> "Common Carrier" in the sense that someone is obliged to offer > certain types of connectivity: No, not for Internet (some issues > with Swisscom and Voice [Grundversorgungsauftrag] do not concern > Data traffic, although this may change with the upcoming revision > of telecommunication law [Fernmeldegesetz]).
No, sorry, maybe the context was unclear--"common carrier" refers to a series of US court decisions taken in the 1980s, which specify essentially that a voice carrier can't really be held liable for traffic which goes over their lines, due to the technical impossibility of sifting through it all. It's been used in the last few years to refer to both data carriers/ISPs, as well as certain content providers. Here's a link: http://tinyurl.com/t0fk (from findlaw.com) I'm not entirely clear on its current legal status, but the general perception of it is that, as soon as an ISP or telco starts either investigating or selectively filtering any kind of traffic, it's assumed that they are capable of doing so for any and all traffic they handle, and thus can be held responsible for "questionable" or illegal content transmitted over their lines. I thought that this might be relevant to the spam filtering discussion. As I recall, a cornerstone of Swiss providers essentially telling Madame la Juge Dessaux to sod off, was the fact that it is just not feasible for an ISP to start filtering/blocking certain types of traffic. I just wondered whether something like selectively filtering SMTP traffic (e.g. 'free' vs. 'known' customers) might send a wrong signal to some technical ignoramus with a law degree somewhere... Just a thought, I'll shut up now. Cheers, -John > -- Matthias > > ---------------------------------------------- > [EMAIL PROTECTED] Maillist-Archive: > http://www.mail-archive.com/swinog%40swinog.ch/ > ---------------------------------------------- [EMAIL PROTECTED] Maillist-Archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/swinog%40swinog.ch/
