Wednesday, April 05, 2017

No Dear, ISPs Are Not Websites

 Snider, Mike: "ISPs Can Now Collect and Sell Your Data: What to Know About Internet Privacy Rules", USA Today (4/4/2017).

So here's an analogy: if 50 years ago AT&T (or whatever they called themselves back then) had kept records of all your phone calls and then started selling that information to the highest bidder -- would they have gotten away with it? I don't think so. (In fact, interesting research topic.)

ISPs are not websites. They're governed by different rules, regulated by different agencies and golly-molly, ya just can't get on the internet without them. That makes them a utility and frankly, there's no similarity to Facebook, Google, etc.

But, hey, we're living in a free country! There's nothing keeping those ISPs from setting up their own groovy websites so they can take advantage of the same benefits. Problem solved!

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