Canadian ISP High Jacks Your Browser

It wasn't too long ago that peoeple were looking at us Net Neutrality folks as Tin-Hat wearers. We were seen as a fringe, worried about "what might happen." People would poke fun at us, referencing "the man" and calling us hippies. But after recent goings-on concerning AT&T and Big Brother's bedroom scandal and Comcast's "traffic shaping" snafu and even politicians jumping on the NN bandwagon, I think there is a strong case for why Net Neutrality legislation should exist. If that weren't enough, Canada's Roger ISP has just provided yet another reason.

Roger's has developed a system of actually manipulating web content to suit their needs, supposedly for the express reason of alerting subscribers of when they are reaching their bandwidth limits. I say supposedly because the ISP claims that the bandwidth limit notice will be the only use for injected images, but it is fairly easy to project that the same technology could be used to inject additional ads or even to adjust/block sites all together. As it is, the technology currently inserts what amounts to a banner ad informing the subscriber that they have gone over 75% of their bandwidth usage which won’t go away until it is clicked off.

I can't speak enough to how invasive this technology is. When I surf to Google or Homotron or any other site, I want to see the content on that site, not the information the ISP has decided I want to see for me. I pay my internet bill for access, not to be preached to by my ISP. Many developers spend hours and stake their living on the websites they have built, and for an ISP to decide that the content that developer has created is not what it wants you to see is absurd. Check out the Ars Technica link for a good look at this issue.

Canadian ISP Tests Injecting Content Into Web Pages [Ars Technica]