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North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical Re: FBI tells the public to call their ISP for help
On Wed, 14 Jun 2007, John Levine wrote: But ISPs are not wholly without responsibility. If one of your customers reloaded Windows from CD and then needed to download all of the patches, do you provide a way for them to do it without getting re-wormed before the download is done? Windows patches and updates are copyrighted intellectual property of Microsoft, and can not be re-distributed without written permission of Microsoft. Microsoft currently does not have an authorized way for general public ISPs to redistribute Microsoft updates except by a connection to the Internet. Institutional licenses, such as available for universities, are not licensed to ISPs. Since many Microsoft patches are only legally available via the Internet, and an ISP can not predict which servers Microsoft will use to distribute Microsoft patches, ISPs must enable essentially full Internet access which includes access for most worms. I have been down this road several times with Microsoft legal. And if an ISP wants to obey the law, there isn't a good answer for ISPs. If the ISP says to hell with the law, there are several technical options for redistributing Microsoft updates. If Microsoft changed its licensing policies for ISPs, there are several technical options for redistributing Microsoft updates.
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