Butch,
Most likely wispa will act on this. But, ultimately, it comes down to
does the membership of wispa want to do this.
I don't mean to be rude, but shouldn't the paying members that make up
the wispa membership decide what wispa acts on or not?
It's not that I disagree with any of this, and I'm sure the other paying
members of wispa and the rest of the board are interested in making a
statement and will most likely act.
But Mark did not bring this up to the "membership". Just the open list.
Mark is a "member" and he should have brought this up to the membership
and just tossed eggs at wispa from outside of wispa.
And I think his original post was at midnight last night chastising the
so called "insiders" of wispa, accusing the insiders of being in with
the feds for their personal gain even though he is a paying member of
wispa and could have easily brought this up at some point in a more
dignified manner without accusing the insiders of having some sort of
conspiracy and dereliction of duty.
here is his original post:
"Or, is this issue like certain others, where WISPA founders take
contrary positions to the rest of the members and side with big brother
and encourage the feds to dig into and regulate our business, in some
apparent hope of ingratiating themselves with the regulators?"
So what was his real message?
I'd like him to explain to the membership what "certain others" are.
I would also like to point out that everyone wants wispa to do
something, but I only saw 1 person jump up and instantly try to give a
solution. That was Peter R. and he isn't even a paying member of wispa, yet.
He does though contribute to the wispa promo committee and is very much
interested in working with wisps and wispa in as an industry
representative. Which I congratulate him on being right there for us
when wisps who are in the industry won't even contribute anything.
Actually there was a 2nd and that was Pete Davis who made a darn good
suggestion that would deflect costs away from the ISP and back towards
the feds.
Now if we could just get more people to join in and help with some of
the stuff wispa could be doing, we might be able to get more done and
stay on top of things.
Right now there are about 500 list dwellers here and only a small
percentage are paid members.
The paid members are MUCH appreciated, because even if they don't have
the time to contribute, they at least contributed money to help pay the
bills and keep wispa alive.
The rest of the list dwellers, who I will assume are in the industry or
related to the industry also need to consider that the math is easy.
here it is
The MORE people who join in and contribute either with a little money or
even actions and a little time will mean the MORE wispa can get done.
The LESS people who contribute, the LESS that gets done.
Remember, everyone has day jobs and businesses that takes up most of
their time, so it's not like we have full time anybodies.
Sincerely
George
Butch Evans wrote:
On Sun, 4 Jun 2006, George Rogato wrote:
1) Does the government have a right to know the actions of Americans
on the internet?
This is not really at issue. At least it is not really of any concern
for us here.
2) Is this a responsibility of the ISP to bear the burden of gathering
this information or should the burden be carried by the feds
themselves with little or no cost to the ISP?
THIS is the real issue that ISPs face. The problem that we all have
with this is multifaceted. First, (and perhaps most importantly) is the
cost that many ISPs will face to comply with the requirements. In many
cases, this cost will be both direct (for hardware) and indirect
(network reconfiguration). Also, many ISPs are set up in such a way
that compliance will be nearly impossible. Let me provide just a couple
examples.
First, many ISPs use private IP space internally for their customers.
For these ISPs, any monitoring done by an outside entity (i.e. AT&T)
will be completely useless.
Another example, would be the many ISPs that have several diverse
networks. I have several customers that have 3 or 4 distinct networks
(one has 8). These ISPs would be required to store this data in either
one location, or purchase the equipment for each network.
It is my belief that WISPA should create a stance against any
requirement for WISPs to store customer traffic patterns for any
period. The very idea is hideously un-American in the first place. Be
that as it may, it is technically difficult, and financially unfair for
many smaller ISPs to have to store this information at all.
This thread started out as we should not be allowing the government to
know our every move. This is a political discussion that can not and
should not be decided by an ISP, but rather the entire country. We
don't have any jurisdiction on issues such as this.
George, this is one area where we disagree. This is NOT a "political
discussion". This is an issue that directly impacts every ISP (wireless
or wired). It is, perhaps, true that the political implications are
what Mark was driving at, but the issue at hand is NOT political in
nature. It IS financial and technical.
We do however have a right to contest who is responsible for the
burden of gathering this information.
OK. If that is the case, wouldn't you agree that this is something that
SHOULD be addressed by WISPA? I don't agree with much that Mark had to
say (really, it was the "implications" he made that I disagreed with),
but his point that there should be SOME action on the part of WISPA is
one that I do agree with.
--
George Rogato
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