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North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical Re: Rescheduled: P2P file sharing national security and personalsecurity risks
On Mon, 16 Jun 2003, Peter Galbavy wrote: > By trying to get around this and requiring soft targets, such as > under-represented (OK - under-lobbied to be accurate) industry segments like > ISPs, to do this work 'unpaid' is a way of making the politicians look > competent and make any self-policed industry look bad when something is > missed or goes wrong. Except this is not "self-policing." ISPs are not being asked to police what ISPs do. For the most part ISPs don't attack their customer's (or anyone else's) computers. Remember, the traffic generally flows THROUGH the ISP's network, it doesn't come FROM the ISP. ISPs are being asked to control what their customers can do. Yet another analogy, its a bit like asking grocery stores to "self-police" their customer's eating habits. Should grocery stores be responsible that the public only buys healthy food or holding the grocery store liable for the hospital bills when customers buy junk food. ISPs generally exert even less control over their customers than a grocery store, and don't have double coupons. Most ISPs don't police (or self-police) their customers' use of the Internet. Like a grocery store, if a customer is harassing other customers, the grocery store may ask them not to come back. But generally the customer just moves on to another grocery store. Its up to the police to arrest people engaged in criminal activity.
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