Saw this article floating around the internets, and I gotta say it's a little disturbing to this free speech junkie.

If this trend continues, what does it mean for TER?

I've read stuff from Raw Story for years. I have Kaspersky, and didn't get any warnings. I'll copy and paste the article for everyone's safety.

With 56% of American Internet connections now capped, advocates ask FCC for probe

The practice of capping Internet bandwidth and selling it as a metered commodity has fully taken hold, to the point where 56 percent of U.S. internet connections are now on plans that restrict how much information users can access before triggering additional fees.

For an Internet landscape that's been accustomed to unlimited access to information the world over, this represents a sea-change for many broadband subscribers. And to at least two prominent Washington, D.C. advocacy groups, it's cause for immense concern.

That's why the directors of Public Knowledge and New America's Open Technology Initiative -- two Washington tech policy groups -- have written to the Federal Communications Commission to request they investigate the potential for these practices encouraging anti-competitive activities.

"These caps, which are now a fact of life for 56% of all broadband users, can perniciously undermine each of the goals set out by the Commission in the National Broadband Plan while at the same time stifling the competition and innovation that has established itself as the sine qua non of the internet economy," they wrote.

AT&T's bandwidth cap for DSL users, which went into effect on May 2, limit users to just 150 gigabytes per month before the fees start piling up. While they claim the limitations are intended to ensure every user has adequate bandwidth at all times, critics say their intent is to force businesses into an artificially restricted business model that commoditizes bandwidth.

"In the world of broadband data caps, the caps recently implemented by AT&T are particularly aggressive," the groups explained. "Unlike competitors whose caps appear to be at least nominally linked to congestions during peak-use periods, AT&T seeks to convert caps into a profit center by charging additional fees to customers who exceed the cap. In addition to concerns raised by broadband caps generally, such a practice produces a perverse incentive for AT&T to avoid raising its cap even as its own capacity expands."

Others have suggested the move by AT&T, which followed a bandwidth capping scheme by Comcast, is also an affront to online movies provider Netflix, which has far and away trumped other video services owned by the network providers. The vast majority of mobile broadband plans are similarly limited, although those caps are typically far more restrictive than home-based broadband.

"The lower cap for DSL customers is especially worrying because one of the traditional selling points of DSL networks is that their dedicated circuit design helps to mitigate the impacts of heavy users on the rest of the network," they continued. "Together, these caps suggest either that AT&T's current network compares poorly to that of a major competitor circa 2008 or that there are non-network-management motivations behind their creation."

"Our usage-based pricing plan is about offering a high-quality, fair and affordable broadband service for all of our customers," an AT&T spokesman told Raw Story. "It is designed to protect the low-volume consumer and provide the high-volume consumer with the necessary information (at least six notifications) prior to being billed for overages. It is narrowly tailored to ensure that only those who use the most bandwidth pay for it. In fact, 98% of our customers will not be impacted by our approach."

Bandwidth capping was explicitly permitted by the FCC's recently-passed "net neutrality" regulations, which mandate that Internet providers treat all traffic equally on wired networks. Critics of the regulations suggest they are really a giveaway to big business and essentially toothless to enforce the rules in cases where the principles of neutrality are violated.

I got no such warning and was able to open the article with no problem.  I think the problem is the article itself, though it's consistent with the view that caps are a nefarious plot.  First of all, of course network operators want to maximize their profits.  They spent billions  to build these new networks.  There also is a legitimate position that a small percentage of users are sopping up huge amounts of capacity to the detriment of most users.  See the attached article for another, perhaps more balanced, view.  Also remember that, despite its name, AT&T is not that big a player in broadband.  The biggest are Comcast, Verizon and Time Warner.

Pretty soon they'll want to find a way to charge more to those people that leave their lights on all night. And watch out or your tellephone bill will be tied to how much you use your phone. The gall of those guys.

Most likely one of the ads used some code that was more offensive than normal and now it's gone, so the next visitor with the same protection wiuld not see the warning.

I have owned several ISPs and currently run a big one among other things. People think Internet access is an unlimited resource that falls out of the sky.

But let me tell ya -- MY bandwidth is limited. And if I don't cap people who are constantly downloading endless HD movies and shit, pretty soon everybody's speed is down to a crawl. Of course, I can always buy more bandwidth. But with what money? Where does that money come from?

What would you propose I do, Willy? Should I jack everybody's rates, including the little old lady who only uses email once a week, so that people can use the Internet to bypass buying cable or satellite TV service?

OR -- should I put a cap on downloads that allows me to bill the actual users of bandwidth and bill THEM for it, so the little old lady can live in peace?

People complain because their cable company makes them buy a package of networks, some of which they don't watch.  (Of course, the company has no choice and is contractually obligated by the networks to do this).  But when the cable company offers choice -- in this case to buy more or less bandwidth/speed -- they complain, too.  Makes no sense.

I haven't had to deal with this, but I have a question.
Are the extra prices effected by overall usage, or usage during peak periods through out the day?

I understand that there are limits to what are systems can do, seems to make more sense
(if technological possible) to aim extra charges at times when systems are overloaded instead of a flat monthly limit.  
The guy downloading movies at 330 am for instance might not be putting that much strain on the system, while all the people doing the same thing during prime time are.

Electricity is often billed in the way you would suggest, but bandwidth usage is not.

Though, because I have to buy the bandwidth I resell based on peak usage it would be ideal for me to bill in that fashion, in practice monitoring usage that closely, so I can get it down to the minutes and say "You bursted at 8:59!" just isn't feasible right now. So I have to do it on overall usage.

Theoretically, I could use a Sandvine (look them up) box to bill with that much detail; but I have avoided that because of issues having to do with *actual* censorship. Or I could just do frequent snmp queries of modems and store it in a mondo database, but that is ponderous. It's easier for me to just compare month to month total bandwidth usage.

Customers, incidentally, are totally fixated on speed.

What I sell them is a certain speed from their modem to my gear. I can't guarantee the speed of their PCs, their self-installed routers, their wireless connections, my own upstream providers and the speed test servers they are using. They don't grasp that speed is always limited by the worst link in that chain at any given point in time; which is usually their own gear or the speed test site.

What is even worse is the way places like netflix or vonage who make their livings by delivering content over MY infrastructure try to turn ME into their first-tier support without compensating me a dime.

I am all for net neutrality as it is one thing that makes the Internet great and free. But I wish these guys would be honest in establishing expectations rather than trying to force me to spend money supporting their crap.

I was thinking of electrical smart-grid design with my original post, though I don't believe it's that wide spreed at this time.

I believe that this type of billing would be ideal for consumers, I just hope in a upcoming generation of servers there will be a way to incorporate it in.  The thing I don't like that's trending right now with billing, is that a good portion of the population might get priced out of the market for new content.
If it were just a mater of Netflix type services I would be ok with that, however the Internet is replacing TV as the public main information source.

As far as Netflix, Vonage and the other bandwidth hogs, you're right.  Unfortunately all the solutions that are being suggested to limit bandwidth usage or bring in more money for bandwidth purchases are shielding them from the costs.