| Loss of Common Carrier Status COX should loose their common carrier status if this continues. If they switch to playing police then by definition they loose their common carrier status. This then opens them to civil lawsuits for damages. All it will take if for one person with who likes to sue (And an attorney who likes to make money) to make it real painful for COX.
Cox should be a middle man and no more. The "management" of their network is limited solely to the bits flowing over it and not to the content. The post office is not allowed to cut off your mail becuase some company does not like that your mailing out copyrighted content. It is up to the copyright holder to use the legal system to enforce it's copyright. The only way your mail can be cut off is if the court tells them to.
Many people forget that in order to be protected from lawsuits COX needs to be an independant common carrier. This means they need to be blind to the content. The phone company cannot shut off your phone service because you sing happy birthday to your family too many times (The tune is copyrighted). If they were to do this they would loose their common carrier status as a neutral third party.
This is not a matter of COX responding to overuse of their network, but a matter of them taking action based on the alleged complaint of third party. By doing this they are no longer a neutral third party. This is grounds for nullifaction of their status as a common carrier. Once that is gone, the first person to be wrongly cut off can sue COX for damages that arrise from the loss of their service.
Filtering will only result in more encrypted data. Decrypting data is a violation of privacy laws. You can't open someone's mail to check to make sure the letter is legal. All the xxAA's of the world will do is push seeding sites offshore to sites that do not respond to copyright violations. These sites will then host fully encrypted content to select users. The xxAA's cannot violate the law (i.e. decrypt content) to prove their side. Only the cops with a suponea can do this in the civilian market. (Military, NSA, CIA, etc. could care less what tv show you are watching). |
