Don't Pirate Or We'll Mess With Your Connected Thermostats, Warns East Coast ISP (engadget.com)

Internet service provider Armstrong Zoom has roughly a million subscribers in the Northeastern part of the U.S. and is keen to punish those it believes are using file-sharing services. According to Engadget, "the ISP's response to allegedly naughty customers is bandwidth throttling, which is when an ISP intentionally slows down your internet service based on what you're doing online. Armstrong Zoom's warning letter openly threatens its suspected file-sharing customers about its ability to use or control their webcams and connected thermostats." From the report: The East Coast company stated: "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." All U.S. states served by Armstrong Zoom will be experiencing temperatures around or under freezing over the weekend and into the near future. Bandwidth throttling for customers in those areas who have connected thermostats could mean the difference between sickness and health, or even life and death. Seems like an extreme punishment for any allegedly downloaded Game of Thrones cam rips.

Comments

dont mess with my thermostat

[FudRucker]

or i will take an axe to your series of pipes

Re:dont mess with my thermostat

[Anonymous Coward]

Just report them to the authorities.
This threat is no different from "It is a nice house you have here, would be unfortunate if something were to happen to it."

It is illegal as fuck for them to make a statement like this.

They aren't law enforcement. If they have a problem with someones possibly illegal online activities they should report it and let a court determine if the action was a copyright violation or not.
Taking the law in your own hands isn't generally accepted.

Re:dont mess with my thermostat

[serutan]

I agree that ISPs shouldn't act as copyright cops, judges and juries, but this one isn't threatening to mess with anybody's thermostat. They're just threatening to throttle bandwidth, which realistically could affect the operation of net-enabled devices if say a bit torrent client is hogging the connection.

Hyperbole much?

[Obfuscant]

Bandwidth throttling for customers in those areas who have connected thermostats could mean the difference between sickness and health, or even life and death.

If you are needing to adjust your thermostat using the network, that means you aren't at home to do it manually. You are not where the thermostat controls the temperature. I.e., if you freeze to death because you didn't walk across the room to turn the thermostat up, it ain't the ISPs fault.

Yeah, maybe death of your pet fish if you aren't home to turn it up and the tank gets too cold, but "difference between ... life and death" is not something you usually hear with reference to fish.

Or are people facing death from the cold really so lazy that they'd rather freeze than walk across the room?

Re:Hyperbole much?

[sunking2]

Granny should have thought of that before she pirated The Girlfriend Experience.

Re:Hyperbole much?

[Xenx]

They aren't touching the thermostat. They're throttling the internet speed in response to copyright infringement notices. Their terms of use and related documentation likely covers what can happen in regards to copyright infringement. If you don't like that practice, that is a different argument.. one that I would likely side with you on. However, it's up to the customer to understand the policies and what it entails. The ISP isn't targeting smart thermostats or the like, it's only warning the customer of possible issues if their connection is throttled.

Re:Hyperbole much?

[aardvarkjoe]

They're not "messing with your thermostat." They're messing with your internet connection, which you've connected your thermostat to.

If lack of internet connectivity is going to cause your house to flood, or your granny to die, then you probably need to re-evaluate how you're using these devices.

Re:Hyperbole much?

[Obfuscant]

If the ISP messes with your thermostat it is their fault.

Stand still and think for a minute. If an ISP throttles or shuts off your internet connection for any reason, what effect will that have on your internet-controlled thermostat?

1. 1. It will turn the temperature setting down.
2. 2. It will turn the temperature setting up.
3. 3. It will turn your furnace off completely.
4. 4. You will not be able to change your temperature setting using the external internet, but can still operate it on the local internal network, and otherwise nothing is different including the manual controls.

The correct answer is "4". The setting you had in place before the network interruption takes place will continue.

Answers 1-3 are all what could be considered "messing with your thermostat", but only if the ISP actually makes the changes to the settings and not the stupid thermostat changes how it works when it loses a network connection. "Turn all heat off unless there is a constant network connection to some server in China" is a stupid and dangerous operating mode, and you need to blame the thermostat maker for that, not the ISP.

For the person whose grandmother cannot operate a thermostat unless it is internet connected, then I suggest you get her a locally controlled thermostat instead of relying on the external internet. It is quite possible that the external internet will fail during a severe weather event and she'll be dead even if the ISP had nothing to do with it. Even just a local power failure could take out the wireless access point that the thermostat connects to, as well as the internet modem. This is not a case of the ISP turning something into a "matter of life or death", it's a case of poor planning on how to deal with common modes of failure resulting in a "matter of life or death."

Re:Hyperbole much?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the perfect crime

Re:Hyperbole much?

[DontBeAMoran]

What kind of internet-connected thermostat needs a lot of bandwidth anyway? These things should be able to run on a 300bps modem.

Re:Hyperbole much?

[sheramil]

One that's been taken over by a botnet and is too busy mining Dogecoins to adjust the temperature.

This is why we need bet neutrality

[110010001000]

I've said it before, and i will say it again: Your internet provider is a conduit on which multiple services rely. It cannot and should not, by law, be used to control or limit access, or police content either of it's own accord or upon request of external parties.


Of course, personally, I am strongly against connecting any devices (other than computers) in my home to the outside facing network, but that's beside the point.

Hooray! (dupe)

[ls671]

Hooray! I remember reading the exact same story on /. a few days ago.

Let me google it, "connected thermostat site:slashdot.org". Here we go:

https://yro.slashdot.org/story...

Maybe editor should do the same and Google it before posting dupes ;-)