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North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical Re: How to Handle ISPs Who Turn a Blind Eye to Criminal Activity?
On Sat, 13 Oct 2007, J. Oquendo wrote: Personally, if I were a business owner, I would attempt my best to keep my networks in order and ensure that traffic being sent *from* my network to the world wasn't tainted in any shape form or fashion. This is basically the clause for terminating service which may "damage the reputation" that several bloggers found objectionable last week in some ISP's terms of service. You can propose many provocative statements, groups which murder unborn children, engage in illegal drug trafficking, corrupting the morals of youth, and so on. As I said before, I expect next month some group will be protesting that an evil ISP blocked their activities. If you want to turn the Internet into a broadcaster style environment, where only content the network owner considers acceptable to their reputation is allowed, that's probably not the Internet anymore. Just because a particular group uses an ISP to transmit something doesn't mean the ISP approves of the activities of that group or its content. In the UK, ISPs helped create the Internet Watch Foundation to block "illegal" material on the Internet. BT blocked those web sites from all its downstream networks. That didn't stop the biggest child porn group in the world to date operating from the UK, and it took the Canadian RCMP to crack the case since UK law enforcement apparently wasn't aware of the group operating in the UK. Arresting the members of the group was needed, because the network "blocks" simply made it harder to find. In the USA, the Wire Act allows law enforcement to issue orders to disconnect gambling operations. Several other countries have filed international complaints against the USA for blocking their countries' gambling operations. The US has also arrested the executives of several gambling operations, and companies that assisted those gambling operations. Out of sight, out of mind may help politicians show they are doing something because the voters stop complaining. But trying to suppress communications usually isn't that effective at stopping criminals. On the other hand, what can we do about the victims?
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