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

[Brandon Griffis]

I thought this conversation was being discontinued?  I'm fine with going on,
but it seemed that others had grown tired of it.  Perhaps it should be taken
off list if you'd like to continue?  I just don't want to disturb others
going on about the how neither over-regulation nor laissez-fair work well.

-B

On 7/30/07, Todd Walton <tdwalton at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> 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
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