[ NNSquad ] Re: Civil Rights Groups Wants P2P Throttling to Preserve Rights (or something like that)

["Vint Cerf" <vint@google.com>]

I see no reasonable rationale to ban a protocol when traffic shaping can be
achieved by protocol-insensitive means. Lack of competition in internet access
persuades me that common carriage rules should be reinstantiated.

Are you saying that your service is private and therefore you can decide what
I can and cannot send through it?

V

----- Original Message -----
From: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.net>
To: Vint Cerf; Edge, Ronald D <edge@indiana.edu>
Cc: 'nnsquad@nnsquad.org' <nnsquad@nnsquad.org>
Sent: Wed Mar 05 09:08:37 2008
Subject: Re: [ NNSquad ] Re: Civil Rights Groups Wants P2P Throttling  to Preserve	Rights (or	something like that)

At 08:54 AM 3/5/2008, Vint Cerf wrote:

>these people don't seem to recognize that the interference of the
>broadband providers is an abridgment of their ability to speak.
>amazing. welcome to 1984, you have entered a time warp. Maybe this is
>the Bizarro planet.

Three very important points.

Firstly, while the Constitution guarantees a right to free speech, 
it still allows government to regulate the "time, place, and 
manner" of speech. For example, you might be restricted from 
speaking in a way that violates others' rights (e.g. by a noise 
ordinance that prohibited you from driving through neighborhoods 
with a loudspeaker truck at 3 AM). Similarly, you might be 
restricted from using BitTorrent, which degrades others' service 
and thus harms THEIR ability to speak and also to receive speech.

Secondly, the Constitution applies to government, not private 
parties. You have no Constitutional right, for example, to go into 
a privately owned theater, get up on the stage, and disrupt the 
performance, no matter what you have to say. Likewise, you do not 
have the right to abuse a privately owned network so as to speak.

Thirdly, any speech which can be communicated via BitTorrent or 
other P2P protocols can also be communicated via other ones. If a 
speaker chooses to distribute speech exclusively via a protocol 
which is prohibited by most Internet users' contracts, he or she 
should expect that it won't reach many people. Anyone can post an 
ordinary Web site -- and should, if he or she wants the widest 
distribution for his or her speech. And that site will have the 
advantage of being able to be indexed by Google. ;-)

--Brett Glass