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North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical Re: State Super-DMCA Too True
In a message written on Sat, Mar 29, 2003 at 11:22:11PM -0600, Jack Bates wrote:
> Not true. An ISP can choose to allow NAT and wireless or not allow it.
> This is the ISPs choice. The law is designed to protect the ISPs rights
> from existing technology so that the ISP can bill appropriately
> according to what service is being used. This does not mean that every
> ISP will not allow NAT.
I find this argument interesting, because a lot of people seem to
share your feeling that the ISP can, in the terms of service, allow
or disallow specific uses.
I submit at this point in time they can, but it would be amazingly
stupid for them to do that. As much as ISP's don't want it admit
it an internet connection is being treated more and more like a
utility. Drop into that mix that many consumers who can get DSL
or Cable Modems only have a single ISP to buy from and it looks
even more like a utility.
Now, does the electric company tell you what you can and can't plug
in? Do they tell you that you can only use 120v devices, or 220v
devices? No, they simply bill you for what you use.
Does the water company tell you that you can't drink the water?
Share it with a stranger that stops by? Bill you based on how many
sinks and showers you have? No, they simply bill you for what you
use.
Does the phone company tell you how many phones you can have? Do
they prevent you from using a cordless phone, or loaning that
cordless phone to your neighbor? No, they simply bill you for what
you use.
The last one is an interesting case. The phone company used to
lease you the phones (and you didn't have a choice). They kept
tally of every connection, required you to use them to run all the
wires. They screamed for years that if the system was run any
other way it would all fall apart. Well, the people revolted,
broke up AT&T, and put in a pile of government regulation to allow
people to plug up (at least from a phone point of view) pretty much
anything.
If ISP's keep imposing these overly restrictive terms of service
eventually the people will revolt. The government will come in
and make a huge mess of the industry, but probably "fix" things
from the consumer point of view. ISP's would be wise to look at
what the other utilities do, and make their service be the dropping
off of an Ethernet port on a billing device (eg, meter) and simply
bill per bit.
In the end, I think users would be more happy (plug up whatever
you want, however you want, we don't care!), and I think the ISP's
would make more money. First, more people would plug up more stuff.
Second, they would make revenue off things they don't today. They
outlaw servers because they can't make money on them with $49.95
a month pricing. Well, if you bill by the bit the guy who runs a
server can pay $50 in usage charges. He has his server, the ISP
has the money to scale their network to support it. We call this
a win-win situation. Third, they could lower the entry point price
for people with low needs. $25 could get you DSL with 1G a month
for grandma and her e-mail, while $100 could get you DSL with 8G
a month for a gamer. The grandma who won't pay $50 today might
pay $25.
So, while the ISP's may not be doing anything illegal, and in fact
may be having success in passing laws to make what they seem to
want to do even easier, they are being extremely short sighted and
stupid. They may get a couple of good years out of this run, but
eventually the people will be fed up, and fed up people get the
government involved, and the government will fix it in it's usual
bull-in-a-china-shop way, which will be very bad for the ISP, and
hopefully only slightly bad for the consumer.
--
Leo Bicknell - [email protected] - CCIE 3440
PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/
Read TMBG List - [email protected], www.tmbg.org
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