Ever heard of DPI (not in printers or scanners), or probably less likely, ISNS? If you are familiar with the Net Neutrality thing you probably know DPI = Deep Packet Inspection, something which most of us are less than enthusiastic about. Please understand I am no Net Neutrality expert, but I have a passing knowledge of DPI, mostly related to ISPs utilizing this concept to layer packets (downloads) coming through their web servers (generally from P2P which fill up their pipes very readily). Now, this ISNS thing is straight from your favorite Canadian cable ISP, Rogers, and their “in-browser marketing” firm, PerfTech.
ISNS (Internet Subscriber Notification System) is this nifty little function Rogers is testing which utilizes JavaScript to inject information into third party web pages, apparently without the knowledge or consent of those sites' owners. Check out this screen capture of ISNS in action, thanks to Lauren Weinstein’s Blog. What the hell happened to Google’s nice, clean look? ISNS happened to it. Can anyone out there really say they think this won’t be used for advertisement purposes in the near future? Sure the thing allows users to choose not to see the messages in the future, but I think it’s safe to assume the ads won’t have that feature readily/commonly available.
This is just another example of ISPs using their location between you and the web sites to maximum commercial advantage. Comcast has already drawn plenty of negative press from their apparent DPI choke hold on download traffic (P2P, torrents, etc), and you can be sure if this slips through our grasp at least 1 large US ISP will soon be jumping into the game as well. Want to check the weather? Well how about you learn about these great weight loss pills! Oh, and you are visitor 999,999,999… lucky you.
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