Nobody cares, what provider does. What matters is whether or not you sign a damn consent form.
Suppose, that there is a popular mobile App, written by Zhang Li Ltd. The App allows you to buy travel tickets, receive discounts in local stores and upload contents of your address book to it's servers. After a while you notice, that everyone uses it. Your local store no longer sells large amounts of grocery unless you make a reservation from The App. All train tickets must be booked by using The App. A bunch of local utilities stopped accepting payments unless you send them via The App. The thing is just so convenient!
One day you notice, that The App requires you to sign some "consent form" in order to use it's advanced features. A month later it threatens to delete your account if you don't "consent" (of course, it won't say so directly — "our ML algo detected, that you are Russian hacker! plz confirm your identity! account secuuuurity!" — that's how it will roll). The App is absolutely not connected to your ISP — it's authors just want to buy the data, that's all!
Reminds you of anything?
You can go on a web browser even a phone browser and do almost all the activities you can do in an app, and not deal with the T&C of the app once declined. Of course, no one does because they can't be inconvenienced. Again, you might believe that you can't check your Facebook/tender/whatsapp/Snapchat/etc, but that's generally untrue for most of them..
In most places due to govt regulation, you only have one or two ISP's serving a geographic area. So the T&C in this case have an actual impact, not some mythical and perceived injustice by "big tech".
Those app providers have the right to suck every last detail from their meatspace, down to what color socks they like on Tuesday and sell it to Hanes.
It's entirely feasible to have two classes of customers, right? One that agreed to the provision, and one that didn't. One that gets a 500GB data cap, and one that gets 150GB, say.
Just because you serve a customer doesn't mean you must serve them equally. Afterall, technically, they are serving the customer, right?
> (2) Charge a customer a penalty or offer a customer a discount based on the customer's decision to provide or not provide consent under paragraph A.
It's against the spirit of the law of course, but maybe not the letter.
WTF is "consent" doing here? Why would ISP ever need to sell someone's data in order to operate? Do they also plan to explicitly prohibit ISPs from torturing customers and selling their organs? From selling illegal drugs to minors? Dear state of Maine, I too would like to waive all my legal liabilities by making my victims sign a bunch of paperwork!
Won't the law only help then?
Now it is going to become legal in Maine — as long as you are an ISP.
There's probably a "as necessary to provide the service" exception more than large enough to encompass internal logging.
https://mainelegislature.org/legis/bills/bills_129th/billtex...
http://legislature.maine.gov/LawMakerWeb/summary.asp?ID=2800...
The summary: "This bill prohibits a provider of broadband Internet access service from using, disclosing, selling or permitting access to customer personal information unless the customer expressly consents to that use, disclosure, sale or access. The bill provides other exceptions under which a provider may use, disclose, sell or permit access to customer personal information. The bill prohibits a provider from refusing to serve a customer, charging a customer a penalty or offering a customer a discount if the customer does or does not consent to the use, disclosure, sale or access. The bill requires providers to take reasonable measures to protect customer personal information from unauthorized use, disclosure, sale or access. The provisions of the bill apply to providers operating within the State when providing broadband Internet access service to customers that are billed for service received in the State and are physically located in the State."