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 KrKHeavy Artillery For The Little GuyPremium
join:2000-01-17
Tulsa, OK
 ·AT&T DSL Service
| reply to fAcEtIOUs
Re: Loss of Safe Harbor = end to Internet said by fAcEtIOUs:For 95% of the users, they will notice no change at all. Only those pushing the envelope or always looking to get something for nothing will be inconvenienced. I disagree. Perhaps when it comes to illegal activities, true. But when it comes to offending someone, or, annoying a Corporation by posting something they view as negative, you'll find the pool of prospective "victims" grows a lot.
The problem is that ISP's, if they can be held liable, will have to try to preempt such activity. IE they won't be able to afford to "wait" until a user does something wrong, they will have to take steps to try and block and prevent access to anything deemed illegal/offensive/improper etc
This would affect everyone, including the 100% perfect legal straight laced types.
It would be a disaster.
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"Regulatory capitalism is when companies invest in lawyers, lobbyists, and politicians, instead of plant, people, and customer service." - former FCC Chairman William Kennard (A real FCC Chairman, unlike the current Corporate Spokesperson in the job!) | |
 swhx7Premium
join:2006-07-23
Elbonia | You are correct. This has always been the sound basis of the "common carrier" principle.
The "common carrier" principle started at least as early as railroad law in the 19th century U.S.. The deal was that the carrier would lack the right to police what comes and goes (except as necessary to run the service), and in exchange they would not be held liable for contraband or criminals, etc.. Later it was applied to telephone companies. It's obviously a good rule for ISPs for reasons you mention.
If this ISP does end up having to implement and filtering (after any appeals, etc.), the practicalities of it are going to kick them in the be a problem. They'll first have to run *all* the traffic, gigabytes per second, thru some device without slowing all the subscribers' connections unacceptably. Then they have to avoid false positives (which would mean lawsuits in USA) and try to catch a good percentage of offenders. The latter depends on the capabilities of the Audible Magic which frankly seems a bit dubious to me.
And the whole thing will be defeated by encryption. Or are they going to ban VPNs, SSL, SSH, etc.?
The only good news is it's only one ISP for now, and soon, hopefully, the courts will see that this is the wrong approach. | |
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