[ NNSquad ] Re: Broadband Infrastructure (from IP)

[Barry Gold <bgold@matrix-consultants.com>]

Lauren Weinstein wrote:
> You, me, and many others have made this point over and over again.
> A key reason that there's so much skepticism about ISP deployment
> promises is that we've been screwed on this score repeatedly.  Unless
> there are ironclad requirements for truly neutral, open access
> deployments, there's no good reason to assume that ISPs will behave
> any differently than they have in the past.  To wit: cherry-picking
> locations, giving themselves the lion's share of bandwidth for their
> own content, blocking ports, arbitrarily prohibiting servers and other
> applications, and nowadays even modifying user data, spying on user
> data, trying to charge unaffiliated Web services for access to
> customers, and of course implementing arbitrary and anticompetitive
> bandwidth caps.
>
> Any new public funding/tax incentives for ISP broadband deployment
> should be predicated on a reasonable regulatory approach, including
> disclosure, transparency, neutrality, and an understanding that we're
> not going to throw money at the ISPs the way we just did with the
> financial services sector.
>   

Agreed 100%.  In fact, I'm a lot happier with this idea than with 
flat-out regulation.  Here, you can have this subsidy for setting up 
cable to more places, provided:
 . You reach at least X% of the households in the designated geographic 
area, with Y% signing up.
 . At least X% of the cable bandwidth is allocated to Internet access 
(vs. TV cable, PPV, etc.)
 . Bandwidth caps must be demonstrably reasonable based on median and 
90th percentile usage.
 . Protocol and port-agnostic carriage.  [Exceptions: users must 
explicitly opt-in to allow access to the Windoze filesharing and to 
allow _outgoing_ connections to port 25.  In the latter case, users 
explicitly agree to accept responsibility for spam sent from their machine.]
 . No modification of data sent to or from the user's machine except for:
    + those explicitly allowed by the RFCs (e.g., decrementing TTL, 
changes involved in packet splitting)
    + caching,
 . Users are allowed to run any application -- specifically including 
servers -- except those things generally recognized as malware (spam or 
spim generators, botnet directors, port scanners without explicit 
consent of the scanned site, attempts to exploit known security holes).  
[Note: I would have no objection if users have to opt-in before remove 
access to servers is allowed, as long as there is no additional charge 
for this.  That protects the vast majority of users from having their 
systems exploited in various ways, at a small inconvenience (one phone 
call) to the relative few who actually _do_ want to run 
web/ftp/filesharing servers.]