Minnesota to block online gambling sites?

Mon May 4 23:12:37 UTC 2009

To me, the bigger question is "Are ISPs common carriers?"

To the best of my knowledge, the ISP businesses even of the telcos
are not of common carrier status under federal law.  If that is the
case, my understanding of statute in question is that it does not apply
and the ISPs should tell the MN government to go find a workable
statute.

Owen

On May 4, 2009, at 10:53 AM, Ken Gilmour wrote:

> So is this going to become like the great firewall of China
> eventually? You can see in the letters that they are "going to see how
> it goes and then maybe start blocking more stuff" if they are
> successful. I can see a big nightmare heading this way if ISPs start
> caving in to requests like this.
>
>
>
> 2009/5/4 John Levine <johnl at iecc.com>:
>>> Not withstanding the legality of such an order, how would one
>>> operationally enforce that order?
>>
>> The order has a list of IP addresses, so I expect the ISPs will just
>> block those IPs in routers somewhere.
>>
>> Since offshore online gambling is equally illegal everywhere in the
>> U.S., the ISPs have little reason to limit the block to Minnesota
>> customers, giving them a lot of latitude in where they implement the
>> block.
>>
>> Regards,
>> John Levine, johnl at iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet  
>> for Dummies",
>> Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://www.johnlevine.com, ex- 
>> Mayor
>> "More Wiener schnitzel, please", said Tom, revealingly.
>>
>>

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