[Cialug] OT: Deep packet inspection meets 'Net neutrality, CALEA

[Todd Walton]

On 7/28/07, Brandon Griffis <brandongriffis at gmail.com> wrote:
> local/smaller stores.  Walmart comes in, undercuts everyone and takes a loss
> at that store for 5-8 years.  Then when all the other businesses go backrupt
> they jack up their prices and in many cases destroy the town.

Indianola has one single general department store, and that's
Wal-Mart.  And yet the prices I find there are just the same as in Des
Moines.

But whatever.  I've argued this a thousand other times and this is
probably not the place for a thousand and one.

> Iowa is actually a great example of government doing a good job with
> utilities.  The state having laid quite a lot of the fiber that is used.

Government here *has* laid a lot of fiber.  Can't really argue with that.

> Also I would say that the government breaking up the bell company did quite
> a lot for moving tech forward.  I certainly like no longer having to "rent"
> my corded telephone.

The government was slapping a kludge onto a problem they had created
in the first place.

> by "types" I mean similar functions.  I mean it as generally and as open to
> interpretation as possible.

But that's my point.  Regulations open to interpretation are no
regulations at all.  They are the bane of civilized society, and this
has been recognized in explicit form since at least the time of
Hammurabi.

You can't just write laws for some vague notion of the way things
ought to be and then find your lawbreakers *after* the fact.  There is
a notion of justice in this country that it should apply equally to
all.  You can't apply a law equally if it's only after the supposed
crime that you make the decision of how it applies.

In the case of the Internet we've come from multiple protocols to The
Web to Rule Them All, and now we're headed back again with BitTorrent,
streaming video and audio, RSS feeds, and so on.  We have news sites
that are blogs and blogs that are news sites.  There are product sites
and sites about products and sites that advertise products.  There are
sites that stream video and sites that host files, sites that have web
pages of content and sites that serve that content through web
services.

If our government tells ISPs they can't differentiate traffics of the
same "type" or "function" the world will not end.  But this is what
*will* happen.  ISPs will feel like they've been given a pass to
differentiate between non-similar "types" or "functions" and they'll
start doing so.  It'll become widespread and we'll have only niche
market ISPs that advertise that they don't do that.

There'll be lawsuits.  Customers will charge companies with slowing
down their access to a site that's obviously of the same "type" as
another.  It'll be left to the judge to decide if they really are
similar "types".  In the next four or five years, maybe less, it'll
all be hashed out and everyone will "know" what type of traffic such
and such is because it will fit into a neat little pigeonhole that
ISPs, judges, and consumers have created.

Any new protocol or service or site will be created to fit the market,
which is to say it will be pigeonholed.  You have to help consumers
understand what your product is and you have to have a reasonable
expectation of how your service or the like is going to be handled by
your customers' ISPs.  And so you lose some of the creativity and
innovation that have so far made the Internet so empowering.

You want government to type network traffic and I think that's best
left to the consumers of that traffic to decide what it means to them.
 This isn't brain surgery.  Nobody's going to die if there are
casualties who get a fuzzy connection on their VoIP phone.  If people
are really pissed about this let them take it to the courts and hash
it out on a contract by contract basis.

What you look for in an Internet provider is just perhaps not what I'm
looking for.

> Contract between who?

The customer and the provider, of course.

> And who's to say that a contract will be acceptable to all sides?

Those who signed on the dotted line, of course.  That's what accepting
a contract means.

-todd