RE: ISPs as content-police or method-police

["Christian Kuhtz" <ck () arch bellsouth net>]

[..]
> The point is this: 137-139 are used for NetBIOS and Samba, neither of which
> are secure (or even supported by their vendors, AFAIK) for use out on the
> Internet. I think we can all agree that anyone using them in that
> situation, shouldn't be.

I don't at all disagree.

But, this isn't the same question as.. does this equal to automatically and
strictly blocking such traffic?  Who am I to say a customer can't use them if
they decide to do so? Etc etc.

Now, that isn't the same as saying 'I must not provide a mechanism for
customers to protect themselves if they want to'.  The opposite is true, I
would like to see such mechanisms.

And I think this conversation would be a lot more fruitful if we focused on
how to provide mechanisms that are opt-in/opt-out/whatever and how to deal
with operational, legal, engineering impact of such a decision, and provide
this in a transparent, easily managable fashion to the customer.

--
Christian Kuhtz <ck () arch bellsouth net> -wk, <ck () gnu org> -hm
Sr. Architect, Engineering & Architecture, BellSouth.net, Atlanta, GA, U.S.
"I speak for myself only."