[Colchester] Net Neutrality - It's the end of the world as we know it

[Stelios Bounanos]

>>>>> On Thu, 12 Jun 2008 12:22:26 +0100, Wayland Sothcott <wayland at sothcott.co.uk> said:

> Hello
> Richard Branson wants to turn the Internet into Virgin TV.

AFAIK NTL/Telewest license the name but are not actually part of Virgin.

> If you think about what we have with the Internet it's pretty mind 
> blowing from a freedom point of view. You can visit ANY website in the 
> whole world and you can TCP link to ANY device on the Internet and 
> anyone one can link to your server running at home. The tools exists to 
> deny addresses or address ranges but these are fairly blunt and not 
> generally used much. So far everyones traffic has been free to go where 
> it wants, no questions asked. Having run an ISP, I know how easy it 
> would have been to block a bunch of ad hosting sites using a HOSTS file 
> and maybe a few sites I felt were a bit sick, and maybe the sites of my 
> competition and maybe some sites that just annoyed me. Currently ISPs 
> don't do this, but they are thinking about it. We had a letter from the 
> Government DTI suggesting we as an ISP join some net nanny service to 
> help save children from paedos, I chucked it in the bin.

It's refreshing to hear of an ISP that doesn't comply with these
ridiculous demands/suggestions. However, I wish you would have written
to tell them why their letter went in the bin.

> IPv6 vastly increases the address range. In future your thumbscan could 
> form part of your IP address. The routers all set to route IPv6 will 
> effectively mean they will not route traffic in a neutral manor. They 
> will be able to give preferential treatment to some companies and 
> perhaps to some individuals and certainly some servers.

Hmm, I don't think there are enough bits in an IPv6 address to store a
thumbscan. Perhaps the checksum of one? For example, you could require
that ethernet MAC addresses be used as EUIDs and then demand biometric
ID from people buying computers or NICs! Maybe just a little too
dystopian.

In any case, all these routing decisions are unlikely to be practical,
unless politicians can successfully legislate a faster speed of light as
well.

> IPv6 is a tool that can be used in different ways, it's not bad in itself.

> I am in favour of bandwidth management because bandwidth can be abused 
> just as spam is an abuse of the freedom of email. However email is 
> getting to the stage where some spam is allowed and some personal email 
> is not. If you have a hotmail account you will  notice you simply get a 
> higher class of spam, football tickets and Tescos vouchers rather than 
> viagra and Nigerians.

> For our safety and continued enjoyment of the Internet sites may be 
> blocked or slowed down. You might chose a VoIP provider but find it 
> works very badly with your ISP. This is the case with Internet over 
> mobile phones. They don't want you to install VoIP on your phone and use 
> that to make calls, so they block it. I am sure very smart people can 
> get round this but the basic result is that most can't use their choice 
> of VoIP on a mobile.

Yes, mobile telcos like their walled gardens and will put all sorts of
arbitrary obstacles in the way of anything that might loosen their hold
on their customers and erode their profits.

OTOH, they may also need to reduce demand for bandwidth, as they have
paid vast sums of money for spectrum and cannot afford to build the
infrastructure that would be needed to make it available cheaply.

Some ISPs, especially in the US, are themselves telcos and traditionally
these people are used to having full control of their networks. So I'm
not surprised that they have little to no interest in maintaining an
end-to-end architecture on the Internet.

> Jacqui Smith the Home Secretary said that she would have all paedophiles 
> register their email addresses with the police who would then tell all 
> the social networking sites to block these people. Technically that's 
> the most unworkable idea I have heard. However imagine if all IPv6 
> traffic carried your thumb print, ISP's could block that thumb printed 
> traffic from particular servers. Yes you could use someone elses print 
> and people probably will. The battle between those seeking access and 
> those blocking access could get very complicated and the ordinary people 
> would suffer, just as they do at airports.

> They always tell us this stuff is good and for the children and to fight 
> terror, the results speak for themselves. I think we should look into 
> this Net Neutrality stuff and write letters to our MP's, except that 
> Newmark never replies.

Apart from writing to your MP, you might also consider supporting the
ORG, whose goals seem to be aligned with your interests:

  http://www.openrightsgroup.org/

> Here are a couple of links that maybe helpful:

> This is a good explanation: 
> http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=AA5ZR_jxdXU&feature=related
> This one is nice to watch: 
> http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=AA5ZR_jxdXU&feature=related
> What Paul Watson says: http://www.infowars.com/?p=2640
> Also I have recorded the Alex Jones radio show, skip to 3:00 hour, sorry 
> it's so big I do not have an editing tool: 
> http://www.sothcott.co.uk/lug/20080612_Thu_Alex.mp3


> Let me know what you think.

I think we should oppose ludicrous, misguided legislation that forces
ISPs to snoop on their customers to (supposedly) save the children from
paedophiles, shield sensitive minds from violence, protect the public
from terrorists, and the content industries from pirates, and who knows
what else.

We should also reward ISPs that do not invade their customers' privacy
and/or make gratuitous changes to their network traffic. In particular,
we must avoid a market where ISPs are forced to sign up with companies
like Phorm in order to remain competitive.

So, situations where ISPs are either legally obliged to do these things,
or where they cannot afford not to because everyone else is doing it.


Stelios.