somebody <x### [at] ycom> wrote:
> In this context, information is a commodity, the very thing being sold. They
> can chose what to sell and what not to sell, or how to bundle them and what
> pricing levels they use.

  Can they? They don't own the information in question.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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somebody <x### [at] ycom> wrote:
> How is it basic human right for a *customer* to dictate the goods? Telecoms
> are selling you services which *they* alone should be able to define. You,
> as a customer, can chose to buy it or not.

  Ok, this seems to have become a list of nitpickers.

  Anybody else feel like joining in? If yes, please reply to the original
post and comment on that one point about human rights and how the internet
isn't.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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"scott" <sco### [at] scottcom> wrote in message news:49ed8c94@news.povray.org...

> You are talking like there is some basic human right that you should have
> access to every single website in existance?  Why on Earth should that be
> the case?

Agreed. As a sidenote, some piracy advocates claim that there's some basic
human right that guarantees them access to every single bit of infomation
out there. I call that the "entitlement mentality". There was a point not
too long ago where creators were respected and it was a priviledge to be
able to purchase and enjoy the fruits of their hard work and investment.
Nowadays, creators and providers are regarded as greedy scumbags if they
don't give you the heaven and the earth for free.

Post a reply to this message

"Warp" <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote in message
news:49ed9d53@news.povray.org...
> scott <sco### [at] scottcom> wrote:
> > >  If an ISP started censoring all websites related to a political
party,
> > > should they be allowed to do that? What if all the ISPs started
blocking
> > > all political parties except one? Should they be allowed to do that?

> > It wouldn't be very popular, but IMO it shouldn't be illegal.

>   I suppose you are entitled to your opinion. However, I would at least
> hope that that kind of behavior from the part of ISPs would be highly
> illegal in most civilized countries.

Why? Different broadcast and print media companies already have their
biases, agendas and contents. You as a consumer are free to pick between
them.

I see nothing wrong with one ISP promoting themselves as a family ISP,
blocking all pornographic content, and another one blocking the boring stuff
and focusing on pornography alone, for instance.

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
> scott <sco### [at] scottcom> wrote:
>> So every company should be forced to do things that are no extra cost to 
>> them?
> 
>   Every company should be (and is) forced to submit to basic human rights
> which include, among others, freedom of information. No company has the
> right to actively censor information from its clients.

	Eh - I disagree. But before I begin, I will admit that this is perhaps
a gray area, and it may take decades to get it right.

	Generally, at least here in the US, freedoms like the freedom of speech
are meant to be regarding the government - not private entities. It just
means that the government cannot restrict it. If an ISP wants to, they
can. If I run a physical structure where people debate stuff, I have the
right to restrict the topics.
	
	There are _rights_ that you can't violate, but not all freedoms are
rights in that sense. Occasionally, the government will "promote" one of
those freedoms to a right. But it hasn't happened yet with speech.

	I don't like what the ISP's may be planning, but I can't find a good
legal or constitutional argument against it (laws in Europe may be
different). I can see that in the future, perhaps access to the Internet
will be seen as a human right, and these limitations will then become
illegal. But it's not clear at this point.

>   An ISP blocking part of the internet would be active censorship. They

	Which, I believe, is legal for private entities to do - particularly if
they state it in the TOS.

	It's like if I own a store with a bulletin board. I have the right to
dictate what goes on there and what doesn't. I could arbitrarily say
that you can post anything you want to sell on it, but no postings
regarding private tutoring are allowed.


-- 
"The security of the Enterprise is of Paramount importance.


                    /\  /\               /\  /
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                       >>>>>>mue### [at] nawazorg<<<<<<
                                   anl

Post a reply to this message

Mueen Nawaz <m.n### [at] ieeeorg> wrote:
>         Generally, at least here in the US, freedoms like the freedom of speech
> are meant to be regarding the government - not private entities. It just
> means that the government cannot restrict it. If an ISP wants to, they
> can. If I run a physical structure where people debate stuff, I have the
> right to restrict the topics.

  Everybody seems to know that it's completely legal and not in violation
of any human rights that ISPs can freely choose how they filter content
and what part of the internet they will sell to who.

  Question: If this is indeed so, then why are the directives allowing this
being in the process of admission in the first place? What do they need the
directives for if the filtering is already legal and allowed?

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

somebody <x### [at] ycom> wrote:
> "scott" <sco### [at] scottcom> wrote in message news:49ed8c94@news.povray.org...

> > You are talking like there is some basic human right that you should have
> > access to every single website in existance?  Why on Earth should that be
> > the case?

> Agreed. As a sidenote, some piracy advocates claim that there's some basic
> human right that guarantees them access to every single bit of infomation
> out there. I call that the "entitlement mentality". There was a point not
> too long ago where creators were respected and it was a priviledge to be
> able to purchase and enjoy the fruits of their hard work and investment.
> Nowadays, creators and providers are regarded as greedy scumbags if they
> don't give you the heaven and the earth for free.

  Yeah, there's absolutely no difference between:

1) The claim that people should be given unhindered access to all free
information in the internet.

2) The claim that people should be given free access to all copyrighted
commercial material.

  These two things are the exact one and the same, and advocating one
advocates the other.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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scott wrote:
> I wasn't aware there was anything to prevent them doing that already...

In the USA, there are laws like your local telco has to service anyone who 
wants to pay the rate, for example. If you start censoring stuff, then 
you're responsible for the content you pass through.

I.e., if an ISP starts censoring porn, and little Jimmy finds porn the ISP 
missed, then the ISP can actually get in trouble for it.

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

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scott wrote:
 > Without using the example, I would just say that there is no
> reason why a company should have to do something just because it doesn't 
> cost them anything.

It would have to do things because they're a public carrier. I.e., it's the 
same sort of argument as "I don't see why my company has to sell stuff to 
black people."  Well, because the rest of society decided it's in society's 
best interest to prevent that sort of thing. I think it's in society's best 
interest to prevent companies providing the tubes from interfering with what 
flows over the tubes and charging discriminatory pricing on top of what the 
actual creators of the information provided.

It would be like the postal service saying "we're not going to carry 
packages from Amazon unless you pay extra for the postage." The postal 
service isn't adding any value to what you already paid the manufacturer for.

-- 
   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:
> In this context, information is a commodity, the very thing being sold. They
> can chose what to sell and what not to sell, or how to bundle them and what
> pricing levels they use.

The argument is not against people charging for the information. The 
argument is the ISP specifically blocking you from buying information 
without paying the ISP extra money to deliver it above and beyond what 
you're already paying for the ISP.

It's Sony making a TV that won't play NetFlix DVDs unless you stick a 
quarter in the slot when you put a NetFLix DVD in the DVD player. You 
already paid NetFlix, the studios, etc, and you already bought the TV from 
SOny. Why is it a good thing to pay more?

What happens when the ISP starts filtering out access to any web site 
critical of the ISP, or which reveals their lobbying information?

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

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:
> Why 
> should you be able to force companies to offer everything, if they don't 
> want to that's their choice.

It's not that they're "offering everything". They have a connection to the 
backbone, and that's what you're buying. Then they want to charge more based 
on what happens on networks they don't own.

If I want to read the ESPN sports network website, and my ISP filters 
packets coming from ESPN's website, and ESPN isn't on the same ISP, that's 
like your local post office refusing to deliver mail for products you bought 
online.

It wouldn't be so bad if there were lots of competition for ISPs, but there 
really isn't. It's not like going to a clothing store in a mall, where if 
they don't carry your size you go next door.

-- 
   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 11:04:39 +0100, Invisible wrote:

> And some newspapers seem to definitely only report information that
> makes their favoured political party look good, or the opposition look
> bad. Now I'm curios to know whether this is actually legal.

If they're privately held companies, they can do whatever they like.

For that matter, they can if they're publicly held companies, but if the 
shareholders don't like it, then they'll very likely not stay in business 
very long.

Jim

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scott wrote:
> The ISP business is open 
> and follows market demands, they will provide for whatever the customers 
> want.

Not in the USA.  Aren't most telecom companies state-run in Europe? Am I 
allowed to open a new telephone company in (say) Germany and dig up the road 
and all, running new wires to houses in new developments?

> The point is it *wouldn't* otherwise be available, the ISP is providing 
> you a service which you are paying for, if you don't pay for it you 
> don't get access to the information at all.

You're not paying for them to deliver the information. You're paying for 
them to stop blocking the delivery.

The USA already has regulations against discrimination of various types. I 
don't see enforcing this on common carriers as a bad thing.

If you don't want to be a common carrier, feel free to block various sites. 
However, you then become responsible for what you deliver, and you become 
susceptable to competition.

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

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:
> I never said they could, my argument is that an ISP shouldn't be forced 
> by law to provide access to the entire internet or nothing at all.  It 
> should be able to decide what it wants to provide.

Why? What benefit would that provide? Why is it good for anyone other than 
the owners of ISPs to be able to charge extra to let you access movie 
reviews or your hotmail account?

> likely to me that the "active filtering" could also be used to block 
> torrents, BBC iPlayer, YouTube, or other high-bandwidth content (this 
> would make more financial sense for the ISPs).

Blocking for technical reasons is one thing. Blocking because you can then 
charge more money to deliver content someone else has created that's popular 
is something else.

> I suspect the ISPs really want to change their eg $10/month plan into 
> two separate plans.  Where plan A is $5/month without access to (eg) any 
> streaming video or torrents, and then a plan B that is $20/month and has 
> access to everything. 

No. What they're talking about is allowing access to everything except 
things like ESPN sports, then charging extra for that. ESPN pushes this, 
because then they can refuse to deliver to the customers of ISPs where that 
ISP hasn't paid ESPN extra.  It's basically a form of "e-commerce" 
implemented as a heirarchy of groups charging people.

It's nothing to do with bandwidth.

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

Post a reply to this message

andrel wrote:
> 1) because that is how the internet started and has been run for almost
> it's entire existence. "I'll pass on you packages because I know someone
> else will pass on mine if and only if everybody does that".

	That doesn't make it a human right, nor do I know of a legal precedence
where something was argued with "Because that's how it's always been
done". Especially when we're only talking of a span of less than 50 years.

> We don't sell is valid, but I think Warp was more thinking along the
> lines of not selling and making sure nobody else can sell it. More like
> Coke buying all the countries main distributors, and forcing them not to
> transport Pepsi. Possibly legal in the US but definitely illegal in the EU.

	But from what I understand, that's not what is happening. If a single
entity owns all the ISPs and does this, I can see the problem (and it'd
be a monopoly issue). However, if you have multiple independent ISP's -
as long as they don't collude about what services not to provide, the
analogy doesn't work.

-- 
"The security of the Enterprise is of Paramount importance.


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

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
>   If an ISP started censoring all websites related to a political party,
> should they be allowed to do that? What if all the ISPs started blocking
> all political parties except one? Should they be allowed to do that?

	Is there a generic existing law against that?

	I believe in the US, if I had a bulletin board in my store, I'm legally
allowed to forbid a certain political party from posting notes onto it.

	Besides, now you're invoking slippery slopes. If there's already a law
against what you state, it doesn't nullify the general withholding of
services. It just outlaws a certain kind of withholding.

	It's the same thing about fair business practices. It doesn't sound
like this law would legalize unfair business (as enshrined by the law,
not by our notions). If an ISP violates it, it can be taken to court.
It's not the case that the laws are mutually exclusive.

	Perhaps I misunderstand what the law is stating. If it legalizes some
of these things, I can see your point. However, if it's a more generic
law, then don't assume things previously illegal are now legal.

-- 
"The security of the Enterprise is of Paramount importance.


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

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:
>>  Just because an ISP is providing a service for money does not mean they
>> can break the law.
> 
> I never said they could, my argument is that an ISP shouldn't be forced
> by law to provide access to the entire internet or nothing at all.  It
> should be able to decide what it wants to provide.

	In point of fact, some major ISP's here in the US have stopped
providing newsgroup access. While not blocking nntp, you now by default
suddenly don't have access unless you get it from some news server,
where you normally have to pay to get access.

	I just can't imagine that being illegal, or even wrong.


-- 
"The security of the Enterprise is of Paramount importance.


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

Post a reply to this message

andrel wrote:
> internet will adept to that. What happens if you add a connection to
> your neighbour that has another ISP? Will that be illegal because you
> now have access to sites your ISP does not want you to see?

	Actually, under typical TOS in the US, that _would_ be violating your
TOS. I'm sure somewhere in the TOS of my ISP, it says that I will not
share the Internet with other apartments. People do it all the time, but
in a legal sense, you're violating the contract.

	To answer your question: Other than the TOS issue, it won't be illegal
- apparently even with what I understand from the proposed law. If you
circumvent the filters set in place by _your_ ISP to get access to a
higher tier while paying for a lower one - that would definitely be bad.



-- 
"The security of the Enterprise is of Paramount importance.


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

Post a reply to this message

Invisible wrote:
> Right now, I'm wondering about newspapers. I mean, they very selectively 
> report only certain news stories. And some newspapers seem to definitely 
> only report information that makes their favoured political party look 
> good, or the opposition look bad. Now I'm curios to know whether this is 
> actually legal.

In the USA, yes, of course. Except newspapers aren't a monopoly. Nothing 
prevents you from buying all the newspapers you want. Not so with high-speed 
ISPs.

It's more akin to the government-run post office saying "If you subscribe to 
the New York Times, we'll charge you extra on all your stamps."

> (Of course, it's not the same thing as ISP censorship at all. Somebody 
> has to *write* the news, after all. And it can be very difficult indeed 
> to write in a way which is truly objective and unbaised. But some 
> publishers don't even attempt to be objective. Is that legal?)

Explicitly so, in the USA. But then, newspapers don't get to have laws that 
say they're the only ones allowed to provide the news.

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

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
>   Maybe I didn't express myself clearly enough. Is there something in the
> word "to block" that I'm missing and could cause different interpretations?
> Because I can't believe you are saying that your ISP is blocking access
> to your competitors' websites from its clients.

	I feel you're invoking a false dichotomy. If the law _explicitly_
states that you can do that, it's problematic. If the law just says you
can filter by content, I'm sure the ISP's are still required to follow
fair competition laws. However, if the ISP were to say "No access to
sites selling clothing", that's not unfair competition.

	Likewise, if I own a mall, I can simply declare that no clothing stores
are allowed.

	BTW, newspapers do it even more blatantly. They have the right to
reject any "letter to the editor". On numerous occasions, they've
refused to publish political ads by certain parties. It is, AFAIK,
completely legal for them to do so - if they're run by private entities.

>   Have you ever heard of the concept of fair commerce? Fair competition?
> Monopoly laws? Ring a bell?

	And so does the proposed law _explicitly_ state that monopolies will be
allowed? If not, then likely the ISP's still won't be allowed to do what
you're describing.

>   So you are saying that active censorship is perfectly fine from the
> point of view of basic human rights?

	The only time it is wrong is when you actively censor a means that is
considered a public good. So if there's a state park, I can't stop
anyone from saying whatever they want there. If I own a business,
though, I can put quite a lot of limits to free speech in it. Active
censorship over there _is_ allowed.

	The real issue is that online forums, etc, are not yet considered a
"public good". The laws quite reflect that: If I run a site, and someone
plots a murder via some messageboard on my site, I am usually legally
liable _unless_ I explicitly state that I don't monitor it and that all
comments are the responsibility of whoever posted them.

>>>  No, it's not like that. It's like your local newagent using technical
>>> measures to stop you from accessing competitor publications.
> 
>> "Sorry, we don't sell that publication" is a perfectly valid and legal 
>> phrase.
> 
>   You really like nitpicking, don't you? You do understand what I'm
> writing, but you are deliberately nitpicking, just for the sake of
> argument.

	Not at all. The assumption is that you're free to choose the ISP.

	Now in reality, there are few choices. To make your case (which as I
indicated, they may do in the years ahead), you have to establish that
it is either almost impossible to have enough ISP's for healthy
competition of services allowed, or you have to establish that because
of circumstances in the modern world, not having unfettered access to
the Internet will result in either a great deal of public harm (e.g.
getting way behind other nations) or a violation of an _existing_ right.
Currently, there are few legally defined rights that are related to the
Internet.


-- 
"The security of the Enterprise is of Paramount importance.


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

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
>   In this particular case it would cost the company money to implement the
> censorship. Letting all IP packets through without filtering costs them
> nothing extra.

	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.

>>  That is not censorship, that is just business.
> 
>   Also business has to obey the law.

	Yes, but it's not contradictory to have this law and still require
businesses to obey the previous laws.

-- 
"The security of the Enterprise is of Paramount importance.


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

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:
>> - Package 1 only allows you to access item A.
>> - Package 2 only allows you to access item B.
>> - Package 3 only allows you to access item C.
>> - Package 4 only allows you to access items A and B.
>> - Package 5 allows you to access items A, B and D, but not C.
>> ...
>>
>> Of course, these are stupid, stupid choices, but hey, it'll allow ISPs
>> to charge you way more money for exactly the same thing, which can
>> only be good, right? (For the ISPs, that is.)
> 
> That will only happen if all ISPs work together to fix the prices, which
> is strictly illegal under EU law.  And even if it did happen, there

	I suspect it's illegal only if they collude.

	Don't _expect_ that the market will always fix this naturally. Take
text messaging on cell phones. It is *ridiculously* expensive. Yet no
mainstream provider (at least in the US) has decided to compete by
reducing prices. Does this mean they're colluding? No.

-- 
"The security of the Enterprise is of Paramount importance.


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

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
>> Questions such as, "Since when is Internet service a human right?"
> 
>   Great, another nitpicker.
> 
>   - "Hey, country X does not allow women to express their opinion on the
> internet. This is a violation of human rights!"
>   - "Since when is internet access a human right?"

	That's irrelevant (and at least I didn't invoke it) - what's relevant
is what is considered a human right by the EU.

>   - "Hey, the government is allowing the press to censor political parties.
> This is a violation of basic human rights!"
>   - "Since when is access to paper and ink a human right?"

	Your whole argument is that this case is problematic because it costs
the ISP's nothing extra to provide everything, and so if they start
limiting services, they are actively blocking them. You just haven't
established that there is something legally wrong with that. You've
given some draconian what if scenarios, but some of them are already
protected by existing laws.

	If you just want to say that "This sucks", then I agree with you.<G> If
you want to argue that the Internet is a public good, I can see a case,
but it's not yet obvious.


-- 
"The security of the Enterprise is of Paramount importance.


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

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scott wrote:
> Yes, but when it costs a company money to provide the information, IMO 
> the company should not be forced to provide everything in existence for 
> a fixed price.

Nobody is arguing against fee-for-=bandwidth. But if it costs the same to 
provide web pages about lolcats as it does to provide web pages about 
football scores, why should the ISP make more money from providing web pages 
about football scores?

> ISP wants to charge more for bittorrent than http, or more to access BBC 
> iPlayer because it generates 10x the bandwidth, 

But it doesn't. It costs exactly the same dollars per megabyte transferred. 
That's the point.

Would it be a good idea to say it's alright to refuse to put blacks or gays 
or whatever in your apartment complex, because you can't after all house 
everybody, so you might as well discriminate based on skin color?

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

Post a reply to this message

Invisible wrote:
> ...until ISPs start deciding to charge content producers in order to 
> allow access to their content.

And vice versa. For a while, ESPN was refusing to serve content to Time 
Warner because TW wasn't paying ESPN extra.

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

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:
> That will only happen if all ISPs work together to fix the prices, which 
> is strictly illegal under EU law. 

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

Five mega companies aren't a whole lot of choice. Not like newspapers, which 
I can get from anywhere in the country and probably the world.

> As I said, there would then be an irresistable opportunity for some 
> company to make a shed-load of profit.

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

> 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?

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

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:
> This directive is totally about the ISPs 
> wanting to make more money by blocking traffic-heavy data like torrents, 
> YouTube videos, BBC iPlayer etc.

Where did you see this?  You don't need to block specific sites in order to 
regulate bandwidth, so I suspect you're chasing a straw-man here.

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

Post a reply to this message

Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
> If they're privately held companies, they can do whatever they like.

  That's certainly not true in the general case. There are tons of laws
governing what private companies can and cannot do, even with their own
property. Monopoly law is just one example.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

Mueen Nawaz <m.n### [at] ieeeorg> wrote:
> Warp wrote:
> >   If an ISP started censoring all websites related to a political party,
> > should they be allowed to do that? What if all the ISPs started blocking
> > all political parties except one? Should they be allowed to do that?

>         Is there a generic existing law against that?

  How about the constitution? At least here.

  There's no valid reason (eg. technical or monetary) for an ISP to block
some political party, and thus such an action would be unconstitutional.

  (OTOH I understand that constitutional law works differently in the US.)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

Mueen Nawaz <m.n### [at] ieeeorg> wrote:
> Warp wrote:
> >   In this particular case it would cost the company money to implement the
> > censorship. Letting all IP packets through without filtering costs them
> > nothing extra.

>         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.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

Mueen Nawaz wrote:
> 	I don't like what the ISP's may be planning, but I can't find a good
> legal or constitutional argument against it

Look under "common carrier". If you start filtering, then you're responsible 
for what you pass on. If you decide to filter bittorrent because it might be 
copyright violation, you become responsible for that violation. If you 
filter content but don't block child porn,  you become responsible for 
distributing child porn if you miss any. This is how the phone company 
avoids being convicted of conspiracy when two drug dealers make a deal over 
the phone.

Freedom from such responsibility (in the US at least) comes with some rules, 
like being required to offer everyone the same service for the same price, 
and the responsibility *not* to filter things.

> 	It's like if I own a store with a bulletin board. I have the right to
> dictate what goes on there and what doesn't. I could arbitrarily say
> that you can post anything you want to sell on it, but no postings
> regarding private tutoring are allowed.

Yes. But then if someone posts up naked children, you are *required* to take 
it down, on the grounds that you're policing the content to start with.

This is how google gets away with letting you search illegal content.

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

Post a reply to this message

Mueen Nawaz 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.

I've seen studies showing it's cheaper to add more bandwidth than filtering.

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

Post a reply to this message

Mueen Nawaz <m.n### [at] ieeeorg> wrote:
> You just haven't
> established that there is something legally wrong with that.

  So why are the directives being considered, again?

  If the practice is completely legal and allowed, what do we need the
directives for? Aren't they kind of obsolete?

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

On Tue, 21 Apr 2009 12:22:02 -0400, Warp wrote:

> Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
>> If they're privately held companies, they can do whatever they like.
> 
>   That's certainly not true in the general case. There are tons of laws
> governing what private companies can and cannot do, even with their own
> property. Monopoly law is just one example.

Sure, I was exaggerating for effect; they can, however, report the news 
that they feel is important, and they can do so in a biased way if they 
so desire.

There was an interesting proposal here recently to allow the newspapers 
to choose to take federal funding.  One of the caveats of the proposal 
was that they could then no longer endorse political candidates.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

On Tue, 21 Apr 2009 10:59:13 +0200, scott wrote:

> That will only happen if all ISPs work together to fix the prices, which
> is strictly illegal under EU law.

Price fixing is illegal in the US as well.  But just because something's 
illegal doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
> On Tue, 21 Apr 2009 12:22:02 -0400, Warp wrote:

> > Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
> >> If they're privately held companies, they can do whatever they like.
> > 
> >   That's certainly not true in the general case. There are tons of laws
> > governing what private companies can and cannot do, even with their own
> > property. Monopoly law is just one example.

> Sure, I was exaggerating for effect; they can, however, report the news 
> that they feel is important, and they can do so in a biased way if they 
> so desire.

  Well, there are also journalism ethics for unbiased reporting...

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

On Tue, 21 Apr 2009 13:10:25 -0400, Warp wrote:

> Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
>> On Tue, 21 Apr 2009 12:22:02 -0400, Warp wrote:
> 
>> > Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
>> >> If they're privately held companies, they can do whatever they like.
>> > 
>> >   That's certainly not true in the general case. There are tons of
>> >   laws
>> > governing what private companies can and cannot do, even with their
>> > own property. Monopoly law is just one example.
> 
>> Sure, I was exaggerating for effect; they can, however, report the news
>> that they feel is important, and they can do so in a biased way if they
>> so desire.
> 
>   Well, there are also journalism ethics for unbiased reporting...

Sure, but they often aren't followed or the articles are intended to be 
editorials.  The problem is that a lot of news media (not just print 
news) is *all* heavily editorialized.

This is my biggest beef with the news media in general - it tends to be 
overly editorialized, to the point of the writer/producer telling people 
what to think and why to think it.

This type of editorialization in mainstream media tends to lead to a 
populace that doesn't and often can't think for itself.  Which I think is 
a bad place for a society to be.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

"Darren New" <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote in message
news:49ede9ef$1@news.povray.org...
> somebody wrote:

> > In this context, information is a commodity, the very thing being sold.
They
> > can chose what to sell and what not to sell, or how to bundle them and
what
> > pricing levels they use.

> The argument is not against people charging for the information. The
> argument is the ISP specifically blocking you from buying information
> without paying the ISP extra money to deliver it above and beyond what
> you're already paying for the ISP.
>
> It's Sony making a TV that won't play NetFlix DVDs unless you stick a
> quarter in the slot when you put a NetFLix DVD in the DVD player. You
> already paid NetFlix, the studios, etc, and you already bought the TV from
> SOny. Why is it a good thing to pay more?

If you don't like it, don't buy the Sony TV. 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.

> What happens when the ISP starts filtering out access to any web site
> critical of the ISP, or which reveals their lobbying information?

Newspapers already have editors in place to filter out unwanted content. So
do broadcasters.

Post a reply to this message

"Warp" <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote in message
news:49ede41c@news.povray.org...
> somebody <x### [at] ycom> wrote:
> > "scott" <sco### [at] scottcom> wrote in message
news:49ed8c94@news.povray.org...

> > > You are talking like there is some basic human right that you should
have
> > > access to every single website in existance?  Why on Earth should that
be
> > > the case?

> > Agreed. As a sidenote, some piracy advocates claim that there's some
basic
> > human right that guarantees them access to every single bit of
infomation
> > out there. I call that the "entitlement mentality". There was a point
not
> > too long ago where creators were respected and it was a priviledge to be
> > able to purchase and enjoy the fruits of their hard work and investment.
> > Nowadays, creators and providers are regarded as greedy scumbags if they
> > don't give you the heaven and the earth for free.

>   Yeah, there's absolutely no difference between:

There is quite a bit of difference, but there are some similarities.

> 1) The claim that people should be given unhindered access to all free
> information

Nothing is free. Bits and bytes cost money to push around.

>  in the internet.
>
> 2) The claim that people should be given free access to all copyrighted
> commercial material.
>
>   These two things are the exact one and the same, and advocating one
> advocates the other.

You know I didn't say that, but I am sure you can recognize the similar
mentality.

Post a reply to this message

somebody <x### [at] ycom> wrote:
> If you don't like it, don't buy the Sony TV. 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.

  Apple has the right to do whatever they want with their own iPods,
don't they? After all, they fully own all possible rights to everything
related to iPods, and Apple is a privately owned company. Nobody has the
right to go and tell Apple what they can or cannot do with their own
products, right?

  For example, if Apple wants to implement DRM in the music they sell
online so that they will only play on Apple's own iPods, they have the
full right to do so, don't they? They own the rights to sell the music,
and they own the rights to their iPods. What rights does anyone else have
to go and tell Apple that they can't do that? After all, if you don't like
it, you can go and buy some other mp3 player.

  Well, the European Union disagreed with this view and told Apple to
lift their DRM from iPod.

  So it's not always that simple, you see?

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

somebody <x### [at] ycom> wrote:
> > 1) The claim that people should be given unhindered access to all free
> > information

> Nothing is free. Bits and bytes cost money to push around.

  I used "free" as in "you can read this article I wrote without paying
me money" (as opposed to eg. "if you want to listen to this piece of
music, you'll have to pay me money").

  I hate the English word "free". It has so many differing meanings that
it's almost impossible to use in an unambiguous way.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

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?

> 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. It's a free market, after all. If Dell 
doesn't want to sell Windows, they don't have to, so there's no reason not 
to have a law preventing Microsoft from making whatever deal with Dell they 
want?

> Newspapers already have editors in place to filter out unwanted content. So
> do broadcasters.

Yep. That's different tho, for reasons I already explained.

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

Post a reply to this message

On 21-4-2009 17:52, Darren New wrote:
> scott wrote:
>> The ISP business is open and follows market demands, they will provide 
>> for whatever the customers want.
> 
> Not in the USA.  Aren't most telecom companies state-run in Europe? Am I 
> allowed to open a new telephone company in (say) Germany and dig up the 
> road and all, running new wires to houses in new developments?

The way that is handled here is that the monopolist company is split in 
one that does the hardware and one that uses that hardware. You can 
start a telephone or gas or electricity company and the company that 
does the hardware has to provide you with the same service for the same 
price as they do for their former monopoly part. In most cases the only 
thing that changes when you change provider is that the header of the 
invoice changes. And the price may differ, because that is the whole 
point. With electricity and perhaps also gas (I am not handling those 
invoices) you can even change from regular to green energy without any 
physical change at your house.
I hope that is more or less understandable ;)

Needless to say that quite often it does not work as expected.

Post a reply to this message

On 21-4-2009 19:10, Warp wrote:
> Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
>> On Tue, 21 Apr 2009 12:22:02 -0400, Warp wrote:
> 
>>> Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
>>>> If they're privately held companies, they can do whatever they like.
>>>   That's certainly not true in the general case. There are tons of laws
>>> governing what private companies can and cannot do, even with their own
>>> property. Monopoly law is just one example.
> 
>> Sure, I was exaggerating for effect; they can, however, report the news 
>> that they feel is important, and they can do so in a biased way if they 
>> so desire.
> 
>   Well, there are also journalism ethics for unbiased reporting...
> 

Do we have Italians in this NG?

Post a reply to this message

On 21-4-2009 17:59, Mueen Nawaz wrote:
> andrel wrote:
>> internet will adept to that. What happens if you add a connection to
>> your neighbour that has another ISP? Will that be illegal because you
>> now have access to sites your ISP does not want you to see?
> 
> 	Actually, under typical TOS in the US, that _would_ be violating your
> TOS. I'm sure somewhere in the TOS of my ISP, it says that I will not
> share the Internet with other apartments. People do it all the time, but
> in a legal sense, you're violating the contract.
> 
> 	To answer your question: Other than the TOS issue, it won't be illegal
> - apparently even with what I understand from the proposed law. If you
> circumvent the filters set in place by _your_ ISP to get access to a
> higher tier while paying for a lower one - that would definitely be bad.

Perhaps I should have stressed the 'because', I know there are other 
reasons. OTOH the issue indeed won't arise as there will be plenty of 
other more 'innocent' reasons to forbid it for the end user. For e.g. 
universities (and big international firms) it could still be an issue as 
they they may provide large bandwidth connections between them.

Post a reply to this message

andrel wrote:
> On 21-4-2009 17:52, Darren New wrote:
>> scott wrote:
>>> The ISP business is open and follows market demands, they will 
>>> provide for whatever the customers want.
>>
>> Not in the USA.  Aren't most telecom companies state-run in Europe? Am 
>> I allowed to open a new telephone company in (say) Germany and dig up 
>> the road and all, running new wires to houses in new developments?
> 
> The way that is handled here 

Where is "here"?

> I hope that is more or less understandable ;)

I used to work for the company that provided the shared services to all the 
local phone companies that worked this way in the USA (i.e., I worked for 
Bellcore). It makes perfect sense.

And if an ISP could come in that could scoop up TW's customers that wanted 
unrestricted access and provide it at a lower price than TW's customers 
could get it, I'd agree that it's not a big problem. However, I suspect this 
new ISP would wind up paying for the cost of the filtering hardware anyway, 
since I'm sure TW would include that as "part of the price".  (TW being Time 
Warner, my personal local monopoly.)

I'd still ask why anyone thinks allowing this behavior is a good idea for 
the general public.

> Needless to say that quite often it does not work as expected.

Tell me about it. :-)

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

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
>   Everybody seems to know that it's completely legal and not in violation
> of any human rights that ISPs can freely choose how they filter content
> and what part of the internet they will sell to who.
> 
>   Question: If this is indeed so, then why are the directives allowing this
> being in the process of admission in the first place? What do they need the
> directives for if the filtering is already legal and allowed?

	Valid question - one that I don't have the answer for. I wondered the
same thing when net neutrality was debated in the US. A cursory reading
shows that if ISP's are considered telecommunications companies (which I
think they currently aren't), then they're not allowed to discriminate.

	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 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.

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


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

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> Mueen Nawaz wrote:
>>     I don't like what the ISP's may be planning, but I can't find a good
>> legal or constitutional argument against it
> 
> Look under "common carrier". If you start filtering, then you're

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_neutrality_in_the_United_States

"Cable modem Internet access has always been categorized under U.S. law
as an information service, and not a telecommunications service, and
thus has not been subject to common carrier regulations"

Citation not provided, and in any case, WINAL.


>>     It's like if I own a store with a bulletin board. I have the right to
>> dictate what goes on there and what doesn't. I could arbitrarily say
>> that you can post anything you want to sell on it, but no postings
>> regarding private tutoring are allowed.
> 
> Yes. But then if someone posts up naked children, you are *required* to
> take it down, on the grounds that you're policing the content to start
> with.

	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.

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


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

Post a reply to this message

"Warp" <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote in message
news:49ee0a2d@news.povray.org...

>   For example, if Apple wants to implement DRM in the music they sell
> online so that they will only play on Apple's own iPods, they have the
> full right to do so, don't they? They own the rights to sell the music,
> and they own the rights to their iPods. What rights does anyone else have
> to go and tell Apple that they can't do that? After all, if you don't like
> it, you can go and buy some other mp3 player.
>
>   Well, the European Union disagreed with this view and told Apple to
> lift their DRM from iPod.
>
>   So it's not always that simple, you see?

Nothing is simple. In this case, the complex but obvious observation is that
EU is not infallible.

Post a reply to this message

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...

-- 
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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