Owen DeLong wrote:
--On Monday, June 14, 2004 17:57 -0500 Adi Linden <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
That depends... Is it an envelope covered in suspicious white powder,It's not crap. Infected machines are no more the fault of the internet than junkmail in your mailbox is the fault of the post office. There's literally no difference to the model. The post office delivers mail that is addressed to you. They don't care if it's junk mail or not. They deliver it.
So what about little envelopes with white powder? Does the post office
still have an obligation to deliver it or should they be concerned about
the welfare of their customers? Perhaps they should insist that customers
are properly vaccinated....
or, is it a well sealed envelope that happens to contain a plastic
baggy of white powder? If it's the former, then, there is obvious
reason, and, this would be equivalent to a malformed IP datagram,
which most (all) ISPs will drop. If it's the latter, then, the
post office has no legitimate way to know that the envelope contains
white powder, nor, does it know what the white powder is. Also,
the primary reason/responsibility the post office has in not delivering
the white powder on the outside of the envelope is to protect postal
employees. Secondarily, the mail may come into contact with other
than it's intended target. The post office does not, in my opinion,
have an obligation to protect you from mail properly addressed to you.
And yet the UK postoffice xrays all parcels looking for bombs (confirmable with the UK post office).... AFAIK they also now use sniffer technology to look for other 'nasties' (this is completely unconfirmed)
Actually, there is some debate about that. However, there are alsoPoint I am making is that the post office is not responsible and/or liable for the content of the packages they deliver. However, if they deliver packages that are obviously visibly dangerous to the recipient they have an obligation to investigate and not deliver the package.
strong boundaries on that. The obligation you speak of applies to
things that endanger human life. If you send a diskette mailer to
someone with the label "Diskette inside contains live computer virus",
I bet the post office will probably deliver it. That's every bit
as harmful as the packets you're complaining about the ISPs delivering.
And to the same respect you send a package with 'The package contains the Anthrax virus" they'll probably deliver it as well...
(wouldn't recommed anyone testing it though ;-))
Right... that's why I support the "abuser pays" model of charging cleanupMost residential ISPs get paid the same whether the customer spews abuse or not. Their costs go up some when they get abuse complaints and when abuse starts using more bandwidth, so, for the most part, most residential ISPs have no incentive to support abuse, but, not enough incentive to pay to staff an abuse department sufficiently to be truly responsive. Further, most abuse departments don't get enough support from management when the sales and marketing departments come whining about how much revenue that abusing customer produces each month. This is one of the unfortunate realities of a free-market economy. It doesn't always tie profit to doing the right thing, and, it favors short-term thinking over long-term planning.
Who do you suppose pays for the abuse department staff? Those are
operational costs passed on to all customers. If increasing abuse results
in increasing staff, hopefully eventually, these cost will most likely be
passed on to all customer. It would be nice to see per incident billing
so only offenders and repeat offenders pay. I doubt that'll happen (just
a gut feeling, no other justification).
fees for users that get infected. That's what I'd like to see too.
Hear hear..
Arguing for ISPs to filter customers arbitrarily, distracts from this.
No it doesn't - it's two different models - I'm sure some customers would prefer filtered access rather than risk a cleanup charge being dumped on them...
/ Mat
