Rescheduled: P2P file sharing national security and personal security risks

Mon Jun 16 15:26:41 UTC 2003

Sean Donelan wrote:
> Except this is not "self-policing."  ISPs are not being asked to
> police
> what ISPs do.  For the most part ISPs don't attack their customer's
> (or anyone else's) computers.  Remember, the traffic generally flows
> THROUGH
> the ISP's network, it doesn't come FROM the ISP.

OK - my mis-wording. You have expressed what I meant.

> Yet another analogy, its a bit like asking grocery stores to
> "self-police" their customer's eating habits.  Should grocery stores
> be responsible that the public only buys healthy food or holding the
> grocery store liable for
> the hospital bills when customers buy junk food. ISPs generally exert
> even less control over their customers than a grocery store, and don't
> have double coupons.

My turn - grocery stores can police much better than ISPs - they just do not
stock products that are classified as 'bad' by some established standard.
This sort of happens in the Internet, with prefix filters, routeing
registries etc. but I see your point.

> Most ISPs don't police (or self-police) their customers' use of the
> Internet.  Like a grocery store, if a customer is harassing other
> customers, the grocery store may ask them not to come back.  But
> generally the customer just moves on to another grocery store.  Its
> up to the police to arrest people engaged in criminal activity.

The grocery store analogy breaks down and we are back to the tired old
'highway' nonsense. This is more like the 'public spirited' induhviduals
(sic) that block lanes to prevent others 'speeding' - or rather requiring
property owners to perform this task on the parts of the road that run past
their turf. Which is scarier.

Peter