Last year in the USA, a law was repealed that prevents internet service providers from intentionally limiting internet speed for certain types of traffic. Left without this law, Americans are now threatened by Internet service providers that if they want to pirate content, they could be left without heat in their homes.
The image below was taken by Armstrong Zoom, an internet service provider with 1 million customers, telling them that if they hacked they might not be able to control their Nest thermostats. The provider announced to its customers that if they pirate content, their internet speed will be substantially reduced and IoT products such as the Nest thermostat could stop working.
Moreover, limiting internet speed will also affect other IoT devices in customers' homes, so the operator recommends them not to pirate content. The warning comes at a time when the states where the provider operates have temperatures well below zero degrees, so in certain situations the limitation of internet speed could have serious effects.
However, this image should be the starting point to reinstate the repealed law in the US and to prevent other similar decisions in other countries. And in Romania at one point the imposition of similar laws was taken into account, and now would be the time again to learn something from the Americans in order not to be the victims of some companies, in the USA many innocent people are accused of having pirated content.
