Craigslist blocked by Internet provider

Posted by Deanna Zandt at 7:40 AM on June 8, 2006.

Amidst the battle for Net Neutrality, there's some discussion happening around Cox Internet, who provides software to customers that intentionally blocks Craigslist. Why would they do that? Well, because Cox has its own classifieds service, of course.

The background: Whenever you sign up with just about any Internet service provider, they provide you with a bundle of software that they want you to install and use. Outside of AOL, no one actually has to install the stuff in order to use their internet service, but most people don't know that. Thus, people get the install CD, and happily plug away through (often crappy) software that the ISP bundles.

In the case of Cox, they provide a little suite of apps called the "Cox Security Suite." Any unwitting (meaning, non-geek level) Internet subscriber would probably want to feel secure online, so they go ahead and install it. The ugly part is when this so-called Security Suite also blocks universally-accepted-as-awesome websites like Craigslist.

It also gets even uglier when the developers of the software, who provide such services to other ISPs, don't respond for nearly three months to the complaints that their software is blocking websites that it shouldn't.

There's nothing illegal about this activity, but it smacks of evil-ness, especially in light of the Net Neutrality debate. Should Internet service providers be allowed to take advantage of users' illiteracy and capitalize on it? There's a lot of folks out there (most of them the elitist-type of geeks) saying that stuff like this should make people learn about the Internet and how things work. That's like saying people should learn how phone systems work so they know if they're being illegally wiretapped by the NSA.

This kind of behavior by ISPs is irresponsible and detrimental. It's as bad as spyware being installed on your computer as part of a bundled software package... only worse, because you got this crap from a trusted source, the people you pay money to in order to simply access the Internet. And who knows what sites they'll block next?

Deanna Zandt is a contributing editor at AlterNet.