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Graffiti

by Mark on December 12th, 2007

I see the well-known art form graffiti has made it to the Internet…

Or - to Google’s or your front door or “wall.”

That’s right, GRAFFITI. “A form of vandalism involving painted text or images in public places.”

VANDALISM - “Needless damage or destruction of property, usually someone else’s property or common or shared property.”

Now let us all imagine that internet graffiti gangs, otherwise known as ISP’s, are allowed to overwrite anybody’s web page that they choose to. Yeah, makes perfect sense to me. Then we can develop new employment opportunities on the Internet - web site scrubbers exactly like the city workers in L.A. who go around scrubbing the walls of buildings in that city.

“Some bloggers noted the Rogers notice on Google’s search page seemed more like free advertising than a customer-service bulletin, since it suggested the user “upgrade to another level of service which provides higher usage limits and speeds by visiting rogers.com.”

Critics say Rogers’ move, though perhaps well-intentioned, could set a dangerous precedent that says it’s okay for the companies that pipe the Internet into people’s homes and offices to exercise control over their subscribers’ activity online.”

As Mike says at Techdirt;

“This is what leads to all those network neutrality debates, where the ISPs forget that they’re providing just a pipe and think that they are the most important part of the process and have the right to change how everything else works. This doesn’t mean they should be regulated — but it does mean that both users and service providers (such as Google) should make it abundantly clear to ISPs like Rogers that this will not be tolerated.”

Of course, in the same manner as the real graffiti gangs, the ISP’s simply don’t give a damn…

BTW Seth, there was a time, eons ago, when most folks thought graffiti was just a harmless deal also.

Tags: censored, consumers-choice, denial-of-service, homepage-hi-jacking, net-neutrality, Rogers-Communication

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POSTED IN: Web Happenings