It appears we are slowly moving toward a system on the internet which will favour organizations with lots of money, at the expense of not-for-profit organizations and individuals.

As you probably know, a number of UK internet service providers (ISPs) have agreed to help the BPI (British Phonographic Industry) by spying on broadband customers and working with the BPI to send notices to people they believe have infringed copyright by downloading music files. For the moment, it seems the idea of terminating internet accounts after three notices has been shelved.
None of this is based on any new laws by government, it is just big companies getting together with other big companies to protect the interests of music corporations at the expense of customer’s privacy.
Similar moves are being made with ISPs and music corporations throughout the EU, and there is a general move for all the G8 countries to adopt US-style ‘intellectual property’ laws.
List of participating UK ISPs:
BT, Virgin Media, Orange, Tiscali, BSkyB, and TalkTalk (Carphone Warehouse.)
If our ISPs are going to be working for the BPI and Phorm by spying on us, then they aren’t working for their customers. Affected broadband packages should probably be free. Customers might want to consider moving to ISPs that are not taking money to spy.
While there are dozens of glaring legal and technical problems with such plans, they represent one strand in a bigger trend which uses new expensive computer kit to set up toll booths on the internet and use spying as a method of generating revenue.
When I stopped by the Virgin site, a web chat window popped up, so I tried it out. The Virgin salesperson wasn’t that keen to talk.

ISPs and network operators (telephone and cable companies) are beginning to generate new revenue by:
ONE
Syping on customers and selling the data to a 3rd party like Phorm to serve targeted advertising. Customers don’t get anything out of this deal. The ISPs get revenue from selling customer data to Phorm, who in turn gets revenue from advertisers buying more highly targeted audiences for ads. Read more: BBC | Call to prosecute BT for ad trial
There is a telling quote in the WikiLeaks summary of the leaked BT document which explains that part of the Phorm trial involved stripping charity ads from web sites, and replacing them with Phorm ads:
“In addition to the 18 million regular advertising injections or hijackings, it appears charity advertisements were hijacked and replaced with Phorm advertisements.”
UPDATE: The author of the summary on WikiLeaks has since stated that he has “been assured by Emma Sanderson at BT and Phorm’s solicitors that the charity ads were purchased and not hijacked.”
TWO
Spying on customers and slowing down their internet connections based on the content they are viewing. If a customer uses BitTorrent for example, which can be used for downloading files that infringe copyright, their internet connection could be slowed down. Many not-for-profit organizations use BitTorrent to share very large files. Media watchdog groups might use BitTorrent to share high resolution video files, so their community could collaboratively edit documentaries. Similarly, the BBC iPlayer uses a BitTorrent-like system to speed up video downloads. In the future, we could also see a large company like Microsoft, for example, has the anti-competitive option to pay ISPs and network operators to make it more difficult for Linux users to update their computer software. The Linux people are not-for-profit competitors who wouldn’t be able to pay for privileges.
THREE
Speeding up sites and services of those who pay them to do so, like commercial brands, and slowing down the connections of those who don’t, like not-for-profit organizations and individuals. Network operators and ISPs could charge companies like Google for being successful.
Of course, there are other obvious problems: if for example, ISPs and network operators are doing this kind of spying for commercial interests, why wouldn’t they do the same thing for governments? You know, just in case anyone gets any crazy ideas about democracy or freedom of speech.