I thought this "cut off your internet" thing had died circa 2007 with the draconian, yet endearingly-condescending "three-strikes-you're-out" push from the record industry. In a world where internet access has long since become a basic requirement to function in civil society, how is this still a conversation?
Yet in New Zealand they can :(<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_(Infringing_File_Sharing)_Amendment_Act_2011" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_(Infringing_File_Sha...</a>
This happened to myself and my housemate recently, this draconian practice is still alive and well in the USA. We have Service Electric, who uses PenTeleData as their provider, and I can honestly say they are the worst service imaginable.. I'd rather have Comcast.<p>Neither of us use torrents, we prefer streaming services that have everything we need. Regardless, our internet was turned off without notice two months ago. The most frustrating part was that they didn't tell us, it just went off.. so it took us nearly a day to figure out what was even going on. This included a dozen calls to the ISP trying to figure out what was going on, and the surprising part is that they didn't know! There's more to the story including absolutely most incompetent tech support I've ever seen, but a little over a day later we had it turned back on. We asked what we could do to avoid this in the future, and were told not to torrent.<p>Fast forward to a few weeks back, our internet turns off again. I call and find out that our internet has been cut off for 72 hours due to torrenting, which turned out to be a TV show. A TV show neither of us watches, so the circumstances are suspect.<p>When I questioned the operator about this, she flat out called me a liar, with no evidence to support her argument. When I suggested that we might cancel our service because of the poor treatment, she said go ahead. Of course, she knew that there are no other ISPs where we live (out in the woods).<p>So here we are again, our internet may get turned off permanently and without warning for no wrongdoing on our part. Rather strange times we're living in where scumbag companies can get away with this, ruining peoples lives so they can increase their own profits by 3.2%<p>Burn in hell, PenTeleData, I'm sure you're monitoring this as well.