Warp wrote:
>>         In the short term only. If some ISP is getting hurt by huge bandwidth
>> requirements (iplayer, youtube, Bittorrent, etc), in the long run they
>> may save more money by implementing filtering.
> 
>   Or simply by limiting its customers' bandwidth.
> 
>   Bandwidth limitation for technical reasons sounds a lot less dubious
> practice than filtering content.

	Yes, but easier to get more profit one way than another via marketing.

-- 
If a pig lost it's voice, would it become disgruntled?


                    /\  /\               /\  /
                   /  \/  \ u e e n     /  \/  a w a z
                       >>>>>>mue### [at] nawazorg<<<<<<
                                   anl

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"Darren New" <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote in message
news:49ee1019$1@news.povray.org...
> somebody wrote:

> > If you don't like it, don't buy the Sony TV.
>
> That's not what I asked. I asked why it's a good thing.  I.e., why are you
> in favor of this becoming a law?

I'm in favour of the law not restricting what ISPs can deliver. The law
doesn't say ISP's *should* restrict what they deliver, does it?

> > Buy another brand. In a free
> > market, people speak with their wallets. Making it unlawful for Sony to
> > manufacture such a TV is not the answer, it is censorship.

> And if it were a free market, I'd even agree with you. In practice, it's
not.
>
> I take it you're in favor of MS including their browser for free in every
> version of Windows and such too.

Sure. They should also be able include whatever they want, including the
kitchen sink. Do people complain when the auto manufacturer includes a
stereo? Why the big fuss when MS includes a media player?

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Mueen Nawaz wrote:
> 	Which indicates that in the US, such rules are not intended for the
> whole society (i.e. all private enterprises), but only to certain
> categories (which was what I was referring to under "public good").

The category is "common carrier".

> 	The crux of my arguments in this whole thread was that the legal
> position is not unambiguous or clear. Ultimately, society or the
> government may rule that it is vital to the public good and make sure
> this can't happen - but there's no generic law that's valid for all
> private enterprises.

I don't think it's appropriate for private enterprises. Enterprises granted 
regional monopoly status by the government should be forced to not 
discriminate, because you've just removed the market forces.

And for the same reason the USA has the First Amendment, I'd suggest it's 
probably a good idea to force a business to either be a carrier or a 
provider of information, but not allow a business to be both.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   There's no CD like OCD, there's no CD I knoooow!

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Mueen Nawaz wrote:
> thus has not been subject to common carrier regulations"

Technically, then, they're responsible for what is sent over their cables, 
not unlike a television station can get fined for showing porn during prime 
time.  Or the RIAA could sue them for allowing downloads of copyrighted 
material and contributory infringement.

That said, I wouldn't be surprised if the cable companies and such managed 
to get laws making them neither common carriers nor responsible for the 
information they serve.

> 	I'm not 100% sure. I would think I'm required to take it down only if
> notified of its presence. IOW, I don't think there's any law that states
> that I _have_ to actively monitor what goes on on my Web site. Not sure,
> though.

No, there isn't. But if you *do* monitor it, you're responsible for it.

In this case, the ISP is saying "we *do* monitor where you go, and actively 
police that."  Hence, they're responsible for the content they deliver. You 
can't say "we watch everywhere you go, and block some legal sites for 
financial purposes, but we take no responsibility for blocking illegal 
sites."  IANAL still, but I did spend a year or so making sure the porn on 
the company's web server didn't leak out to the pages before you proved your 
age, so I spent a fair amount of time with the lawyers discussing it. If you 
filter the content, you're taking responsibility for being an "information 
service", and the information you serve needs to be legal.

I.e., it's the Pirate Bay defense: "we never looked at what we were serving, 
so you can't blame us for what the users put there."

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   There's no CD like OCD, there's no CD I knoooow!

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Mueen Nawaz wrote:
> Darren New wrote:
>> And vice versa. For a while, ESPN was refusing to serve content to Time
>> Warner because TW wasn't paying ESPN extra.
> 
> 	Unless something changed lately, I still don't get ESPN 360 through my
> ISP...

Well, there you go. But that's ESPN extorting the ISP, not the ISP extorting 
the customers. Since ESPN creates the content, it seems perfectly reasonable 
that they control who can see it, just like any other author. ESPN just 
decided it was easier to collect money from ISPs than individual customers.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   There's no CD like OCD, there's no CD I knoooow!

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somebody wrote:
> "Darren New" <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote in message
> news:49ee1019$1@news.povray.org...
>> somebody wrote:
> 
>>> If you don't like it, don't buy the Sony TV.
>> That's not what I asked. I asked why it's a good thing.  I.e., why are you
>> in favor of this becoming a law?
> 
> I'm in favour of the law not restricting what ISPs can deliver.

I 100% understand that. But for the third time you haven't answered the 
question. What's the benefit that comes from allowing ISPs to refuse to 
deliver certain kinds of content, or content from certain providers of 
information that are otherwise legal?

If you just reassert "it's bad", then you're not saying *why* you think it's 
bad. Convince me with logic, not "proof by repeated vigorous assertion."

> Sure. They should also be able include whatever they want, including the
> kitchen sink. Do people complain when the auto manufacturer includes a
> stereo? Why the big fuss when MS includes a media player?

Honestly, I don't know. I just wondered what your take on it was.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   There's no CD like OCD, there's no CD I knoooow!

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On Tue, 21 Apr 2009 15:51:41 -0700, Darren New wrote:

>  What's the benefit that comes from allowing ISPs to refuse to
> deliver certain kinds of content, or content from certain providers of
> information that are otherwise legal?

I think the real problem isn't so much in allowing ISPs to refuse to 
deliver certain kinds of content, but the line provider being an ISP and 
then refusing.

The loss of choice, then because the carrier provides the ISP service as 
well (as in the case of AT&T, Comcast, Time Warner, etc) where you're 
locked into using their ISP and their line.

The setup I have is not unique, but it is relatively uncommon; I use DSL 
service from Earthlink, but they don't provide the line, Covad 
Communications provides the line - and actually that's a shared line with 
Qwest (since they provide the wire to the house).

With the cable companies in the US, they behave as a common carrier in 
that they are the sole provider of the line, but you can't (AFAIK) choose 
to use a different ISP if you use the cable provider.  So in my locale, 
Comcast controls the line and the network access, and the problem is them 
deciding arbitrarily that they aren't going to give reasonable (or any) 
access to, say, Qwest's online resources.  Comcast provides a telephone 
service as well, so if you get your 'net access from them, they *could* 
unilaterally decide to prevent you from paying your Qwest bill online by 
preventing you from visiting their website[1].

What I think needs to happen is that the line provider needs to be 
classified as a common carrier.  Common carrier status means they have to 
treat all data equal, and the service providers (ie, the one providing 
the network address and access to the Internet at large) then compete on 
features, access, availability, and bandwidth options.

Jim

[1] I'm not saying they'd actually do that, and that customers wouldn't 
be pissed off and make noise about it.  I am saying that if they decided 
to do that, they could tell the customers "well, you have a choice, you 
can go with lower-speed DSL, so suck on our truck nuts."  There would be  
a certain percentage who would switch to Comcast for phone service as a 
result, a certain percentage who would grumble and accept it, and a 
relatively small number who would say "screw you" and drop Comcast.

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somebody <x### [at] ycom> wrote:
> Nothing is simple. In this case, the complex but obvious observation is that
> EU is not infallible.

  So in your opinion Apple should be allowed to keep its monopoly status?

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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> How many network connections do you actually have access to in your house. 
> I only have a TV cable and a wire for the phone. I could probably get a 
> fiber installed, but maybe not. And I could probably get a cellular 
> wireless connection to the internet from two different companies.

About the same here actually.

> Everything but the wireless is a government-enforced monopoly.

Oh that's different here, the government-enforced monopoly that owns the 
wire for the phone is forced to let any other company use it.  This only 
happened quite recently (I think 5-10 years ago in the UK), but now there 
are plenty of ISPs to choose from with a wide range of prices.  Some even 
put their own equipment on their end of the line (like Arcor in Germany), 
whilst others presumably rent equipment from the government-enforced 
monopoly.

> Only if you were actually allowed to. Are you allowed to start a new 
> company that runs fiber into everyone's house?

I don't see why not, a company called NTL did this in my mum's street a 
while back.  If you get permission from the council (or whoever) and/or pay 
NTL then you can probably feed your fibre down their pipes too or build your 
own.

Anyway, if you want to start up an ISP, I don't see any reason why you 
can't, there are enough of them around (in UK and Germany at least).

>> Being an ISP is not like, say, providing live coverage of a sporting 
>> event, there is no restriction to how many companies can offer it.
>
> Are you sure?

Well if there is a restriction it is a really big number, the German 
wikipedia page for ISP lists about 25 companies.

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Jim Henderson wrote:
> With the cable companies in the US, they behave as a common carrier in 
> that they are the sole provider of the line, but you can't (AFAIK) choose 
> to use a different ISP if you use the cable provider.

Sometimes you can. But then what happens is you have things like Time 
Warner, who provides ISP, VIOP, and IPTV services, giving lower priority to 
traffic destined for Vonage's VOIP servers, Hulu, and so on.

I.e., by saying "It's my ISP, I can do whatever I want," they can provide 
VOIP at $50/month, and then refuse to connect you to the $20/month VOIP 
service, or provide cable TV service expensively and refuse to let you watch 
TV provided by someone else online like Hulu. TW already does this to some 
extent, until people complained to the PUC.

Then Time Warner gets pay-per-view, and decides that you shouldn't be 
allowed to hit CinemaNow or NetFlix download servers.

> What I think needs to happen is that the line provider needs to be 
> classified as a common carrier.  Common carrier status means they have to 
> treat all data equal, and the service providers (ie, the one providing 
> the network address and access to the Internet at large) then compete on 
> features, access, availability, and bandwidth options.

Exactly.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   There's no CD like OCD, there's no CD I knoooow!

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