The Slippery Slope of Rogers Hijacking
Thursday, July 31st, 2008 by Enrico
There is a story that has been making the rounds on tech sites about Rogers, one of the two major ISPs in Canada (the other, of course, is Bell). Apparently, they’ve begun hijacking DNS in order to provide a “helpful” search for domain names that don’t resolve… which is, of course, filled with their advertisements. The major problem is that this also applies to subdomains that don’t resolve, meaning that it is possible for Rogers to be putting advertisements on domains that do actually exist.
Some might wonder what is so sinister about this. As an example, it means that Rogers is putting the Yahoo! logo on Google subdomains. Personally, I think that’s in bad taste. Also, I strongly believe in net neutrality and hijacking common Internet protocols like DNS and HTTP (see here) to inject your own content flies in the face of everything that net neutrality stands for.
While I would like to write something provocative and/or witty about this, the Computer Science Canada blog has already done it for me. They detail the slippery slope we could be in for if we accept this kind of behaviour from ISPs. The screenshots are very well made, too.
This is one of the many reasons why it is important that we have a neutral Internet. We are not just consumers of the Internet and the Internet is not just a series of tubes; it is the most important communication tool of our time. It is the catalyst and enabler of the Information Age. And there are those who would want to restrict or corrupt this communication tool so that they can line their pockets with some extra money.
And don’t believe the FUD about there not being enough bandwidth to go around — why, then, can the Japanese get fiber-optic cable to the home, 100Mbps best-effort service, for about $30/month? We “happily” pay approximately that much for a tenth of that bandwidth. No, we are victims of a lack of competition in last-mile ISPs, the ISPs who directly provide Internet service to our homes. If Bell and/or Rogers are the only game in most towns, what incentive is there to provide better service? Even the smaller ISPs are usually just resellers for one of these two.
I am thankful to find that I’m not the only one who thinks this way.
July 31st, 2008 at 7:12 pm
Rogers has a poor record of shifty things such as this and their “virus warnings” which seem to only come to those using torrents (although here they have also slipped up and sent a few to mobile users as well.) they claim that they will shut down service if THEY detect a virus on YOUR computer and suggest that if it occurs then you should reformat your machine. (what??)
August 4th, 2008 at 12:31 am
I wish I was paying $30/month for a 10mbit line! It’s more like $60 :\
August 4th, 2008 at 2:18 am
@John: Actually, I think your number reflects the typical pricing a bit more. But that just makes my point even stronger. =P