There have already been instances of infrastructure owners imposing things like this (ant-bittorrent traffic shaping, if I recall correctly) on their small ISP clients. Small ISPs generally have a bit more bargaining power than an individual subscriber, but not much more, and they generally don’t hold out long.

I’m fascinated that any business will play policeman for another company without verification and proof of charges. I know for example if your auto insurer cancelled your policy because a neighbor said you were say making bombs, they certainly would not be allowed to cancel your policy without proof.

I was gob-smacked when it happened to me and nobody in my family pirated anything. Welcome to 1984.

Where I live, northern san diego county there is comcast.

If I move a mile south I can get time warner instead, but not comcast there.

 .. Oh and ignore the part where you can appeal the red flag. I’m pretty legal and technically savvy. I demanded and received ‘proof of our transgression’… A screen shot showing what and when we supposedly pirated. No way to trace it or disprove it. After arguing with their management, I was told I could contest it, but if I did, there’s always the possibility that the Media Company would chose to prosecute me and the fines could be substantial, like the lady that uploaded 3 songs to a Bit Torrent and is now fighting a several million dollar judgement.

So why are they bothering with this? Why are they not standing up for their customers? If I had to guess, it’s because the Media Corps can withhold movies and music from their cable franchises. What would Comcast be without Disney etc.

For instance, I use Astound, which is a small-ish company that serves about 325k people along the West Coast. They do not practice any of this shady crap. How difficult would it be to start another one? Probably not very difficult. Unless the US govt passes laws that REQUIRE ALL ISPs to do this kind of stuff, who cares if Verizon does it? There will instantly be a demand for a new ISP and one will surely start because it should (if internet follows trends of all technology) get cheaper and cheaper and more accessible to start an ISP.

Can someone tell me why this is not the case? It’s an argument I rarely see presented.

Thankfully, I live on the Cambridge side of Boston. Boston, being about as big of a nerd nirvana as one can hope for, has a grand total of two, occasionally 3, viable ISPs. We have Verizon, Comcast, and sweet beloved RCN. RCN offers the juice at a reasonable speed, at a reasonable cost, and has not signed on to this bull shit.

Many other people are not so lucky as to actually have an option. For you my friends, get a VPN. We might look back on this as a minor blessing. VPN net code is going to get better and beefier because of this crap.

And if the cow jumps over the moon, the dish runs away with the spoon, and big content actually shits out something worth keeping someday, then I still have the option of either buying a copy, or generating mp4s of movies from a redbox rental and mp3s from youtube – depending on its entertainment value.

Maybe some good can still come of this.  Perhaps these draconian “laws” will finally force Hollywood to stop scapegoating piracy for falling revenues and serve to rub their noses in their own shit-content stains.