The data poor

I don't really know where I want to go with this, so bear with me and hopefully I'll get to a point...

Over at Mr Anderson there is a horrible tale of woe that I hope to never have happen to me. To summarize; an unsecured member on his home network was compromised by a virus and that in turn meant that his ISP account was overused MASSIVELY and at HUGE expense to him as the ISP account holder.

Now contractually it is the account holder that has to pay. And that makes Mr Anderson liable. But unfortunately that doesn't go anywhere near to covering the range of blame that can be thrown into the mix here. Firstly there is the writer of the virus. This malevolent software caused the bandwidth to be consumed, so there is an argument that the virus coder is responsible for the account's overuse. Then there is the unsecure computer that hosted the virus. Was the owner negligent and therefore responsible for the damages they bought about? If there was anti-virus software in use, then could responsibility lie with that program's manufacturer? What about the local network provide (in this case Mr Anderson himself)? Does the responsibility for this lie on their shoulders, as after all it was this provider that gave the compromised computer access to the ISP account. Or is it the final responsibility of the ISP? These services are all (as far as I know) limited to some extent, be it time or data usage, so all these providers MUST have effective ways to log and account for their clients usage. With this in mind, surely it is the ISPs responsibility to say - this account is being overused, you must stop now or face hefty penalty.

But they don't. It is not in their best interest as service provider to give you exactly what you want to pay for. So they deal some customers out accounts with BIG limits at cheap rates in the hope that, on average, a user will under utilize the account and therefore the ISP will make more money for the service they actually provided. Conversely they will deal out small account limits at more expensive rates. These users are more likely to approach their limits meaning that any under utilized profit is proportionately less. The ISPs still make more on the average usage.

And, of course, in both 'deals' they will totally screw you if you go over the account limit.

And I find that wrong. It keeps us, the average joe internet user, completely in the dark about how much this rapidly developing technology actually costs. We can't know the profit margin that the ISPs make but they won't be selling their bandwidth non-profit. Then there is the uncertainty about what the average usage is and the average profit this gives the ISP from the average client. And to top it all off there is the extortionate profit that they then make when clients breach their deals and go into penalty rate usage.

And given that data transfer technology is infesting society as rapidly as it is, shouldn't we be aware and concerned about the actual costs involved?

Reading back through this meandering thought process, it looks as if I want to vilify ISPs for profiteering, which I do. Because I see a darker side to all of this as the technology further taps into society. Anyone capitalizing on the technology at this stage potentially has the ability to bleed an incredible amount of money out of it in the near future.

I liken it to the idea and reliance on the concept of credit. Here a SP looks at you and calculates a) how much money you can afford to spend of theirs and b) the associated risk of you then spending it. Like ISPs, credit SPs win with all their clients, most especially those that overuse. Because of the concept that money over time is worth something, interest is accrued, and quickly any debt owed to your SP escalates.

I see this happening with ISPs two fold. Firstly to obtain an ISP service requires monetary credit and all the issues outlined above. But I also see the credit in the context of data. ISPs also credit you data.

So I see the emergence of social problems due to data debt, where data poor are prevented and chased not only monetarily, but also through data channels. Not having money is one thing, but being prevented access to data is quite another especially as society files increasingly towards distributing all of its information as online data. And I guess this leads me to asking:

How do we prevent this?