more on When Muni-WiFi Becomes Vehicle For Muni-Censorship

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Joe Touch <touch () ISI EDU>
Date: August 28, 2006 2:05:51 AM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Re: [IP] more on When Muni-WiFi Becomes Vehicle For Muni- 
Censorship

Dave,



> An ISP's viewpoint:
>
> While blocking porn is nearly impossible to do well and legally
> questionable under the First Amendment, blocking or at least  
> mitigating
> P2P is an essential responsibility of any ISP -- public or private.  
> Not
> only is the vast majority of P2P illegal (the amount of legal activity
> being so small as to be negligible), but it is, quite simply, network
> abuse. Due to the bandwidth hogging behavior which is built -- by  
> design
> -- into P2P software, a relatively small number of P2Pers can  
> render the
> network unusable for its intended purposes. Any responsible network
> provider simply MUST mitigate P2P, both to prevent theft of  
> intellectual
> property and to ensure the quality of service for legitimate users.
>
> --Brett Glass, LARIAT.NET

Filtering bandwidth hogs is reasonable. That's already supported in
'fair share' routers and bridges, and doesn't require port or
protocol-based inference of what the user is doing.

Using too much bandwidth is a sufficient indicator of being a bandwidth
hog. Users can hog bandwidth using non-P2P protocols and applications.

Capacity limits based on protocol or port IS censorship.

Inferring hogging based on port/protocol rather than actual bandwidth
use is, well, both lazy and incorrect.

Joe




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