Keep your ISP off my Google!

December 12, 2007 1:14 PM

Rogers communications has started putting their own messages on the Google homepage.Rogers communications is one of Canada's main ISPs (as well as mobile phone and cable companies). They recently decided to place a message on their subscribers' Google homepage - and neither Google nor the users are happy about it.

As Wired magazine writes, "Expect this development to become Exhibit A in the case for net neutrality legislation."

The technology writer for the Globe and Mail doesn't feel it's such a huge violation, but it'll be interesting to see how it plays out. Canadians have a very strong need for personal space, even on the internet.

This week the government also had to back off attempts to impose American-style copyright laws up here, owing to the backlash from Canadians. I'll be curious to see how that plays out as well.

posted by Salmonberry (45 comments total)

I would also strong encourage my fellow Canadian MeFites in writing their MPs about the proposed copyright legislation. We've seen the posts here describing how damaging DMCA legislation is, now is our chance to ensure we get saner copyright laws introduced, while we have a weak minority government.
posted by Salmonberry at 1:17 PM on December 12, 2007

Imagine if phone companies dropped an advert in the silences in a phone call. I'm surprised the Google response hasn't been more guns-blazing. Maybe they're getting there.

Clever application of technology, however.
posted by These Premises Are Alarmed at 1:26 PM on December 12, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

I wouldn't worry too much. With the level of service Rogers provides, chances are you'll never see either the message or Google's home page.

Rogers and my parents have been playing the following game for about two years now:
1) Rogers technician arrives for a standard inspection of the cable box and performs a routine replacement of the line filter with a different model. This replacement breaks the Internets.
2) They curse Rogers for being the exclusive provider in the neighbourhood and call Rogers to complain. A different technician, responsible for maintenance, arrives a couple of weeks later, realizes that the incorrect filter was installed, and replaces it with the old filter.
3) Two months later, a Rogers technician arrives for a standard inspection of the cable box and performs a routine replacement of the line filter with a different model. This replacement breaks the Internets...
posted by Krrrlson at 1:26 PM on December 12, 2007

It's just a message about account status, they'd better off just redirecting you to a warning message that's the whole page, then allowing you to continue. That way they're not inserting any content. Provided that redirection is only for account issues, I'd have no problem with this (Time warner does this if they detect a virus)
posted by jeblis at 1:29 PM on December 12, 2007

Krrrlson has a point. To burn through your account bandwidth, you'd have beat Rogers' "bandwidth-shaping" (technical term: "fuck you, torrenters!") technology.
posted by bicyclefish at 1:33 PM on December 12, 2007

Exhibit A in the case for net neutrality legislation

I got out of the ISP business by the late 90s because the majors were taking over. If this trend continues it will open up a new opportunity for small ISP's that adhere to net neutrality. The market can correct for broken laws. Just as broken laws created the ISP business in the first place. Worse case, build an entirely new inter-net (peering points) using some sort of Creative Commons based rules system - peers can only peer with others who adhere to a net neutral agreement. It should have been in place a long time ago but no one had the vision of a dystopia Big Brother reality we have.
posted by stbalbach at 1:34 PM on December 12, 2007 [2 favorites has favorites]

This week the government also had to back off attempts to impose American-style copyright laws up here, owing to the backlash from Canadians. I'll be curious to see how that plays out as well.

In some ways, the copyright laws in Canada are actually worse. Every time you buy something like an iPod, or even a hard drive (IIRC) you have to pay a surcharge that goes to the record companies.

So basically the new law would be a Canadian version of the DMCA? I love that they call it "reform" I always thought reform improving and modernizing something in a way that reduces it based on it's excesses. According to wikipedia it means "a reversion to what is perceived to be a pure original state.". What they're trying to do would be copyright expansion.
posted by delmoi at 1:35 PM on December 12, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

Every time you buy something like an iPod, or even a hard drive (IIRC) you have to pay a surcharge that goes to the record companies.

Yes, but no individual private citizen has ever been successfully sued for copyright infringment in Canada because of that levy. Copying is legal in Canada (well, sort of, or at least arguably).
posted by blue_beetle at 1:43 PM on December 12, 2007 [3 favorites has favorites]

People need to use TekSavvy and call it a day. Rogers is a sack of shit ISP.
posted by chunking express at 1:45 PM on December 12, 2007

Well, here's the rub in my mind. If they can alter a Google page as they have, then they could potentially alter other pages in a less obvious fashion...
posted by Samizdata at 1:47 PM on December 12, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

jeblis is completely right. If they put in an interstitial page like the annoying "accept our conditions" page on hotel wifi, no one would care. At least not at this volume.
posted by These Premises Are Alarmed at 1:54 PM on December 12, 2007

I've worked on Rogers' technical support line. I am a hardcore internet user.

Any and all techies I know of steer clear of Rogers and most are on TekSavvy. Chunking express is completely right on this one, there is little reason to go with Rogers unless you really have no other choice.
posted by splice at 1:55 PM on December 12, 2007

Why couldn't they just drop an automated email warning you that you're near limit? They know your address already, since they're hosting the account.
posted by ardgedee at 1:59 PM on December 12, 2007

_______Ads by Rogers______________________________________________________________________
|   YOUR COMPUTER IS BROADCASTING ITS IP ADDRESS TO THE ENTIRE REST OF THE WORLD!!!   |
|            Click HERE to protect your privacy from malicious hackers!!!             |
_______________________________________________________________________________________

Seriously, what's all the fuss over a little ad or two? Bandwidth ain't free, ya bunch of chincey freeloaders.
I bet some of you reds even use the hacker software called linux to steal information processing power from Microsoft.
posted by BeerFilter at 2:02 PM on December 12, 2007 [4 favorites has favorites]

Maybe it's happening with Videotron too, but with Adblock I'd probably have missed it.
posted by clevershark at 2:04 PM on December 12, 2007

I bet some of you reds even use the hacker software called linux

OMG. WTF BeerFilter. This isn't a fucking warez site. Keep that linux stuff off of here.
posted by eyeballkid at 2:05 PM on December 12, 2007 [2 favorites has favorites]

I bet some of you reds even use the hacker software called linux to steal information processing power from Microsoft.

Don't do that. THERE IS NO SARCASM TAG.

I wouldn't care so much if I didn't know for a fact that there are people out there that are computer illiterate enough to take all of that as truth.

And, frankly, I wouldn't care so much about that if voting came with an IQ test, but it doesn't, so there you go.
posted by loquacious at 2:09 PM on December 12, 2007 [3 favorites has favorites]

I would also strong encourage my fellow Canadian MeFites in writing their MPs about the proposed copyright legislation.

That's always something, although frankly the Tories don't give a flying f*ck what we Canadians think (they get their marching orders from Washington), and the opposition parties are too feckless to do a damn thing about it even though they could easily defeat Harper's minority government.

Let's face it, no one's looking out for the Canadian consumer in much of any way. Except maybe if some poll shows that the Liberals have a sizeable lead nationally, in which case they just might grow a set of cojones. In their own time, of course.
posted by clevershark at 2:13 PM on December 12, 2007

Ardgedee, their claim that they can't e-mail is probably legitimate. I think that most Rogers subscribers are of the cable modem variety, and I'd guess that many don't even use the ISP-supplied e-mail, or know it exists. A cable modem + DHCP + web browser is all the Internet most users reach. They use Hotmail or GMail for e-mail, and don't even realize they have any ISP-supplied mail services.

I'm not a pedestian user, myself, but I have a cable modem from a different provider, and I have no idea what my e-mail address would be, or how to reach it. No interest, either.

TPAA and Jeblis have it right: hotels, airports, and every Internet cafe in the world deals with this, and has for 20 years. Those are micro-ISPs. Just put up an interstitial on ANY HTTP connection, presumably the first one of the day/session, to make the user acknowledge, and continue. That's NORMAL. Monkeying with existing pages, while not technically challenging, essentially turns the ISP into one big phishing culprit, masking a site's real identity or content.

In my experience, most cable modem companies can't even get this figured out for any application, though. Whether in San Francisco or Edmonton, you end up fighting with a non-working connection for awhile before giving up and phoning them. Then they tell you that you forgot to pay your bill.

Extra warning to Canadians: Rogers is the company you're counting on for friendly iPhone service. Good luck with that.
posted by rokusan at 2:20 PM on December 12, 2007

Is this the same Rogers that tried to bill me $88.60 for 1,772KB of data on my cellphone? Time to switch providers.
posted by furtive at 2:20 PM on December 12, 2007

the Tories don't give a flying f*ck what we Canadians think

They do when a lot of people get involved. The government almost certainly backed down this time because so many people complained in so many different ways. The best thing you can do to help the "Canadian DMCA" pass is to do nothing.

Michael Gaist has a list of 30 things you can do. The easiest thing is to write a letter to your MP, The minister of Heritage and the minister of Industry using the online form provided by Online Rights Canada. If you care about this at all, I'd encourage all Canadian Mefites to click on that last link.
posted by bonehead at 2:30 PM on December 12, 2007

Gaist Geist
posted by bonehead at 2:31 PM on December 12, 2007

Oh you Americans and Canadamericans, you haven't SEEN an ISP as outrightly cunty as Australia's very own Bigpond.

Bigpond is operated by the ex government telco, Telstra which maintains a monopoly on infrastructure, so all ISPs in Australia must dance to Telstra's tune.

It's hugely anti competitive, and a blatant fucking rip-off, which I hasten to add are most things in Australia's small market place.
posted by mattoxic at 2:36 PM on December 12, 2007

Nov 27 23:45:02 Box1 MormonGuard[20721]: Mormons be tryin' to break into y0 system!

Thank god for you MormonGuard
posted by Skorgu at 3:04 PM on December 12, 2007

"As a general principle, we believe that maintaining the Internet as a neutral platform means that carriers shouldn't be able to interfere with Web content without users' permission"

So Google think it's cool that Rogers can interfere with creators' content? Huh? I'd have assumed they came out for their own rights before users'.
posted by AwkwardPause at 3:09 PM on December 12, 2007

_______Ads by Rogers__________________________
| Jesus Christ, it's a lion! Get in the car! |
______________________________________________
posted by quin at 3:15 PM on December 12, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

I think it's time for all of us webmasters here with mefi accounts to be putting in mock rogers ads for all our canadian customers. I'll be glad to contribute some simple java code if someone wants to shoot the actual HTML they're inserting my way- it will be particularly confusing for non rogers customers :)

We'd need some fake ads that canadians would find REALLY offensive tho. Not just slagging hockey or recycling doug and bob mackenzie riffs.
posted by jenkinsEar at 3:26 PM on December 12, 2007

Now, now, mattoxic - there's no reason to blame anyone other than the Australian government for the situation with Telstra / Bigpond.

<snip long & irrrelevant explanation>

Telstra are the worst? Never been a Dodo customer, have you? And I'd lump TPG right in there with Dodo, except they're actually OK provided you never have to deal with their so-called "support".

Besides, you only think you hate Telstra. I worked there for 20+ years - I know I hate them...

(The last year or so doing effectively 2nd-level field support for ADSL & ConnectIP. The sooner all the other carriers & ISPs stop using Telstra as a fault-finding department, repair service, & whipping boy for their own shortcomings, the better for all concerned.)

On topic: OzEmail did something like this, not long after I joined them ... oh, about 8 years ago? I opened a bookmark to my own site - and was redirected to an OzEmail customer survey page. Rang them, and told them in no uncertain terms that if they ever did anything like that again I'd walk.

Never happened again, and I'm still a customer.
posted by Pinback at 3:34 PM on December 12, 2007

I don't know what the problem is. I think the isp's content livens up the page a bit, and everyone knows that google's design for their homepage was really boring and bland and didn't have enough zing. and by zing I mean advertisements.
posted by shmegegge at 3:41 PM on December 12, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

A note on the new Canadian copyright bill. It's been proposed several times before - each time the MP who was shepherding the legislation has been voted out of office before its been presented for formal consideration. I suspect they've bounced it to Jim Prentice because he's in a strongly conservative riding (Calgary), and is less likely to be given the boot.

I turned up at the Open House that Prentice had at his headquarters this weekend, and for which Geist was urging attendance. Prentice showed up, saw that the place was packed, spent 15 minutes answering questions about the bill in a rather abstract manner, and left, saying that there was a party he had forgotten about that he had to attend.

The next day, C-60, tabled for presentation to Parliament, was withdrawn. Participation - getting in politican's faces - does make a difference.
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul at 3:47 PM on December 12, 2007 [4 favorites has favorites]

That's always something, although frankly the Tories don't give a flying f*ck what we Canadians think (they get their marching orders from Washington), and the opposition parties are too feckless to do a damn thing about it even though they could easily defeat Harper's minority government.

You mean they don't give a fuck about what you and your "Buck Fush" t-shirt buddies think. Frankly, I don't either. Canadians, last I checked, voted them into office, where they continue to maintain a higher lever of support than the opposition.

Nice derail, though.
posted by Krrrlson at 3:52 PM on December 12, 2007

I'm just conjecturing here, but isn't this something that using SSL or TLS would get you around? Simply make https://google.com your new home page? Looking just now, it seems to redirect to http://google.com, though iGoogle does implement partial encryption... so I don't think it'd work immediately in the current situation. (Well, I imagine it would work using SSL for iGoogle until they started hijacking the images...) However, it seems like a plausible non-legal approach to me. They're effectively carrying out a man-in-the-middle attack, which is an issue those protocols were designed to address. I may be missing something concerning their elevated status as an ISP with physical control of the network though. Is there some flaw in this reasoning? Can the ISP somehow spoof as the certificate authority and kill this?

Naturally, there would be a resource penalty for encryption at both ends. Images would be particularly expensive; I'm guessing that's the reason iGoogle only implements partial SSL encryption at the moment. Also, I suppose the ISP could block https://google.com. But how could they respond to Google moving all their services to SSL? They'd be the ISP that couldn't use Google. I don't imagine that would win many customers. Naturally, this would also only protect the integrity of pages and could not address other important net neutrality issues.

I feel like I'm missing something here though. Feel free to point out the gaping holes in my logic...
posted by Bugg at 4:22 PM on December 12, 2007

Pinback, I find the service offered by the Telcos, AAPT, Optus, Telstra, iPrimus to be the most expensive. They surely trade off the ignorance of the consumer in not knowing what all these confusing gigabytes and megatrons are.

A friend recently signed up for a 24 month contract with AAPT. He gets 512mb a month at 256k for $24 a month. Sure he gets to "bundle" (wtf that means) in his phone rental, and local calls are capped at 18 cents. I asked him if he actually uses his home phone, and well no, he doesn't. So he gets to open a couple of youtube videos, download a Christmas virus and bingo- welcome to shaped city.

I had to go to a conference recently and took along a Telstra Next G card. $70 a month for 200mb. I noticed that Telstra installed a BHO meaning that my browser's default page was set to bigpond. How thoughtful of them- here's me operating a browser for all this time without Bigpond as my homepage. Silly me!

The same card was taken to New Zealand by a colleague, on his return we noticed Telstra had charged us $750 for the privilege. (The card was useless in NZ - even after the Telstra sales creep assured us it would be OK- you can imagine our surprise!)

We queried the bill and Telstra said that because the couldn't find a record of the bill, they charge the maximum amount, and it's up to consumers to query it.

Fuckers.
posted by mattoxic at 4:23 PM on December 12, 2007

Teksavvy warning.. As of January 1, 2008 Teksavvy's pricing tiers are changing. The unlimited plan will be $40/month, while the premium plan will remain at $30/month. The premium plan download cap will increase from 100GB to 200GB, and the charge for overuse will become reasonable.

I was quite bothered when I first read about this, but on reflection, it isn't a big deal. At least, it wouldn't be a big deal if they gave customers fair notice - so far it doesn't look like they are doing that though.

Also, anybody using Teksavvy as part of a group access?
posted by Chuckles at 4:39 PM on December 12, 2007

Bora Horza Gobuchul: I turned up at the Open House that Prentice had at his headquarters this weekend, and for which Geist was urging attendance. Prentice showed up, saw that the place was packed, spent 15 minutes answering questions about the bill in a rather abstract manner, and left, saying that there was a party he had forgotten about that he had to attend.

That is really interesting. The CBC article doesn't make any mention of cutting the open house short.. Sure, they don't know what the intended duration was, but they could at least report 'Prentice spent a brief 15 minutes answering questions'. CBC seems to have a very pro copyright "reform" editorial policy, actually, which kind of sucks.

Krrrlson: You mean they don't give a fuck about what you and your "Buck Fush" t-shirt buddies think. Frankly, I don't either. Canadians, last I checked, voted them into office, where they continue to maintain a higher lever of support than the opposition.

Indeed.. They don't give a fuck what I think, because I live in Trinity-Spadina, but if I lived in Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, or St. Catharines.. Come to think of it, I could write a letter using my Mom's address :)
posted by Chuckles at 4:54 PM on December 12, 2007

So...Canadian internet users are getting a brisk rogering?
posted by LionIndex at 5:37 PM on December 12, 2007

Fortunately Rogers is just one ISP among many in Canada. I'm on Videotron and frankly I can't find anything to complain about with them as an ISP. I do have the "Extreme" service and it's quite fast, torrents don't seem to be throttled and if you have more than 100 gigabytes of transfer in a month they just charge you a little overage (instead of cutting you off). It's not cheap (I'm paying $80 a month) but for me it's worth it.
posted by clevershark at 5:43 PM on December 12, 2007

It's just a web page. Just don't read the top part of it- and move on. If I see a commercial on TV I don't want to look at I ignore it and change the channel.
posted by wfc123 at 6:02 PM on December 12, 2007

It's just a web page.

The trouble is, it's not just a web page. It's someone else's web page, reworked by the ISP so as to substitute and potentially obscure content.

It's pretty much the equivalent of A having a conversation with B through intermediary C, but where the intermediary changes what's being said between A and B according to his own whim and with no regard for the speaker's original intent.

This is what they do on the Google home page. There's really nothing preventing Rogers from changing the text of news stories that doesn't mention them in a positive light, aside of course from the fact that it would be quite difficult and rather time-consuming.
posted by clevershark at 6:12 PM on December 12, 2007

Hey guys, new member here, I just wanted to throw something out there.

It seems to me that, in the U.S. at least, the thing Rogers is doing would be actionable by Google. That is, I think Google could sue them for libel.

In Masson (where a psychoanalyst had described to a reporter his sense that he was respected in private for his intellect but a pariah in public for his radical ideas, and the reporter then quoted him as calling himself an "intellectual gigolo"), the U.S. Supreme Court held that since, "[i]n general, quotation marks around a passage indicate to the reader that the passage reproduces the speaker's words verbatim, [t]hey inform the reader that he or she is reading the statement of the speaker," and that "[a] fabricated quotation may injure reputation in at least two senses, either giving rise to a conceivable claim of defamation[:] the quotation might injure because it attributes an untrue factual assertion to the speaker[, indicating that he is ignorant or a liar] ... [; and] the attribution may result in injury to reputation because the manner of expression or even the fact that the statement was made indicates a negative personal trait or an attitude the speaker does not hold." Masson v. New Yorker Magazine, Inc., 501 U.S. 496 (1991).

Similarly, in general, an address in the address bar of a browser indicate to the reader that the web content displayed reproduces the server's content verbatim. It informs the reader that he or she is reading the web site of the online entity. Similarly, it would appear, a fabricated web page attributed to Google might injure Google's reputation because the fact that the large, intrusive ads were shown indicates a negative corporate trait or interface philosophy the online entity does not have.

I would be interested to see what legal action, if any, Google attempts to take, and how successful they would be in expanding Masson's applicability to non-person online entities.
posted by jock@law at 8:45 PM on December 12, 2007

Teksavvy warning

Chuckles, how do you know this?
posted by dobbs at 8:46 PM on December 12, 2007

How could Google possibly stop this? Are they able to block access to all Rogers users, which would have those people leave Rogers in droves and make them smarten the fuck up?
posted by dobbs at 8:48 PM on December 12, 2007

Dobbs, not serving up content to customers of a particular ISP would be a bit hypocritical on their part, no?

And just to reiterate, TekSavvy is fucking awesome.
posted by chunking express at 9:06 PM on December 12, 2007

What's to stop them from including an ad for their services at the bottom of every email you send via Gmail without you knowing (at first)? Or what's to stop them from deciding you don't get SSL traffic because they can't put their adds on it? It's a slippery slope and it's a race to the bottom unless someone stops the bastards -- free market solution or otherwise...
posted by incongruity at 9:47 PM on December 12, 2007

how do you know this?

Public knowledge, just not widely discemenated yet, which is why I'm bringing it up: Teksavvy forum at dslreports, Teksavvy unlimited service page.
posted by Chuckles at 12:25 AM on December 13, 2007