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Piracy Notices Can Mess With Your Thermostat, ISP Warns (torrentfreak.com)
U.S. Internet provider Armstrong has warned persistent pirates on its network of limiting their access to the thermostats if they didn't play by its rules. From a report: Our attention was caught by a recent letter the company sent to one of its users. The ISP points out that it received multiple copyright infringement notices, urging the customer to stop, or else. [...] While reduced Internet speeds are bad enough, there's another scary prospect. The reduced service level may also prevent subscribers from controlling their thermostat remotely. Not ideal during the winter. "Please be advised that this may affect other services which you may have connected to your internet service, such as the ability to control your thermostat remotely or video monitoring services." Accused pirates who want their full service restored, and regain control over their thermostats, have to answer some copyright questions and read an educational piece about copyright infringement.
If you are violating the ISP terms of services, then services may be termed.
Is having your Thermostat blocked that big of a deal? So you get home and your home is 50 degrees and you have to turn it up. and be cold for about an hour?
I mean what would happen if your ISP had an outage? Does your IoT fail when there is no connection?
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Either ISPs are a common carrier, or they aren't. If they're a common carrier, they're agnostic to the traffic they carry. In exchange, they're indemnified from liability for that traffic.
If ISPs argue they can throttle or assign certain traffic to fast lanes (anti-net neutrality), then they're arguing they're not common carriers. If they're not common carriers, then they're liable for the traffic they carry. They will have to track down pirates on their network and enforce copyright lest the copyright holders sue them instead of the actual pirates. They will have to monitor traffic for people plotting crimes, lest they be held liable for aiding and abetting. And if a member of a drug cartel conducts illegal banking transactions, the ISP will be on the hook for money laundering. Someone looks up ways to get away with murder, the ISP will be found complicit. If you can monitor your traffic to detect piracy, what's your excuse for not monitoring it to detect these other things?
That's the Pandora's box the ISPs will open if they decide they don't want to be agnostic to the traffic they carry. But like most people, they're tempted by only the positives of a course of action and blindly ignore the negatives.
My dad used to have a remote monitor for his pacemaker that sent data over the internet to his doctor. Without the remote monitoring, he'd have to make regular trips to the doctor for monitoring (and having an elderly man driving on snowy roads is a risk of its own)
The internet is becoming a utility, and it should be regulated as such - the power company can't turn off your power just because they think you're using electricity to grow marijuana. They can, however, tip off the police about the suspected grow house, but they can't turn off your power.
Being a threat, and due process (or lack thereof) have nothing to do with it. 'If you get caught shoplifting you will be prosecuted' is a threat, and is not extortion. 'Pay me $400 or I tell the cops you stole' could be extortion.
Extortion requires you to gain something through coersion. In the first statement, the person making the statement is not gaining anything, and there is no coersion. In the second statement, there is both potential gain and coersion.
In the ISP case, there is neither gain nor coersion.