1984 by Eric Arthur Blair or even Brazil by one of the Pythons springs to the front of my grey stuff.
Wasn't it George Orwell who wrote 1984?
I have held for a while now that 1984 was set about 20 years too early...
And yes, there have been threats to remove people's internet access if they download too much music - that was overturned.
Then there's Phorm which you may or may not have heard of - where (by my understanding) your Internet usage is sent to their servers and used to send you targeted advertising - as if we didn't get enough as it is... There's even a government petition to stop it happening, and if you're a British citizen or resident, I urge you to sign it if you value your online privacy - so you can let Gordon Brown ignore you by name (since that's all he ever seems to do with these petitions).
http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/ispphorm/I'm getting off track. I actually saw something about this FCC decision in New Scientist today:
"ADVOCATES of net neutrality, the idea that all internet traffic should get equal priority, last week cheered a ruling by the Federal Communications Commission against US internet service provider Comcast. Last year the ISP was found to be monitoring its users' activity and "throttling" the transmission of video and other files sent by bandwidth-hungry peer-to-peer applications. The FCC now says this is contrary to the "vibrant and open nature of the internet".
Internet users can now check for themselves whether their ISP is throttling or otherwise interfering with their traffic. A free program called Switzerland, released last week by the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, monitors the data packets exchanged with a provider and alerts the user if anyone is messing with them"
I'm rather tempted to download that and see if BT aren't doing anything with my connection...
(EDIT: And I've just realised that I didn't need to type all that out from the magazine. The article, short as it may be, can be found
here.)
