How ISPs Will Royally Sucker the Internet, Thanks to Ad Blocking
http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/001127.html
Largely lost in the current controversies about users blocking ads from
websites is a dirty little secret -- users are about to be played for
suckers by the dominant ISPs around the world, and ad blocking will be
the "camel's nose under the tent" that makes these ISPs' ultimate wet
dreams of total control over Internet content come true at last.
There have been a number of clues already, with one particularly notable
new one today.
The big red flashing warning light is the fact that in some cases it's
possible for firms to buy their way past ad blockers -- proving
demonstrably that what's really going on is that these ad blocking firms
want a piece of the advertising pie -- while all the time they wax
poetic propaganda about how much they hate -- simply hate! -- all
those ads.
But these guys are just clowns compared to the big boys -- the dominant
ISPs around the world.
And those ISPs have for so very long wanted their slices of that same
pie. They want the money coming, going, in and out -- as SBC's CEO
Edward Whitacre noted back in 2005 during their takeover of AT&T, when
he famously asked "Why should [Internet sites] be allowed to use [my]
pipes for free?" -- conveniently ignoring the fact that his subscribers
were already paying him for Internet access to websites.
Now -- today -- ISPs sense that it's finally time to plunge their fangs
into the Net's jugular, to really get the blood gushing out into deep
scarlet pools of money.
Mobile operator Digicel announced today that they intend to block
advertising (except for some local advertisers) on their networks across
the South Pacific and Caribbean, unless -- you guessed it -- websites
pay them to let their ads through.
And while their claimed targets are Google, Facebook, Yahoo, and the
other major players, you know that it will never stop there, and
ultimately millions of small businesses and other small websites -- many
of them one person operations, often not even commercial -- who depend
on those ads will be decimated.
Germany's Deutsche Telekom is known to have been "toying" with the same
concept, and you can be sure that many other ISPs are as well. They're
not interested in "protecting" users from ads -- they're all about
control and extorting money from both sides of the game -- their
subscribers and the sites those subscribers need to access.
Where this all likely leads is unfortunately very clear. No crystal ball
required.
Some sites will block ISPs who try this game. Broad use of SSL will
limit some of these ISPs' more rudimentary efforts to manipulate the
data flows between sites and subscribers. Technology will advance
quickly to move ads "inline" to content servers, making them much more
difficult to effectively block.
But right now, firms such as Israeli startup Shine Technologies are
moving aggressively to promote carrier level blocking systems to feed
ISP greed.
Yet this isn't the worst of it. Because once ISPs have a taste of the
control, power, and money - money - money that comes with
micromanagement of their subscribers' Internet access and usage, the
next step is obvious, especially in countries where strong net
neutrality protections are not in place or are at risk of being repealed
with the next administration.
Perhaps you remember a joke ad that was floating around some years ago,
showing a purported price list for a future ISP -- with different prices
depending on which Internet sites you wanted to access. Pay X dollars
more a month to your ISP if you want to be permitted to reach Google.
Pay Y dollars more a month for Facebook access. Another Z dollars a
month for permission from your ISP to connect to Netflix. And so on.
It seemed pretty funny at the time.
It's not so funny now -- because it's the next logical step after ISP
attempts at ad blocking. And in fact, blocking entire sites is
technically usually far easier than trying to only block ads related to
particular sites -- most users won't know about workarounds like proxies
and VPNs, and the ISPs can try block those as well.
These are the kinds of nightmarish outcomes we can look forward to as a
consequence of tampering with the Internet's original end-to-end model,
especially at the ISP level.
It's a road to even more riches for the dominant ISPs, ever higher
prices for their subscribers, and the ruin of vast numbers of websites,
especially smaller ones with limited income sources.
It's the path to an Internet that closely resembles the vast wasteland
that is cable TV today. And it's no coincidence that the dominant ISPs,
frantic over fears of their control being subverted by so-called cable
TV "cord cutters" moving to the Internet alone, now hope to remake the
Internet itself in the image of cable TV's most hideous, anti-consumer
attributes.
Nope, you don't need a Tarot deck or a Ouija board to see the future of
the Internet these days, if the current patterns remain on their present
course.
Whether or not our Internet actually remains on this grievous path, is
of course ultimately in our hands.
But are we up to the challenge? Or are we suckers, after all?
--Lauren--
I have consulted to Google, but I am not currently doing so.
All opinions expressed here are mine alone.
- - -
Lauren Weinstein ([email protected]): http://www.vortex.com/lauren
Founder:
- Network Neutrality Squad: http://www.nnsquad.org
- PRIVACY Forum: http://www.vortex.com/privacy-info
Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: http://www.pfir.org/pfir-info
Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
Google+: http://google.com/+LaurenWeinstein
Twitter: http://twitter.com/laurenweinstein
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 / Skype: vortex.com
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