[ NNSquad ] Re: FCC paths to Internet network management? (from IP)

[Ed Jankiewicz <edward.jankiewicz@sri.com>]

Brett:

I certainly don't advocate breaking contracts in force between a willing 
vendor and customer.  I was speaking in very broad terms about firewall 
behavior; generally everyone agrees that spam and botnet attacks are bad 
and we should try to block them.  I also respect your right and 
responsibility to protect your network from abuse, and to protect your 
customers from each other, but I guess the big debate on this list is 
over what constitutes "abuse" versus reasonable and allowable use of 
bandwidth, or what constitutes "interference" versus reasonable and 
allowable network management and protection. 

I am not familiar with your terms of use, nor am I a lawyer so I won't 
debate whether p2p inherently violates them, or whether you have the 
right under those terms to block or throttle packets based on the use of 
particular applications.  If your customers signed that agreement, and 
the terms forbid what they are trying to do, and permit what you are 
trying to do, then they have to live with it.  Perhaps I'll read my ISPs 
terms of use...

I'm glad to see both sides of the debate are allowed to flower here.  As 
Sy Syms says "an educated consumer is our best customer (r)" (sorry - if 
you are not in his market area see http://www.syms.com/) so we'd all be 
better off (vendors and customers) if everyone meant what they said and 
said what they meant, and customers read and understood the EULA and 
made their free-market decisions. 

Ed J.

Brett Glass wrote:
> [A few responses to messages on the list, concatenated for brevity. -BG]
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> Ed J. writes:
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> > There should always be a very good reason, mutually acceptable to the network operator and its customers, for any blocking. 
> >     
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> How about that it was agreed to by contract and therefore was
> mutually accepted by both parties at the get-go?
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> <snip>
> --Brett Glass
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