NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Re: FCC paths to Internet network management? ( from IP )
[ I really don't want to start another round of tit-for-tat arguments
regarding the portion of the message text below that we've
discussed earlier. But toward the end of this message a new
topic is broached that I don't believe we've talked about
directly on this list yet. That is, ISP bouncing of *outgoing*
e-mail based on the content -- in this case "forbidden" URLs
as determined by a third party.
Imagine if your obviously steamed-open letter came back from
the postal service with this insert:
"We opened your envelope to make sure that your letter was
acceptable, and we discovered that according to our
third-party rating service you mentioned some forbidden
topics (we won't list them here, you'll need to
guess!). So, we're returning your letter to you
undelivered. Have a nice day!" -- U.S.P.S.
I suspect that most people receiving their letter back in such
condition would be outraged. Should it be any different for
legal, non-spam e-mail, being sent through ISP servers since
most subscribers aren't permitted to run their own servers?
Is declaring outgoing e-mail to be spam based simply on the presence
of particular URLs acceptable? Silly? Sloppy? Actionable?
-- Lauren Weinstein
NNSquad Moderator ]
On Friday 29 February 2008 01:52, Lauren Weinstein wrote:
> The following is my personal opinion, not a statement on behalf
> of NNSquad.
>
> At the risk of sounding a bit like Bob Frankston, I don't accept the
> premise that ISPs have any intrinsic right to monitor my
> applications and micromanage my use of the Internet, beyond flow
> control as necessary to keep their networks healthy. Even the fact
> that a user is choosing to run application A or application B can be
> viewed as an element of content that should be none of the ISPs'
> business.
Agreed! It has always been my position that what I'm buying is a chunk of
connectivity, at a certain level, and that beyond that what's going through
the wires is none of their business. Unfortunately my experience has been to
the contrary, with one provider's handling of "virus" and "spam" issues
being so heavy-handed that they interfered with legitimate communications,
and if I hadn't been talking to the same person by way of fidonet (!) at that
time I'd never have known. The provider's suggestion that blacklisting a
whole cable company in BC was reasonable didn't sound so to me, nor did
their solution to the party to hit a web site to remove the block work,
either.
> Even if users choose to run 24/7 VPNs, with all applications layered
> within those encrypted channels, ISPs' main concerns should be that
> those subscribers' bandwidth usage stays within their contractual
> limits and that their overall throughput is managed to the extent
> necessary to avoid unfair impacts on other subscribers or the network
> itself.
>
> This implies that any subscriber should be able to run servers if
> they wish. If a subscriber were determined to be engaging in
> illegal activities or actions that were disrupting other users (e.g.
> spam), they would be subject to appropriate actions, of course, but
> it's inappropriate to treat subscribers as if they were
> untrustworthy crooks on an a priori basis.
Indeed. In the past few days I received an email from Verizon about them
changing their TOS, which strangely enough didn't link to the new one. A
quick perusal of it after some digging didn't show much different than what
I'd remembered from the old one, but that "no servers" clause is still in
there. They don't, anywhere that I noticed, define how they mean that
term, and if it turns out to be something that runs without my intervention
then I'm probably in trouble.
> "Disrupting other users" by this definition doesn't include the
> simple running of protocols that make heavy use of subscribed
> circuits. If ISPs have a problem with user throughput, they should
> be able to throttle the speed (not block!) as necessary.
Just so.
> But such throttling rules should be spelled out clearly, so that when a
> person pays for a circuit of a specific advertised "up to this speed," they
> have some clue as to what they're actually paying for.
Yes.
> This all doesn't address the problem of how to avoid ISPs managing
> bandwidth in ways that favor their own entertainment and related
> delivery systems over outside services, but that's another story.
>
> --Lauren--
> NNSquad Moderator
I would also like suggestions as to how I might deal with providers that see
fit to mess with things based on _content_. For example, I have an ongoing
correspondence right now which had 20 or so posts sittiiing in my sent-mail
folder, and Verizon, for some reason, decided that it didn't like one of
them:
Delivery Notification: Delivery has failed
From: postmaster@verizon.net
To: rtellason@verizon.net
Date: Today 05:36:19 am
This report relates to a message you sent with the following header fields:
Message-id: <200803020532.57241.rtellason@verizon.net>
Date: Sun, 02 Mar 2008 05:32:55 -0500
From: "Roy J. Tellason" <rtellason@verizon.net>
To: (Snipped for privacy)
Subject: Re: Fwd: [MSD] Sneaky gadget reads deleted text messages
Your message cannot be delivered to the following recipients:
Recipient address: (Snipped for privacy)
Reason: SMTP transmission failure has occurred
Diagnostic code: smtp;552 5.2.0 Remote MTA 206.46.252.46: An URL contained
in this message is blacklisted by SURBL. See http://www.surbl.org
Remote system: (Snipped) (impinc04.yourhostingaccount.com NO UCE ESMTP
server ready )
(End quoted material)
They're running something that looks at the content of my emails and bounces
it if it doesn't like _some URLs_ that I have in it? WTF?
And the URLs in the message were these:
http://www.xxxx.com (as an example, not an actual site!)
ftp://ftp.somesite.com, gopher.somesite.com, mail.somesite.com, and so on
(likewise)
http://whatismyip.com/ (as a pointer to an actual site)
This is well beyond anything I'd consider reasonable behavior on their part.
Any hints/tips/suggestions as to how to deal with this would be much
appreciated. I've already written one email to postmaster@verizon.net but it
won't likely be the last.
And if I decide that I want to use my own mail-handling software for both
directions to avoid their nonsense? I suppose that'd be a violation of
the "no servers" policy... :-(
--
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space, a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed. --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James
M Dakin