For Your Convenience Your ISP is Now Spying On You

Once upon a time Dave Barry wrote a great column about how corporations in general used the phrase "for your convenience" to mean "we're doing whatever the hell we please but we want you not to hate us for it." Companies make changes that people hate but slap the "for your convenience" label on it on the theory that people are stupid and easily duped. His edge case example was something like a supermarket announcing "For your convenience we've filled the parking lot with rabid weasels. Have a nice day."

It's good to see we've made progress. Here in the 21st Century, nobody pretends that turning ISPs into copyright cops is for anyone's convenience except the Cartel's. Now we just spy on you, screw with your Internet connection, and sue you because you use P2P services.

Sadly, WIRED's coverage is lame, excuse-filled, and lacking any sense of appropriate moral outrage, which is slightly surprising given their recent misfired spasm over 3D printing patents. Here, let me fix that for you.

Where David Kravets wrote "online copyright scofflaws" you should read "anyone who happens to have the misfortune to be assigned responsibility for an IP address that the Cartel thinks is doing something wrong." Because, remember, that's what we're about here - taking IP addresses and smacking people for things we claim were done at those addresses. The Cartel can't even be bothered to remember its own history, which involves claiming that mysterious "Someone Else" used RIAA-owned IP addresses to pirate content.

Where David Kravets wrote "backed by the President Barack Obama administration" you should read "pushed by the Cartel flunkies who have entirely captured the DOJ and the US Copyright office in the last four years." I doubt Obama gives a rat's ass about this stuff, but you can bet that the people at DOJ who are eyeing juicy jobs at major studios and labels after their tenures in Washington are done.

Where David Kravets wrote "To be sure, the deal is not as draconian as it could have been" you should read "Somehow the ISPs managed not to cave entirely to the Cartel's demand that people associated with IP addresses it doesn't like be tarred, feathered, and dragged through the public square, as if piling on ever-more-draconian measures would somehow eradicate hundreds of years of people sharing creatively."

OK, I give up. I can't even maintain a sufficient level of outrage to make this entry funny. It's pathetic, it's sad, and it's hopeless. No one elected the Cartel to enforce laws and I certainly didn't pay my ISP hundreds of dollars/year to filter my content. I eagerly await the inevitable day when DOJ is forced to degrade its own network because, hey, people are using DOJ IP addresses to torrent movies, too.