I'm sure a lawsuit will clear that up when someone dies.
A few years ago (3) TWC did this to me. Since my CM was behind a router I had to call TWC and call an outage. There was no redirect. Hopefully they have smartened up since then. They said they sent me an email (oh yeah I read that TWC email all day).
Sad thing is that they shut me off for something I hadn't even done.
This whole Napoleonic $35 fee guilty until proven innocent is why the US ditched imperial powers, and now we are back to European rule or law. Great way to go back to the dark ages.
Message to copyright whores: Make your content easy to get, easy to use, and priced reasonably.
The success of Netflix and the decrease of piracy is direct demonstration of that. A vast majority of people would transact in legal means if a competitive and free exchange is in operation. And that means DRM and the derivatives are crap.
Does my browsing activity get redirected or does my whole internet connection get redirected?
It would really suck for AT&T if they purposely redirected VOIP traffic and someone couldn't call 911 in an emergency.
Depends on where the VPN is implemented in your setup. If the VPN is through your computer, and you have a separate VoIP adapter, then no. But if you use a softphone then yes. If your VPN is setup at your router, then yes as well.