| | |
|
GlennLortscherSecondPaper 5 - 23 Jan 2009 - Main.IanSullivan
|
|
<
< |
| META TOPICPARENT | name="WebPreferences" |
|---|
| >
> |
| META TOPICPARENT | name="OldPapers" |
|---|
| | | Broadband Providers See a Goldmine in Terms of Service Agreements
Still hung over from a brief, drunken courtship with the media giants, broadband providers have awoken to a harsh reality where Internet connections are now a commodity. The "we bring the eyeballs, you bring the content" delusion faded as media conglomerates realized that ISPs have little control over which websites their customers visit. In this paper, I argue that in response to this commoditization of bandwidth, broadband providers are creating a crisis of informed consent by deceptively changing their standard Terms of Service and Privacy Policy agreements, effectively adding invisible asterisks to "Unlimited" Internet plans, deluding consumers and chilling the adoption of innovative web services. | | | But ISPs do still have vast quantities of users who would rather die than wait for the cable/DSL guy in order to switch providers; still other customers have no broadband alternatives. While this might encourage monopolistic complacency, other factors push back. First, shareholder pressure and newfound independence for some ISPs, such as Time Warner Cable, have increased pressure to find new profit sources despite peaking subscriber numbers. Second, there is a clear and increasing usage gap between users of high-bandwidth, cutting-edge web services like Hulu and Bittorrent, and the average Hotmail, MySpace? , and YouTube? user, with the former forcing expensive network upgrades. | |
<
< | Broadband executives have settled on two strategies to face this bandwidth commoditized world: reducing costs by reeling in the most expensive customers, and discovering new profit sources while keeping in mind consumer desire for invisible, unlimited Internet service. To accomplish these tasks without upsetting customer immobility, two solutions have emerged: limiting the connections of high-bandwidth users ("network management"), and enlisting services which sell customer browsing data. One such service, Phorm, claims that its software represents a "privacy revolution" by tracking random numbers instead of IP addresses. (How soon we forget.) | >
> | Broadband executives have settled on two strategies to face this bandwidth commoditized world: reducing costs by reeling in the most expensive customers, and discovering new profit sources while keeping in mind consumer desire for invisible, unlimited Internet service. To accomplish these tasks without upsetting customer immobility, two solutions have emerged: limiting the connections of high-bandwidth users ("network management"), and enlisting services which sell customer browsing data. One such service, Phorm, claims that its software represents a "privacy revolution" by tracking random numbers instead of IP addresses. (How soon we forget.) | | | Certainly these service changes pose no problem in themselves, as long as consumers consent. But Phorm, for its part, seems quite aware that "informed" and "consent" might be mutually exclusive with regard to its service, and seems to be taking a page from Facebook regarding the meaning of "opt-in". Even some providers like Virgin and Charter have conceded, in a way, that privacy and consent problems exist with network management and Phorm-like programs. |
|
|
|
|
This site is powered by the TWiki collaboration platform.
All material on this collaboration platform is the property of the contributing authors.
All material marked as authored by Eben Moglen is available under the license terms CC-BY-SA version 4.
|
|
| | |