AT&T Patent Mocks Net Neutrality, Wants to Charge Extra for Certain Data
It's been less than a month since a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C. delivered a devastating blow to the FCC's net neutrality rules, and despite AT&T's reassurances that it would remain committed to an open Internet, a new patent suggests otherwise. The patent, which is innocently named "Prevention of Bandwidth Abuse of a Communications System," details how AT&T wants to monitor the type of data its users consume and penalizes them with increased fees based on their usage.
AT&T as Judge and Executioner
In the patent, AT&T describes a credits system it would use to monitor bandwidth. "The user is provided an initial number of credits. As the user consumes the credits, the data being downloaded is checked to determine if it is permissible or non-permissible." Non-permissible data includes file-sharing, movie downloads, and downloading/uploading large files, the patent states. So what happens when users consume too many non-permissible credits? The patent suggests restriction policies be applied including "levying additional fees and/or terminating the user's access to the channel."
In other words, this patent lets AT&T cut you off, slow you down, or charge you extra if it deems you're misusing its network. So that all-day House of Cards marathon you were planning for February 14 could either have you booted or levied with a fine.
The patent also gives AT&T the right to scan data and decide what users can or can't do on its network. The more a user "abuses" its network, the more credits a user can lose. On the other hand, users who do right by AT&T would be granted additional credits so they can continue accessing the Internet.
A Dark Future for the Internet
Fortunately, this patent is currently just a concept and will not be implemented in the near future. However, it's a clear indicator of the dangerous territory we've now entered as the fight for net neutrality continues. It also demonstrates how, if net neutrality were to be completely eradicated, consumers would be at the mercy of their ISPs. Whether or not TimeWarner and Comcast have similar ideas brewing behind closed doors remains to be seen, but for a company that was supposedly committed to an open Internet, this paints a bleak future indeed.
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For instance, DDoS, spoofing, Spam!, trojans, viruses and similar types of traffic have a very negative effect on the ISP's network as well as our connection and usage.
Under net neutrality, would those types of traffic be given the same access and priority as your traffic? I'd hate to take away an ISP's ability to fight against that kind of nasty traffic, rather than being REQUIRED to treat it neutrally. I can't think of a worse outcome than that kind of government regulation. Technical issues require technical solutions, -not- government regulation.
Yes, it's fixed wireless.
@jcauthorn "my internet comes from the top of a local grain silo"
Fixed wireless?
Also, I think the last time I saw all-you-can-eat in a restaurant was in the episode of The Simpsons in which Homer eats that seafood restaurant into going out of business. :P
There's really a much better option - it's called "competition" - which is probably why you read dealnews. ;)
Nothing works better to get a vendor in a competitive environment to change than to lose business.
Worried about missing out on that all day Firefly/Serenity marathon (I've done that!)? Most ISPs allow you to pay more for more use, or you can shop around - isn't shopping around just what DealNews is all about anyway?
Competition and educated consumers are the *ONLY* thing that will simultaneously increase quality/quantity -and- reduce cost. Government regulation (or the pretty term "net neutrality") always has the opposite effect. Please don't fall for destroying the internet with government regulation!
These kind of technological challenges should be handled by technological fixes and not these pretty sounding words for Government Regulation called "net neutrality".