Rod, Sorry for the mislead on this. I agree with you. There are a lot of layer 9 reasons why this is the case. regards NP Quoting rodbeck1@gmail.com:

Nancy,

You're missing the point and you're quoting out of context.

The point is that common carrier protections should apply to ISPs since they are essentially doing the same thing as carriers - they are shipping bits.

The whole enhanced service distinction is flimsy. There is nothing about IP that makes an enhanced service in any meaninful sense different It is just a transport protocol.

So don't confuse 'is' and 'ought'.

I am advocating that common carrier protections should be extended to ISPs. ---- Envoyé avec BlackBerry® d'Orange ----

-----Original Message----- From: <nancyp@yorku.ca>

Date: Thu, 25 Jun 2009 12:22:08 To: Richard A Steenbergen<ras@e-gerbil.net> Cc: NANOG list<nanog@nanog.org> Subject: [SPAM-HEADER] - Re: tor - Email has different SMTP TO: and MIME TO: fields in the email addresses

As I understand & pls correct if I am wrong:

...

There is a long established legal tradition that telecommunication transport is not liable for the content it transmits. It's called common carrier.

Telephony = common carrier yes- considered 'basic service'under Telecom Act 96..

but data is considered 'enhanced services' different section of the Act. Thus common carrier does not apply.

The dualism/argument began in the 2nd computer inquiry and scales right up to [US dominated] Intl telephony settlements- ICAIS where VoIP is not settled the same way [$] but governed by peering/transit arrangements

Nancy Paterson (Reachability as a Net Neutrality Issue) PhD student, YorkU, Toronto

Quoting Richard A Steenbergen <ras@e-gerbil.net>:

...

On Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 10:57:27PM +0100, Rod Beck wrote:

...

Hi Richard,

It is a more complicated issue than that.

There is a long established legal tradition that telecommunication transport is not liable for the content it transmits. It's called common carrier. If someone makes an obscene phone call, the phone company cannot be held liable. Yes, if the client subsequently complains and asks for that number to be blocked and the phone company does nothing, that's different.

But the general principle is that anyone who transmits bits is not liable for content.

Unfortunately in my personal view that principle never got established in the Layer 3 world.

This has nothing to do with telecommunications or any kind of carrier or business relationship. This is intentionally leaving your computer open so that anyone on the Internet can come along and appear to be coming from your IP, where they will promptly set off doing bad stuff that will get traced back to you rather than them. Think of it like intentionally leaving your car unlocked with the keys in the ignition and a note authorizing people to borrow it and take it for a spin, and then expecting not to get into any kind of trouble when they rack up speeding tickets and/or use it to run someone over.

Besides, the kind of consequencies I'm talking about are "having your internet account shut off for abuse"... But if you do happen to be one of those unlucky people who gets sued for downloading illegal content I don't think "but your honor I was running tor" is the defense you're looking for. :)

-- Richard A Steenbergen <ras@e-gerbil.net> http://www.e-gerbil.net/ras GPG Key ID: 0xF8B12CBC (7535 7F59 8204 ED1F CC1C 53AF 4C41 5ECA F8B1 2CBC)