That is the single most unlikely thing that could happen. It is also just a dumb argument to require people to do a lot of book keeping for every printer or other device on a network.
I am starting to think this is some weird plot to make entry into any web software harder and protect those already here because the arguments for this don't make sense. I assume that caching is going to end.
Really? 4chan got Apple stock to plummet 5% just by announcing stuff about Steve Jobs. Yahoo News publishing news like "Elon Musk dies" or "3 killed in Tesla car battery explosions" or just other simple "X misses Q3 by 80%" or "X to acquire Y" would do a pretty good job at changing prices, I'd guess. (Though if you went overboard they could roll trades back, maybe.)
As far as the fun part. Just change people's quotes, slightly. Twist words around. Make it seem like Obama really regrets the healthcare act. Or something funnier. Done well, it'd be a fantastic piece of trolling. Done really well, you could send people into a panic.
Has this actually happened or is this just a fever dream? We are talking actual dollars and pain-in-the-butt work versus some weird hijack looks like it would get caught in very short order. I am unwilling to trade caching and bandwidth for this.
Even easier - someone just posted to CNN iReport and AAPL fell 10%. Awesome.
You asked what the benefit of encrypting news is. Well one benefit is that you restrict who can modify stories. Instead of just compromising the network, you've gotta compromise the box. There's value in making sure all data people receive comes from the source they believe it does. (Now if they decide to make trading decisions on CNN iReport or Yahoo News, well that's another issue.)
You keep giving examples that do not involve anything like a Man In The Middle attack. The CNN iReport was a regular posting. All of your examples have nothing to do with the proposal and would have happened if the site was using https.
I am starting to think this is some weird plot to make entry into any web software harder and protect those already here because the arguments for this don't make sense. I assume that caching is going to end.