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


Well, I didn't exactly say "spammers deserve jail, not blocking," but
the point is that the world seems to have pretty much reached a
consensus that there isn't such a thing as legit spam.  And in fact,
I have nothing at all against blocking spammers.  My concern is when
ISPs treat most subscribers as "potential spammers" and prevent them
from running their own servers, forcing them through ISP mail servers,
making cert-authenticated STARTTLS crypto impossible, and so on.
Block and boil spammers, fine.  Block innocents because they *might*
spam -- unacceptable.  Now of course, most of the ISPs who do this
sort of preventative blocking will be glad to unblock you, so long
as you *pay them more* to get to a higher service tier.  Money
talks, eh?

--Lauren--
NNSquad Moderator

>   While blocking spam is a worthy cause, "owners" of network components 
> blocking things at will is a slippery slope.
> 
> What if Microsoft decides tweak their Windows DNS client to forge 
> replies redirecting "google.com" to their own search engine. I may own 
> my computer, but Microsoft owns the windows code. If I don't like it, I 
> can go to their competition ;-). Or my Linksys router (again, I may own 
> the hardware but Cisco owns the code) "helps" my bandwidth even more by 
> blocking my non-Cisco "SIP" VoIP serivice (Cisco uses SCCP VoIP, the 
> rest of the world uses SIP).
> 
> Meanwhile my ISP, having gotten away with blocking BitTorrent, might 
> block any VoIP service other than the one they sell. Coupled with Cisco 
> SIP stomping, above, this means no VoIP for me. And my Realtek 
> (Taiwanese) Ethernet NIC start dropping any packet with a destination IP 
> mapped to Yahoo (in retaliation for Yahoo helping the mainland Chinese). 
> And Firefox refuses to link to MSN. There go all my search engines.
> 
> Eventually nobody can reach anything. The whole Idea of Internetworking 
> is (or was) that all these parts should should make a best effort to 
> forward all traffic, not pick and choose. Blocking should only be done 
> as a last resort, with the express informed consent of the end users of 
> the network. My ISP blocks spam, but I'm aware of this and free to 
> unblock it anytime I want. I assume Brett's customers have the same 
> option. As Lauren pointed out, senders of spam deserve jail, not blocking.
> 
> -JB-
> 
> Brett Glass wrote:
> > At 10:19 AM 3/5/2008, Vint Cerf wrote:
> >  
> >   
> >> Are you saying that your service is private and therefore you can decide what I can and cannot send through it?
> >>     
> >
> > Yes. For example, I can tell you that you cannot spam.
> >
> > --Brett Glass
> >
> >   
> -- 
> John Bartas - Director of Network Engineering
> Packet Island, Inc. www.packetisland.com
> jbartas@packetisland.com
> cell: 408-857-0605
>