Big Brother has finally arrived my friends. But the threat comes not from the government but from corporations. They go by names like Knology, and NebuAd. They pray to the altar of profit at any cost. How do we know they do so? They slither in the shadows not wanting to be known that they do deep packet analysis on everything you send via your ISP. They hide their motives deep in the user agreement that your ISP makes you sign. They make you opt-out, if you become aware, rather than permitting you to have an opt-in instead. They are the crack dealer of the internet world.

In England, Phorm is expected in the coming weeks to launch its monitoring service with BT, Britain’s largest Internet broadband provider.

NebuAd and Front Porch declined to name the U.S. service providers they are working with, saying it’s up to the providers to announce how they deal with consumer data.

Some service providers, such as Embarq and Wide Open West, or WOW, have altered their customer-service agreements to permit the monitoring.

Embarq describes the monitoring as a “preference advertising service.” Wide Open West tells customers it is working with a third-party advertising network and names NebuAd as its partner.

Officials at WOW and Embarq declined to talk about any monitoring that has been done.

Each company allows users to opt out of the monitoring, though that permission is buried in customer service documents. The opt-out systems work by planting a “cookie,” or a small file left on a user’s computer. Each uses a cookie created by NebuAd.

Officials at another service provider, Knology, said it was working with NebuAd and is conducting a test of deep-packet inspection on “several hundred” customers in a service area it declined to identify.

Any company that declines any inquiry of this nature should be treated with suspicion.

I think it is time that the No Call List be expanded to force such companies that partitiptation must be opt-in. Not only that if my name is on the list the onus is on them that I not be scanned, folded and mutilated by their schemes. Applicable fines should be levied for non compliance on a per user infraction basis.

Read the Washington Post below in full.

Linky.

If you want to stop piracy, don’t do things that encourage it. Im my life at the moment, it is difficult to watch an entire movie in a single setting, which is the best reason for a Netflix subscription - no late fees if I keep a DVD for a week. I’m not that unusual, in fact I know quite a few industrious souls who do their movie viewing in installments, often using PVR’s as their tool of choice instead of the rented DVD.

Directv subscribers who have paid a premium to have a DVR and have paid to download a movie to it no longer have the same flexibility. Glad I’m not one of them, and I’ll bet more than a few are pretty angry.

If you’re a DirecTV subscriber and you watch their pay-per-view moves, you’ll shortly notice a change. A big change.

The company offers the moves via digital video recorders, but from April 15, once you’ve downloaded the film you’ll only have 24 hours in which to watch it. Currently there’s no time limit.

According to the company, the blame for the move lies with Hollywood. (Digital Trends)

My Netflix subscrition can’t compete with the immediacy of Pay Per view, and new releases tend to have a waiting list. True, I can also watch some Netflix content online, but again, not the new releases. While I’m OK with this many are not. It’s just too easy to download a portable pauseable copy of most new releases online. Most would gladly pay for content that is easier to get legitimately if it was just as easy to use.

Memo to Hollywood execs: the movie fan is not your enemy. Make content cheap, immediately available and portable. You’ll eradicate most of the pirates instantly and your army of high salary lawyers can be retrained to serve lunch to you at your favorite eatery.

Canadian access provider Rogers management must be throwing a fit right now. It’s alledged that they have been pretty aggressive in efforts to reduce Bittorrent traffic.

On March 24, CBC will use BitTorrent to distribute this year’s broadcast of Canada’s Next Great Prime Minister. This will make Canada the first country in North America to release high-quality, DRM-free copies of a prime-time show using the popular P2P file-sharing technology.(from Cnet)

I’m betting there will be abundant veiwers and that TVoIP distribution will be growing at CBC. It’s likely to encourage similar action by the US’s PBS and others. Comcast is next the have the fits.

Before I get to the news item, I offer a short history lesson on the big music industry. The industry’s business model has always been about acquiring the rights to material cheaply and reselling the product eternally. They have never been interested in paying the typical artist anything. Sure there are exceptions, usually the most popular artists, but by in large artists not getting paid much by big music has been going on since the days of the Victorola. With increasing regularity, artists are not assigning rights to the labels. Of course, the labels also consider this to be piracy.

Quoting Wired:

An invitation-only meeting on the subject drew about 50 people, including representatives of IFPI, Sony BMG, T-Mobile, the giant European ISP and mobile-carrier Orange, and performing-rights organizations like BMI. The response, according to Jenner, “ranged from ‘What do we do now?’ to ‘It sounds good, but can it possibly work?’ A lot of people are like rabbits in the headlights: They’re terrified they’re going to lose their jobs. No one dares to feel that this might be the solution.”

Even so, notes Shira Perlmutter, IFPI’s head of legal policy, “none of our members are ruling anything out. These companies are all very open to creative new ideas that would allow customers to do things they want — including using file sharing technologies.”

More on Clueless Big Label Music seeks protection money from ISP’s