> Date: Sun, 24 Jun 2007 22:05:12 -0400 > From: "Ben Scott" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> On 6/21/07, Bill McGonigle <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Perception doesn't have any effect on the Comcast NOC, but it has an > > effect on the ToS the company can get away with. > > Says who? > > The point I'm trying to make, and that most people seem to be > missing, is that *Comcast controls the terms*. This isn't a situation Who controls the terms really isn't the issue. The issue is Reality. What *in reality* does Comcrap do when you violate their ToS. In most cases, I'd posit zip. As much as I abhor philosophy, I want to break reality down, for you, into four strata: (1) What the Terms of Service say. This is the "theoretical level of reality". This is where business analysts, lawyers, and language-picky Linux nerds live. (2) Official company policy. This is where managers make the decision "which legally reserved rights of ours do we wish to enforce?" and "what policy will this company adopt for operations purposes?". These policies are generally distributed to underlings in "Policy Manuals" which are never read and only briefly referenced during employee training. (3) Unofficial company policy. This is where employees make the decision "what part of the policies in this stupid handbook do I want to comply with?" and "what on earth am are they saying I supposed to be doing, anyway?". This is where most employees in a company operate. In the particular case ISPs, this is MOST (if not all) of tech support staff fall into this category. (4) What's done in reality. This is where all the Linux nerds and spammers live. What you can get away with on a network often goes beyond even unwritten policy. There are aspects of ISPs' networks with which the ISP is often unaware or unconcerned. In some places, port 25 is firewalled. In others, it's not. It's not firewalled because (even though it may be policy), it's not "in reality". So, there are many levels at which you can "allow" or "deny" your subscribers to/from doing certain things with their feeds. You seem to be focusing on #1, the legal-verbal-business layer. What I'm concerned with is #3, the actual, unofficial, unwritten "policy" that the company follows. Not the ToS. These are two different realities. "I reject your reality and substitue my own." > If you call Comcast trying to play semantic word games, in all > likelihood, they're just going to summarily shut you off anyway. See I doubt it. Most tech support won't understand or be interested in the meaning of your ToS. They'd most likely put you on eternal hold. You'd probably (if, who knows why, you wanted to argue verbiage) have to talk with management. And in that case, you risk making enough of a stink to get noticed and get beaten with a spool of hardline. > If someone comes up with some popular "client" application that > needs to listen on port 25, or any other equally asinine scheme, > Comcast will just allow that, but still deny the rest. If need be, That's the point. Creating an IM client that interfaces with gmail (substitute your own flashy, useless, fad application here) that listens on port 25 would encourage ISPs to *not* block that port. Then, those of us who use port 25 for its real purpose (email) would be able to get on unencumbered. It's insanity curing insanity. > they can simply put a bandwidth meter on your modem, and sock you when > your usage goes out of balance. See #1. That would require effort on their part. ISPs generally want to ignore as many people as possible and just collect monthly fees. They want to do as little as possible and make as much money as possible doing it. > Note that I'm not saying you should immediately shut off your SSH > server or port 25 listener or whatever. Staying below the radar is > fine if that's what you want to do. I'm just saying that arguing This is reality #4. Living here is a little risky, because you never know when any given part of reality #3 is going to start being enforced in reality #4. > Country *and* Western." Whether competition be enabled by structural > separation, many small local providers, distributed P2P wireless nets, > or something else, I'd say this is the best bet for the whole, in the IMHO, the best chance we have for reclaiming our Internet feeds (and our telephones) is large-scale ubiquitious WiFi coverage. With the planned reallocation of the OTA TV broadcast spectrum, the WiFi community is in the (historically) unique position to be able to muscle its way - literally - across the country. It's an obvious freedom solution. I believe we should be pursuing comprehensive- coverage WiFi like our lives depended on it. Indeed, our sanity may depend upon it. > seems more than a little far-fetched, to me. This also destroys the > anti-leech protocol arguments; implementing such just decreases the > popularity of the protocols. Anti-leech protocols? So, I'm wondering. If you try (for EXAMPLE ONLY) to connect to a shared folder on your windoze box from a remote site, and call tech support for help, what will they say? I suspect they'd probably say that they firewall those packets for your own protection. They *probably* won't even mention their server policy (or non-policy) at all. I suspect that weapon's reserved for spammers and residential dot-com'ers. If anyone has first or second-hand experience with what, in fact, Comca$t will do in a situation like this (trying to access your own, password-protected, computer remotely), I'd love to know. reality.level-=4; exit(0); _______________________________________________ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/