As Americans start staying and working from home in droves due to the Coronavirus, some Internet providers are removing data caps and boosting speed.

You may have heard recently about the ‘Copyright Alert System’, or “CAS” (also being called the “Six Strikes” system. This is the ‘6 strikes’ system that was proposed by the RIAA as a new way for Internet service providers (ISPs) to help combat the illegal downloading of copyrighted materials such as movies and music. Did you catch that? Your ISP is getting involved in the fight to keep you from downloading illegal content.

A group of U.S.-based Internet service providers (ISPs) have announced that they are going to start charging their email users for processing the spam that is addressed to them. As the deluge of spam continues unabated, ISPs are seeking new ways to help offset the cost of processing the trillions of pieces of junk email that they are keeping out of their customers’ inboxes (or, in some cases, still delivering to their customers’ inbox or junk folder).

It had to happen sooner or later. The heydey of the wild frontier Internet, where ISPs had unfettered artistic license to create the landscape they wanted, is over. Like Adam and Eve in the proverbial garden of Eden, it was theirs to lose, and lose it they are about to, it seems. Now, as some Internet providers are moving to restrict bandwidth usage and charge outrageous amounts for “over usage” – much like the phone company once did, legislation has been introduced to regulate ISPs, and even to have a Federal agency oversee them – much like the telephone companies now do.

The European Commission has sued the country of Sweden for failing to implement the European Union (EU) Data Retention Directive – a mandate of having in place data retention legislation aimed at codifying how and for how long an ISP must retain user data.