ISPs Don't Really Want Per Byte Billing > security concerns?

security concerns?

Perhaps, but those problems would be quickly resolved instead of festering for months/years at a time. Neighbor leechs off of Bob's open WiFi and downloads tons of porn. Current scenario: Bob doesn't even know anything's wrong. Metered scenario: Bob gets an outrageous bill, calls his ISP to find out what's wrong and eventually secures his WiFi.

Also, this could help against zombied computers. Current scenario: John's computer is rooted and sends out ten million spam e-mails a month. John notices his computer is running a bit slow but curses out Microsoft instead of doing anything. Metered scenario: John gets a bill for a ton of data sent, has his computer checked out, and cleans up his act.

Granted, this is all assuming a few things. First of all, this assumes true metering as in $X per MB sent/received and not $X per month for up to Y GB plus $Z/GB overage. Secondly, it assumes that ISPs put systems/policies in place to help users transition to taking more of a responsibility for their system's security (have combination fraud/IT departments that can help users troubleshoot high bills and issue one time refunds as users clean up).

Of course, I still have problems with metered billing, such as having to overly pay for downloading spam e-mails or pay actual money for a site's annoying video ad. Server side spam filtering will have to be in place and ad blockers might become more common/effective.
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-Jason Levine
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