Modest proposal for Comcast's net-filtering

By at 1:39 pm Monday, Nov 5

Will sez, "I just posted my semi-serious vision of the worst-case result of Comcast's Bittorrent/Lotus Notes filtering policy in the form of Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal."
Phase two hinges on the rollout of a new Comcast toolbar. In addition to tracking our users' web surfing habits and favorite pornographic sites, this toolbar also alerts customers before they download any file larger than 75KB. A helpful pop-up bearing the question “Are you sure you really meant to do that?” appears, and if the user does the right thing, and opts out of his bandwidth-intensive download, he’ll be greeted by a clever multimedia ad unit for a free webcam. The Happy Bandwidth Initiative team will be using the webcams to track user eye movements, allowing our research department to identify the content that users enjoy most, so that we can charge them a modest premium to access these high-traffic pages. The toolbar will be a mandatory download for all of our customers.
Link (Thanks, Will!)

Cory Doctorow

Upcoming appearances

* Feb 9, 2012, DeKalb, IL: Day of Doctorow, NIU
* Feb 10-12, 2012, Chicago, IL: Capricon 32
* Feb 13, 2012, Arlington, TX: UT Arlington College of Engineering Distinguished Speaker Series
* Feb 16, 2012, Victoria, BC: 13th Annual Privacy and Security Conference

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* Context (essays)
* With a Little Help (short stories)
* For the Win (YA novel)
* Makers (adult novel)

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