Rogers Delivers a Lesson in Net Neutrality

If you’re reading these words in Canada, I can only guarantee that they were true to my writing as I typed them. Chances are nothing has changed but for the record, if you are reading these words in my home and native land, I can no longer pass any assurance to you whatsoever that the site I write to is exactly the same as the site you are viewing. Huh?

Earlier this week, Canada’s largest high-speed Internet Service Provider, Rogers Communications, began an experiment in which the company hijacks and alters other websites in order to deliver messages through its new Internet Subscriber Notification Service. In the specific case mentioned at Net Neutrality expert Lauren Weinstein’s blog, the familiar Google homepage was altered to add a message from Rogers which was sponsored by their corporate search partner Yahoo!

Using deep packet inspection technology, Rogers monitors every page delivered to its clients with the ability to insert its messages into the content stream when it feels it necessary. The messages note when each client is passing the 75% mark of the monthly bandwidth caps Rogers applies to client accounts.

Quoted in Wired.com, Weinstein said, “This is what Net Neutrality is about — it’s not just making sure that data is handled in a competitive and non-discriminatory manner, but it’s also that the data that’s sent is the data that you get — that the content is unmodified, not with messages that are woven into your data stream.”

While Google Search spokesperson Matt Cutts quipped, “…it may be your only chance to see the word “Yahoo!” on Google’s home page in three different places”, he also stated he agrees that Rogers’ actions are, “pretty uncool”.

It should be noted that Rogers is not targeting Google exclusively. This notification could come up on any website as the viewer approaches or exceeds Rogers’ bandwidth caps. That it did appear when a user requested the Google homepage (and appeared with advertising from one of Google’s major competitors) is relevant only for the value of irony and also because Rogers casually managed to tick off one of the largest information networks in the world.

That means Rogers could apply branded and sponsored content against any other page or site request made by a client whose account is about to tip over the bandwidth cap. Perhaps this page itself is being affected as it appears on the monitors of some of Canada’s heaviest Internet home-users.

We are inclined to agree with Lauren Weinstein and Matt Cutts on this one. Rogers has delivered a direct lesson on the importance of Net Neutrality in a most uncool way. While one can understand what Rogers was trying to do and why they might need to warn some users of pending extra expenses, altering content on what appears to be someone else’s website without their specific permission is simply wrong.

As the words I write here belong to Metamend, the content we work on for our clients belongs to our clients. So does their website and webpage interfaces. Code is property and though that code might be transmitted and displayed publicly, no transference of ownership has been conferred or even implied at any time whatsoever.

At no time have we or our clients given Rogers the right to alter site content or interface appearance. Third parties wishing to add or modify content viewed on or about our clients’ websites are invited to contact our clients and, assuming said clients are interested, politely make a business arrangement. That’s the right way to do things. Otherwise, we are left feeling an act a kin to content-theft has been committed.

There are several ways Rogers could have deployed and used this technology without threatening the veracity of page content or their own credibility. A simple branded warning page could have been inserted into the stream before the delivery of the requested content. In the olden days, an ISP would simply send an email.

The use of deep packet inspection is one of the things that make the Internet work as well and as quickly as it does. The abuse of such technologies however makes the Internet a more dangerous and less credible place. Rogers could as easily have used it to insert its own contextual advertising in websites it delivers to clients. In the likely inadvertent case of the Yahoo! brand appearing above a request for Google.com, it did. To quote Matt twice, “… this is pretty uncool”.