William Allen Simpson wrote:

It outlaws all encryption, and all remailers.

I'm missing where it outlaws these? In fact, it outlaws others (say your ISP) from decryping your encrypted data.

It outlaws connecting any device "without the express authority of the telecommunications service provider". No NATs. No wireless.

Not true. An ISP can choose to allow NAT and wireless or not allow it. This is the ISPs choice. The law is designed to protect the ISPs rights from existing technology so that the ISP can bill appropriately according to what service is being used. This does not mean that every ISP will not allow NAT.

(Some DSL/cable companies try to charge per machine, and record the machine address of the devices connected.)

And to use NAT to circumvent this should be illegal. It is theft of service. The ISP has the right to setup a business model and sell as it wishes. Technology has allowed ways to bypass or steal extra service. This law now protects the ISP. There will be some ISPs that continue to allow and support NAT.

It outlaws configuring your ISDN to be a voice device, and then sending data over the device.

(Most folks around here are willing to settle for 56Kbps + 56Kbps -- fixed fee -- instead of 64Kbps + 64Kbps -- per minute.)

Isn't ISDN regulated still?

It outlaws configuring a wire pair purchased as a burglar alarm circuit, and then using it as DSL.

The alarm circuit trick was getting caught onto and stopped as it was. It was only a matter of time before laws/regulations stopped this.

It outlaws using Linux/*BSD for reading DVDs and a host of other things.

How does it outlaw this?

Also, "reprogramming" a device (and software and computer chips are explicitly included) "that is capable of facilitating the interception, transmission, retransmission, decryption, acquisition, or reception of any telecommunications, transmissions, signals, or services" would seem to prohibit mod'ing of M$ Xboxen.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the DCMA(sp?) already performed this function. Circumventing copyright protection has always been deamed illegal and they are just now implementing laws to help protect it from technology.

Heck, it is possible to read this Act to prohibit changing your operating system from M$ to Linux.

It would be a far stretch, and I do not feel that it would hold up in court as applying. One thing to note, a telecommunications service provider is defined in such a way that anyone running a network is included. This means that running a business or home network protects your network. If in the nature of security, you have encrypted tunnels to other offices, those tunnels are protected from decryption by this Act. It is also important to note that NAT and tunnelling does not hide the source and destination in such scenario's, as the NAT IP is the correct customer and the network behind that is the Service Provider that owns that network. HOWEVER, it does make the abuse of an open proxy illegal. I will conceed that the Act is poorly written and is subject to abuse. It should have been worded more clearly concerning interconnected networks and jurisdiction. The definitions shouldn't have any ambiguity to them. The act also presumes that the service provider has declared specifically what can and cannot be done with the service. As most existing contracts show that this is not the case, there is room for the service providers to abuse this Act in their favor. Jack Bates Network Engineer BrightNet Oklahoma

On Saturday, 2003-03-29 at 23:22 CST, Jack Bates <jbates@brightok.net> wrote:

William Allen Simpson wrote:

...

(Some DSL/cable companies try to charge per machine, and record the machine address of the devices connected.)

And to use NAT to circumvent this should be illegal. It is theft of service.

No, it is not theft of service. It doesn't cost an ISP more for me to have 20 machines than it does if I have just 1. Nor does it cost them if I use NAT. What might cost them more is if I use more bandwidth or use additional IP addresses (for which there may be an associated expense). But a user with one machine can potentially use as much or more bandwidth than a user with 20. There simply isn't a decent correlation between number of machines and amount of service consumed. Even so, an ISP doesn't have a legitimate complaint against users that are simply consuming the bandwidth that the ISP advertised as being part of their service. Tony Rall

On Sun, 30 Mar 2003, Simon Lyall wrote:

Banning NAT and servers is a simple way to filter out most of the "power users" without scaring the "mom and pop" customers with bandwidth and download quotas.

Hardly. Banning NAT doesn't filter out anyone. There are plenty of "power users" without NAT. Instead of using dishonest marketing, just explicitly ban bandwidth hog stuff like p2p services up front... -Dan -- [-] Omae no subete no kichi wa ore no mono da. [-]

On Sun, 30 Mar 2003, Simon Lyall wrote:

On Sat, 29 Mar 2003, Tony Rall wrote:

...

No, it is not theft of service. It doesn't cost an ISP more for me to have 20 machines than it does if I have just 1. Nor does it cost them if I use NAT.

What might cost them more is if I use more bandwidth or use additional IP addresses (for which there may be an associated expense). But a user with one machine can potentially use as much or more bandwidth than a user with 20. There simply isn't a decent correlation between number of machines and amount of service consumed. Even so, an ISP doesn't have a legitimate complaint against users that are simply consuming the bandwidth that the ISP advertised as being part of their service.

So if I own an "all you can eat" restaurant you would say that I should allow you and your whole family to eat for the price of one person as long as only one of your was in the restaurant at any one time?

Ahh! But you see it ain't "all you can eat" or rather, "use as much bandwidth as you want as we don't throttle you at all." I recently signed up for Comcast and had it installed. I get some really nice download speeds, would be surprised if the download has a cap on it. However, upload is definetly throttled, stops at about 250 kbps. So that is what I am paying for. It's not limitless. I payed for a big mac and a drink with free refills, If I share that with my room mate, I am not stealing from them. -Mike

Of course you'll say your family of vegetarian dieters eats less food than some truck driver I had in last week so thats okay.

The ISP is able to charge the low price for "flat rate" Internet because it knows there is only one computer in the house and it's (99% of the time) doing normal web browsing and email type stuff for only a limited amount of time each day (p2p has screwed up the economics a bit).

If you price your product on the assumption that the average customer only uses 5% of their bandwidth then it doesn't take many customers using 50% or 100% of it to really spoil your economics.

Banning NAT and servers is a simple way to filter out most of the "power users" without scaring the "mom and pop" customers with bandwidth and download quotas.

-- //////////////////////////////////////////////////// - Mike Lyon - - Network Admin/Engineer for hire: - - www.mikelyon.net - - Cell: 408-621-4826 - ////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Can't NAT-like devices be just as viable as a security device as well? Is the ISP willing to take responsiblity for security breaches on my home network because they banned my firewall? From a political/public-perception standpoint, treat those ISPs that are complaining about NAT as being soft on security and encouraging hacking. In todays paranoid political climate, there might even be some milage here. I have Charter pipeline in Madison, WI, and they've been very open about people using NAT devices to the point that they are recommended in some cases as security devices as well as being sold by Charter's professional-services group as inexpensive firewalls. About six months ago I got a 1-page flier from Charter offering a 4-port Linksys and an on-site installation. Since a "NAT device" could include virtually any operating system and any PC with two or more ethernet ports, it might be better to push the "firewall" aspects of them rather than try to defend or justify the MANY-to-1 routing aspects of NAT.

On Sunday, 2003-03-30 at 09:07 CST, Jack Bates <jbates@brightok.net> wrote:

Please see Saphire worm. Then tell me that an ISP doesn't oversell services. The fact is, the entire Internet is oversold. If everyone did their full capacity, it would crash. DSL is also based on this assumption.

It's fine to oversell your capacity, as long as you inform your customers that that is what you're doing. And it's ok to put bandwidth limits on usage (or tiered pricing), as long as you're up front with your customers about it (don't advertise a 2 Mb/s connection for $50 and then, in the fine print, say that the customer can't average more than 50 kb/s). It's not fine (although an ISP can do it if they choose) and it is somewhat stupid to try to control what you care about (bandwidth) by limiting something that is not necessarily related to that resource (NAT, certain apps, etc.). In summary, charge appropriately for what costs you money. NAT does not cost you anything. Charge for bandwidth, helpdesk calls (not due to ISP problems), whatever really is a direct expense to the provider. Again, tell the customer plainly about these limitations (before they commit to them). Tony Rall

Peter Galbavy wrote:

Er, isn't that the fundamental difference between IP and fixed-bandwidth voice ? I have spent any number of years trying to 'educate' old guard telco management and planners that one of the key economic benefits of the Internet over old fashioned private networks is that the sharing of capacity actully works 99.99% of the time...

Yes, this is the fundamental difference, and it isn't a bad thing. However, the theory of oversell is dependant on the type of customer. In production, businesses actually oversell better than other customer type. ISP transit customers oversell next. Then there is the home user who can be oversold the least amount. Granted, 99% of the oversell problem with home users has now become piracy. It's no longer the one or two power users, but everyone and their dog that is computer illiterate but can still install p2p software or at least use it if their friend installs it for them.

To many telcos came into this market and sold 'no overbooking' QOS and then wondered why so few bought their overpriced services compared to the new (also going bust now) network operators ?

Yeah. Give things away for free and you go bust. In Oklahoma, the telco price for DSL is around $35. SWBell was doing a plan for the longest time (may still be doing it) of allowing ISPs to use their DSL, but the problem with the deal is that the ISP only got $10 out of it. $10/mo for 1.5Mb bandwidth? ha! If I'm nice, I might give you 64k for $10/mo. Modems have the luxury of working well on oversell because we 1) oversell the lines going into the modems at anywhere from 4:1 to 10:1 depending on the town and 2) oversell the bandwidth because p2p is too slow and takes too long, so many modem users don't use it. Take this to DSL speeds and then it's suddenly attractive and they'll suck a 1.5Mb/s worth in nothing flat. Let's see. It costs me a minimum of $1000/mo for a T1 (loop charge, not port) to some of these DSL supporting towns. The home user isn't going to pay $1000/mo for their 24/7 p2p. I can't afford to support it at $50/mo either. Even cranking up to DS3, I don't save much on the oversell. 30 customers doing p2p will do well on saturation of a DS3 and even if I have 180 customers with only 30 doing p2p, $9,000/mo (50/per) is hardly going to pay for the DS3. Much less the SWBell "you get $10" plan. Thus I charge more than $50/mo and you can forget getting 1.5Mb at that price. Unfortunately, there are ISPs out there who are trying to compete against people in Chapter 11 or people who are subsidizing DSL costs with other costs (ie, SWBell does 1.5Mb/s for $49.95/mo which they are subsidizing with the telco and business customers but still lose money on the home user). -Jack

Richard A Steenbergen wrote:

Get some QoS for the p2p traffic and stop complaining. One moment everyone is begging for the "killer app" to motivate high-speed residential connectivity, the next they're pissing and moaning because it actually happened.

Actually, I think it was all the people going bust that were begging for the "killer app". Us country folk were happy with the way things were. As for using QoS for p2p traffic, would you like to explain to me how my Cisco routers can tell the difference between the various flavors of p2p and say ftp? As stated in my previous post, we do fine with our pricing. It's all our competitors that are now buying transit from us and dropping multi-homing because they can't afford it anymore that have problems. Then, on the other hand, you have the people that scream we are too high, and so and so offers it cheaper (say an RBOC or any major city). It's aggrivating to wait while businesses finally keel over dead or adjust their pricing to match the real costs. -Jack

Dan Hollis wrote:

They dont need to adjust their pricing, they just need to lobby for new laws to protect their flawed business models. Oh wait, they just did that.

IANAL, but the laws won't last. If they are enforced, the courts will overturn them. The exceptions are the mods for console game systems. People are already being charged with that under the DMCA if I'm not mistaken. Sadly(yeah right), some politicians will have trouble getting re-elected now. -Jack

Well, most p2p apps live on well-known ports, and Cisco's QOS mechanism allows easy classification on ports. Yes, most of the p2p apps are port-agile -- but only if they are completely blocked. My experience is that if you let the p2p stuff through, it'll stick to its default port and you can police with impunity.

Our data shows that between 30% and 50% of p2p data flows on "non-standard" ports if you run an unblocked environment. Pete

Probably because of blocking at the origin point, such as corporate net-mgrs trying to prevent bandwidth hogs or liability issues.

Sure but my point is, that unless you run your private p2p network somewhere which is not connected to the internet, you´ll end up with similar figures because these "net-mgrs" will be out there doing their thing and there is nothing you can do about them doing it. Pete

Rubens

----- Original Message ----- From: "Petri Helenius" <pete@he.iki.fi> To: "Stephen Sprunk" <stephen@sprunk.org>; "Jack Bates" <jbates@brightok.net> Cc: "Richard A Steenbergen" <ras@e-gerbil.net>; "Peter Galbavy" <peter.galbavy@knowtion.net>; "Mike Lyon" <mlyon@fitzharris.com>; "Simon Lyall" <simon.lyall@ihug.co.nz>; "Tony Rall" <trall@almaden.ibm.com>; "North American Noise and Off-topic Gripes" <nanog@merit.edu> Sent: Monday, March 31, 2003 6:08 PM Subject: Re: State Super-DMCA Too True

| | > Well, most p2p apps live on well-known ports, and Cisco's QOS mechanism | > allows easy classification on ports. Yes, most of the p2p apps are | > port-agile -- but only if they are completely blocked. My experience is | > that if you let the p2p stuff through, it'll stick to its default port and | > you can police with impunity. | | Our data shows that between 30% and 50% of p2p data flows on "non-standard" | ports if you run an unblocked environment. | | Pete |

On Sun, Mar 30, 2003 at 01:50:22AM -0800, Mike Lyon wrote:

Ahh! But you see it ain't "all you can eat" or rather, "use as much bandwidth as you want as we don't throttle you at all." I recently signed up for Comcast and had it installed. I get some really nice download speeds, would be surprised if the download has a cap on it. However, upload is definetly throttled, stops at about 250 kbps.

It is, Comcast has a rate limit of 1.8mbit/.3mbit pretty much across the board. As for the NAT arguement, AT&T (now Comcast) has been advertising the Linksys WAP's for all your wireless+NAT needs, they'll even sell it to you, and install it for you. AT&T/Comcast doesn't sell business accounts (at least not here) but they will now sell you a more expensive package, 3.5Mbit/384kbit, for $95/mo, including 'model rental fee', it includes 5 IP addresses "VPN Capability"(?) as well. Of course, you can get that down to $85/mo if you have cable or phone service through them.

-Mike

-- Matthew S. Hallacy FUBAR, LART, BOFH Certified http://www.poptix.net GPG public key 0x01938203

If you price your product on the assumption that the average customer only uses 5% of their bandwidth then it doesn't take many customers using 50% or 100% of it to really spoil your economics

Personal Telco has some interesting opinions on this: http://www.personaltelco.net/index.cgi/StealingBandwidth?action=highlight&va lue=CategoryPhilosophy (quoting) "Traditional broadband providers cry foul when users take their cable modem or DSL connections and beam them to friends, family and passsers-by through Wi-Fi networks. "It constitutes a theft of service per our user agreement," says AT&T Broadband's Sarah Eder. But at least one very important observer doesn't buy that. "I don't think it's stealing by any definition of law at the moment," says FCC chairman Michael Powell. "The truth is, it's an unintended use." apl

Not true. An ISP can choose to allow NAT and wireless or not allow it. This is the ISPs choice. The law is designed to protect the ISPs rights from existing technology so that the ISP can bill appropriately according to what service is being used. This does not mean that every ISP will not allow NAT.

...

(Some DSL/cable companies try to charge per machine, and record the machine address of the devices connected.)

And to use NAT to circumvent this should be illegal. It is theft of service. The ISP has the right to setup a business model and sell as it wishes. Technology has allowed ways to bypass or steal extra service. This law now protects the ISP. There will be some ISPs that continue to allow and support NAT.

The problem is that these laws not only outlaw the use of NAT devices where prohibited, but also the sale and possession of such devices. Futher, I think many would disagree that the use of NAT where prohibited necessarily should be considered an illegal activity. Note that the customer is still paying for a service, so the question of "theft" is debatable. It is one thing for an ISP to terminate service for breach of contract by using a NAT device, it is quite something else to put someone in prison for such a breach. I found one large broadband provider in Michigan that prohibits the use of NAT devices -- Charter Communications. Comcast, Verizon, and SBC seem to allow them for personal household use (although they do have value-add services that charge extra for multiple routable static IP addresses).

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the DCMA(sp?) already performed this function. Circumventing copyright protection has always been deamed illegal and they are just now implementing laws to help protect it from technology.

The DMCA refers specifically to copyrighted works and has several (somewhat weak) safeguards built-in (must be primarily designed to circumvent, of limited commercial use, allowances for reverse engineering for interoperability purposes) These state laws cover both ISP services and copyrighted content services and have almost nothing in the way of safeguards.

...

Heck, it is possible to real this Act to prohibit changing your operating system from M$ to Linux.

It would be a far stretch, and I do not feel that it would hold up in court as applying.

One thing to note, a telecommunications service provider is defined in such a way that anyone running a network is included.

The Michigan law covers only commercial telecommunications service providers that charge fees. It most definitely does not cover anyone running a network.

On Sun, Mar 30, 2003 at 03:58:17AM -0500, Larry J. Blunk wrote:

...

The problem is that these laws not only outlaw the use of NAT devices where prohibited, but also the sale and possession of such devices. Futher, I think many would disagree that the use of NAT where prohibited necessarily should be considered an illegal activity. Note that the customer is still paying for a service, so the question of "theft" is debatable. It is one thing for an ISP to terminate service for breach of contract by using a NAT device, it is quite something else to put someone in prison for such a breach.

I really fail to see what the problem is. You're trying to justify that you should be allowed to use NAT (and by implication, mulitple nodes behind your NAT) and it not be illegal. If your ISP says that you are paying for access *per node* and not allwoedto use NAT, then your use of NAT is theft of service, because you're not paying for those extra nodes to access (through) the ISP's network. The extra cost (or lack there of) to the ISP is irrelevent. If you're not allwoed to use NAT, you're not allowed to use NAT. If you're paying for per-node access, breach of this is theft of service.

I'm not trying to justify allowing the use of NAT where it is prohibited by a terms of service agreement and thus grounds for termination of service. However, going beyond termination of service and making this an illegal act under law (possibly punishable by a felony conviction and 4 years in prison) is an entirely different case. If you stop paying your ISP bill (thus getting several months for free until the ISP cuts you off) wouldn't that also be theft of service? Should one also be subject to a felony conviction and 4 years of prison for such an act?

...

I found one large broadband provider in Michigan that prohibits the use of NAT devices -- Charter Communications. Comcast, Verizon, and SBC seem to allow them for personal household use (although they do have value-add services that charge extra for multiple routable static IP addresses).

Interesting that Charter Communications in Los Angeles doesn't mind you doing this.

Here is my reference for Charter Communications in Michigan, however, this web page could be out of date. http://support.chartermi.net/gh/residential/pipeline/ Additional Computers: Charter Communications allows up to 3 computers behind each cable modem connected via a hub. The customer is responsible for the purchase and installation of the hub, cross over cables and ethernet cables necessary to connect the additional computers. Charter Communications does not support or install hubs or additional computers. Charter prohibits the use of routers or proxy servers behind cable modems. Use of these methods to connect additional computers and Local Area Networks is grounds for disconnection of service. For more than 3 computers or for a Local Area Networks please speak to our Commercial Sales Team: 888-968-3442.

Larry J. Blunk wrote:

...

I'm not trying to justify allowing the use of NAT where it is prohibited by a terms of service agreement and thus grounds for termination of service. However, going beyond termination of service and making this an illegal act under law (possibly punishable by a felony conviction and 4 years in prison) is an entirely different case. If you stop paying your ISP bill (thus getting several months for free until the ISP cuts you off) wouldn't that also be theft of service? Should one also be subject to a felony conviction and 4 years of prison for such an act?

If it takes a few months for the ISP to cut you off for not paying your bill, that is their own fault. Concerning someone going to jail for running NAT in breach of TOS, I find it supportable. There is precedence set with the Cable companies (using equipment to allow service to be used on more than tv's than allowed by the cable company would be equivelent here).

-Jack

Sigh. My point is this is a question of extremes and punishment commensurate with the "crime". I can understand how one could consider NAT to be "theft" under a terms of service agreement. I can even understand how one might think this should be a criminal offense (although I would disagree - consider how many ISP's consider NAT to be perfectly acceptable). However, going beyond a misdemeanor offense and a fine - advocating prison time and felony convictions - is something I simply can't understand or find supportable.

On Sun, 30 Mar 2003, Avleen Vig wrote:

I can't see why you have a problem sending someone to jail for commiting a crime.

The punishment does not fit the crime. The punishment here is more severe than a lot of violent crimes. Unless of course you feel that "stealing service via NAT" is a truly serious offense... -Dan -- [-] Omae no subete no kichi wa ore no mono da. [-]

I am not sure I am following the argument here. as far as I can make out 1. Many (all!) providers underprovision (aka oversell) their bandwidth, expecting peak utilisations to be approximately the provisioned amount because experience has shown that actual usage is only a percentage of theoretical purchased bandwidth 2. If "power users" use even half the bandwidth they were *sold*, then that has to be made up from low-bandwidth users to maintain an average in line with actual provisioning; the price charged is actually based on the provisioning, not actual usage or sold bandwidth, and is therefore profitable only if the actual usage matches statistically 3. most power users eat bandwidth from a single machine downloading at the maximum achievable rate and/or running servers; however, some could well do so using multiple machines using NAT, and some otherwise low-bandwidth users could possibly use more bandwidth if running multiple machines behind NAT (based on the idea that low bandwidth users can't possibly use a multi-user OS like linux and dumb terminals) 4. Trying to bandwidth limit users to a fraction of the bandwidth they were theoretically sold (and/or similar schemes like total data transferred caps and excess data usage charges) are politically and techically awkward; customers don't like trying to understand that you sold them a product that you knew in advance you couldn't provide, and tend to look around for lawyers when that happens 5. therefore making the sale or advertisting of NAT devices illegal (and by extension, commercial firewalls such as checkpoint's fw-1 and nat-capable cisco routers) is only reasonable and perfectly defendable. it is the hop from 4 to 5 I am having trouble with....

Dan Hollis wrote:

Using the law to defend deceptive business practices. Makes perfect sense.

It's either that or start charging the customer's what it really costs. They've been so happy to get away from that. Large networks have cut their rates based on oversell so that mid-sized networks could cut their rates, so that small networks could cut their rates, so that @home can have service for $50/mo. If @home uses full bandwidth, and each of the networks steps up to meet the bandwidth, either a) @home gets billed no less than 4 times as much or b) any network that doesn't step up pricing goes into Chapter 11. In addition, it's questionable if the overall network infrastructure can handle that amount of throughput. 1.5Mb/s to the house sounds so wonderful, but at $50/mo, it's not really feasible without a lot of oversell. People traditionally base oversell per computer connection (taken from dialup overselling). I disagree with the method, but who am I to say someone else's business plan is faulty and they shouldn't be allowed to enforce it? -Jack

Jack Bates wrote:

Dan Hollis wrote:

...

Using the law to defend deceptive business practices. Makes perfect sense.

It's either that or start charging the customer's what it really costs. They've been so happy to get away from that. Large networks have cut their rates based on oversell so that mid-sized networks could cut their rates, so that small networks could cut their rates, so that @home can have service for $50/mo. If @home uses full bandwidth, and each of the networks steps up to meet the bandwidth, either a) @home gets billed no less than 4 times as much or b) any network that doesn't step up pricing goes into Chapter 11. In addition, it's questionable if the overall network infrastructure can handle that amount of throughput. 1.5Mb/s to the house sounds so wonderful, but at $50/mo, it's not really feasible without a lot of oversell. People traditionally base oversell per computer connection (taken from dialup overselling).

I disagree with the method, but who am I to say someone else's business plan is faulty and they shouldn't be allowed to enforce it?

Then charge what it really costs. Look, I'm buying transit from an ISP. You know, moving bits. This kind of legislation is as absurd as telling me what devices I'm allowed to view my DVD's on, listen to my CD's on, or how I should watch a movie because it happens to come on a little silver disk vs a dark stream of tape. If ISPs have to resort to these kind of tactics to preserve "value" of their services, perhaps they need to find a way to offer more "value" than they do today. As for the security aspects, I have privacy of communication when I put a letter into an envelope. Just because I'm communicating electronically doesn't mean I've abdicated that right. ========== bep

On Sun, 30 Mar 2003, William Allen Simpson wrote:

As Larry Blunk points out, to "possess" an encryption device is a felony!

The law as written would seem to make microsoft windows nt/2k/xp/etc illegal to possess. Perhaps someone can print up a bunch of stickers "Under 750.540c enacted 03/31/2003 it is a felony to possess this software/device" and put them on microsoft windows boxes and hardware routers wherever they appear. Wonder how long it will take for someone to discover michigan government officers committing 1000's of felonies... -Dan -- [-] Omae no subete no kichi wa ore no mono da. [-]

In a message written on Sat, Mar 29, 2003 at 11:22:11PM -0600, Jack Bates wrote:

Not true. An ISP can choose to allow NAT and wireless or not allow it. This is the ISPs choice. The law is designed to protect the ISPs rights from existing technology so that the ISP can bill appropriately according to what service is being used. This does not mean that every ISP will not allow NAT.

I find this argument interesting, because a lot of people seem to share your feeling that the ISP can, in the terms of service, allow or disallow specific uses. I submit at this point in time they can, but it would be amazingly stupid for them to do that. As much as ISP's don't want it admit it an internet connection is being treated more and more like a utility. Drop into that mix that many consumers who can get DSL or Cable Modems only have a single ISP to buy from and it looks even more like a utility. Now, does the electric company tell you what you can and can't plug in? Do they tell you that you can only use 120v devices, or 220v devices? No, they simply bill you for what you use. Does the water company tell you that you can't drink the water? Share it with a stranger that stops by? Bill you based on how many sinks and showers you have? No, they simply bill you for what you use. Does the phone company tell you how many phones you can have? Do they prevent you from using a cordless phone, or loaning that cordless phone to your neighbor? No, they simply bill you for what you use. The last one is an interesting case. The phone company used to lease you the phones (and you didn't have a choice). They kept tally of every connection, required you to use them to run all the wires. They screamed for years that if the system was run any other way it would all fall apart. Well, the people revolted, broke up AT&T, and put in a pile of government regulation to allow people to plug up (at least from a phone point of view) pretty much anything. If ISP's keep imposing these overly restrictive terms of service eventually the people will revolt. The government will come in and make a huge mess of the industry, but probably "fix" things from the consumer point of view. ISP's would be wise to look at what the other utilities do, and make their service be the dropping off of an Ethernet port on a billing device (eg, meter) and simply bill per bit. In the end, I think users would be more happy (plug up whatever you want, however you want, we don't care!), and I think the ISP's would make more money. First, more people would plug up more stuff. Second, they would make revenue off things they don't today. They outlaw servers because they can't make money on them with $49.95 a month pricing. Well, if you bill by the bit the guy who runs a server can pay $50 in usage charges. He has his server, the ISP has the money to scale their network to support it. We call this a win-win situation. Third, they could lower the entry point price for people with low needs. $25 could get you DSL with 1G a month for grandma and her e-mail, while $100 could get you DSL with 8G a month for a gamer. The grandma who won't pay $50 today might pay $25. So, while the ISP's may not be doing anything illegal, and in fact may be having success in passing laws to make what they seem to want to do even easier, they are being extremely short sighted and stupid. They may get a couple of good years out of this run, but eventually the people will be fed up, and fed up people get the government involved, and the government will fix it in it's usual bull-in-a-china-shop way, which will be very bad for the ISP, and hopefully only slightly bad for the consumer. -- Leo Bicknell - bicknell@ufp.org - CCIE 3440 PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/ Read TMBG List - tmbg-list-request@tmbg.org, www.tmbg.org

[snip]

You can be assured that what ever references to "trick or acrobatic flying" will be challenged by the AOPA (aopa.org) . Those rules/laws are the domain of the FAA. Sounds like too long of a winter and it froze their brains. M

This was passed in a lame duck session (December 11, 2002) as part of a big omnibus crime act that covered everything from "adulteration of butter and cream", to "trick or acrobatic flying" to "false weights and measures", mostly increasing fines and/or jail for existing offenses. Michigan is a leader in overcrowding its prisons.

There was other lame duck legislation passed, before a new Governor took office, almost all of it bad for civil liberties!

-- William Allen Simpson Key fingerprint = 17 40 5E 67 15 6F 31 26 DD 0D B9 9B 6A 15 2C 32