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

[Todd Walton]

Now what did I go and do that for?  Just as soon as I hit send I
thought, "Nobody's going to read that long thing."  I know I often
skip long posts.

Release early, release often.  Or something like that.

-todd



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
>