On 27/09/11 7:20 AM, William Allen Simpson wrote:
Most likely the ISPs' lawyers were smart enough to include a clause
in the ToS/AUP allowing
the ISP to intercept, blackhole, or redirect access to any hostname or
IP address.
It's not legal to insert a clause allowing criminal conduct. There's
no safe haven for criminal conduct.
I'm not sure that it's *illegal to insert a clause* for conduct that is
forbidden by law. I'm pretty sure you can claim almost anything in the
contract. What is illegal is enforcement of an illegal clause. Law
trumps contract terms - that's WHY we have civil laws - to protect
people from unscrupulous business dealings. And that's why most
contracts have a clause that says if a particular clause in the contract
is found invalid the rest of the contract still stands - because so many
contracts DO have invalid clauses. For example, many employment
contracts have non-compete clauses that forbid the employee from going
to work for a competitor. But in many states these clauses violate the
state's right-to-work laws. The company lawyers KNOW the clause is
illegal, but they insert it in the employment contracts anyway, to try
to fool employees into thinking they will get sued if they go to work
for a competitor.
The name for an ISP intercepting traffic from its own users is not
"interference" or "DoS",
because they're breaking the operation of (er) only their own network.
No, they're breaking the operation of my network and my computers. My
network connects to their network.
But you have no recourse, their network, their rules. (Right?) You
*might* have recourse if they were modifying traffic you sent to their
customer, but in this case they are modifying traffic that originates
FROM their customer. I'm not convinced that redirecting this traffic is
any different from blocking it (e.g. firewall to prevent employees from
accessing facebook or torrents).
I believe the only entity who has recourse is the entity who is paying
them for service - e.g. their (paying) customer.
jc
