On Mon, Dec 25, 2000 at 02:33:29PM -0800, Ian Clarke wrote:
> > Your ISP will *normally* kick you off if they get a complaint.
>
> Again, safety in numbers, combined with the entrapment argument, are the
> best defenses against this. An ISP may kick you off if threatened with
> legal action - such as was the case with Demon - but why would they kick
> you off for violating a US law (particularly when this violation is
> questionable?).
Because it will shortly be an EU law too. WIPO consumeth all :(
Most ISPs would kick you off for abetting piracy if threatened with legal
action, entrapment or not. (thankfully RIP wiretaps are inadmissable, or
this would be a lot messier...). Maybe the entrapment argument will avoid
this until the new EU legislation gets in; I doubt it.
>
> The point is that if people can get you kicked off the Internet for dumb
> reasons, then you have much bigger problems than just whether you are able
> to run a Freenet node or not - that is the fight which needs to be fought,
> not trying to work around it. Attempts by people to kick people off for
> running Freenet could be the perfect demonstration of how dumb this
> is. Anyone who didn't think that there would be a PR battle at some point
> in Freenet's development was not thinking ahead.
And a legal battle. Your company obviously isn't going to pay for the suit
involved. Legal aid is, err, means-tested and probably rather limited in
civil suits. So only lawyers and other very rich opinionated persons can run
freenet without running a sizeable chance of permanent banning from their
ISPs (remember that in any given area in the UK, there are only 2 broadband
suppliers; if ADSL *does* use NAT, then Cable effectively have monopoly).
Not that ISPs would ban many people, just a few selected
scapeg^H^H^H^H^H^Htroublemakers. Most people really don't want to be part of
the chosen few.
>
> Also, many Freenet nodes I am aware of seem to run from Universities which
> are quite protective of their users - many Universities extended a
> one-fingered salute when the RIAA tried to tell them to remove users for
> running Napster, citing free-speech concerns, if these concerns applied to
> Napster, then they would *definitely* apply to Freenet.
Really? The uni I have most contact with uses an HTTP proxy and NAT (SOCKS
too but I doubt they'd let you run a long-term binding).
>
> > > > Except if you can't tie a user to an IP address, of course, but you can in
> > > > many schemes. For instance if you keep logs of your DHCP transactions then
> > > > it's not a big deal, even on cable.
> > >
> > > Er, bypassing DHCP is a very easy measure to take if this is your concern.
> > And illegal.
> > >
> > > Ian.
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