On Jul 25, 2005, at 10:23 AM, Mike Tancsa wrote:
At 10:05 AM 25/07/2005, Patrick W. Gilmore wrote:
ISPs are not common carriers. Look at your contract, I think you
will find they are allowed to filter specific things if they feel
necessary for a wide variety of reasons.
Infrastructure reasons yes. This is not an infrastructure issue.
As to whether or not an ISP is or is not a common carrier is still
up for debate especially here in Canada.
Does your contract actually say "infrastructure reasons"?
And I bow to your greater knowledge of Canadian law. That said, I
personally do not believe ISPs should be common carriers. There are
a lot of responsibilities that go along with all those perks. Maybe
you want to deal with them, I certainly would not.
(I have not read the Telus
contract, but such language is pretty standard.)
Put another way: If the /32 in question was a spam source, would you
feel the same?
Yes. I dont want them deciding that for me at the network layer.
Besides, SPAM is more on the fence as to whether or not its an
infrastructure issue. A spambot/zombie, yes thats infrastructure.
If they want to drop the advertisement, thats fine. If they want
to put in their contract that they will filter content they do not
like politically, OK, I will vote with my feet. If the material on
those websites are illegal, there are established laws for dealing
with it.
I agree that filtering this site is much different than filtering
attacks. However, I have long believed the "my network, my
equipment, my decision" argument for filtering spam, and think it
holds for more than just spam.
If you believe the ISP should be a common carrier, that changes
things. But until they are, I think you still need to vote with your
feet.
--
TTFN,
patrick
P.S. It's "spam", "SPAM" is a meat product from Hormel. :) <http://
www.spam.com/ci/ci_in.htm> Since Hormel was nice enough not to push
their trademark, we should be nice enough to spell it properly.
