should not be there. In a new filing with the FCC, Comcast says that charging consumers more money to opt out of "snoopvertising" should be considered a perfectly acceptable business model (PDF). DSLReports: "A bargained-for exchange of information for service is a perfectly acceptable and widely used model throughout the U.S. economy, including the Internet ecosystem, and is consistent with decades of legal precedent and policy goals related to consumer protection and privacy," Comcast said in the filing. The company proceeds to claim that banning such options "would harm consumers by, among other things, depriving them of lower-priced offerings." In short, Comcast is arguing that protecting your own privacy should be a paid luxury option, and stopping them from doing so would raise broadband rates. But as we've noted for years it's the lack of competition that keeps broadband prices high. It's also the lack of competition that prevents users upset with broadband privacy practices from switching to another ISP. That's why the FCC thinks some basic privacy rules of the road might be a good idea.
AT&T has being doing this since they announced GigaPower, their 1GB/1GB service.
$100 / month if you want your privacy, or $70 if you let them snoop
Using HTTPS does not prevent comcast knowing what websites you visit. It only prevents them seeing the content, and that is if they don't have a certificate position in your browser's trusted certificate store.
If they do have a trusted certificate (which could easily be installed by their "Here, run this program to set up your new Comcast service. Be sure to run it on every PC!"... anyway if they do end up tricking you into trusting their certificate, HTTPS is useless to you because they can just MITM you (like a lot of ISPs and most employers already do).
HTTPS is pretty worthless as a privacy measure.
The competition problem is the last mile problem. Fix the last mile problem by moving the end point for Comcast from the Home/Business to a COLO facility managed by the local municipality. Then open up the doors to any / all competition at the COLO facility.
That way, Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, Google, HBO ONLY, Netflix .... can all offer their version of "service" as needed, even enhancing their offerings with new and innovative services such as Comcast's "snoopvertising" suite. Then we can let the market decide what TV shows and Internet the market wants.
I realize that this is an ALIEN concept of letting FREE ENTERPRISE solve problems by having the Government get out of the way. No Need for ANY regulation to control Net Neutrality or even needed the FCC to rule on the crap Comcast is spewing.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
This is basically the model of municipal roads.
The municipality builds the roads, and private industry uses them to provide whatever services they can think to sell that involve transportation. The government doesn't really get into the transportation business or businesses built on transportation of goods.
There are minor exceptions, like the post office or mass transit, but there's also generally demand for this or some long-settled precedent for providing them. But there's no calling city hall to order a pizza.