@james347 I couldn't agree more. The construction crews who build the roads shouldn't be responsible for policing them. They have every incentive to NOT start quarantining users. Can you imagine the law suits? They get sued if there's a false positive and someone is quarantined who shouldn't be. They get sued if an infected user gets through and infects somebody else. They get sued for violating freedom of speech, privacy, and the list goes on and on. It's a legal nightmare that will never end.
On top of that, the cost is astronomical. Who helps the infected users clean their PCs? Does the ISP have the right to demand that the user do it, even when they can't afford it? If not, then the ISPs have to foot the bill for cleaning millions of PCs per year. Trying to pass those costs to their customers would require them to become uncompetitive unless they cut costs in other areas (probably by slowing down R&D and future expansion).
And we haven't even touched the problem of the infrastructure required to effectively scan the entire Internet for malware. After all, inspecting the packets isn't enough, you have to check them against virus signatures too.
No, the ISPs will never do this on their own. The mild potential incentives don't outweigh the legal risks and costs they will incur. The only way they would do it is if the government made them, and the government will never make them do it because A) the ISPs will spend millions lobbying against it, and B) the government doesn't want the whole freedom of speech issue on their hands.
ISPs quarantining their users is a pipe dream. The ISPs should be part of the solution, but laying the whole malware mess at their feet will get us nowhere.
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