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Via Ars Technica:
The ability to modify Internet content at the network level could potentially be abused by ISPs to insert additional advertising into web pages or perform selective, automated censorship. Although no mainstream ISP in North America engages in such practices, proponents of network neutrality have discovered that Rogers - a Canadian cable Internet provider - is trialing similar technology to inject notices to subscribers in regular web content, leading some to fear that more abusive content manipulation may occur in the future.
Matt Cutts of Google says: “Uncool”
Network operators continue to push the envelope of what they can get away with. This time it is modifying content via javascript however this isn’t something new. In the past Microsoft tried modifying keywords by adding html tags to them and were hit by consumer backlash. At a later point Verisign tried a program called Sitefinder which takes advantage of non existing domains, again, only to be hit by consumer backlash and took the program down. However, with time and enough persistence, these programs come back with new names, new services, until consumers get tired of fighting them, and the winners are of course those who control the network.
Current “winners” are Microsoft which continues to take advantage of IE typos on the right of the dot, Verizon, Dell/Google (that is also uncool Matt), to name a few.
What possibly is the solution here? I don’t know, but one thing comes to mind.. “if you can’t beat them..”
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