[ NNSquad ] Re: Civil Rights Groups Wants P2P Throttling to Preserve Rights (or something like that)

[Brett Glass <brett@lariat.net>]

Vint:

To echo your message:

Our users voluntarily choose to use our service. We tell them in 
advance that our Terms of Service prohibit P2P and that our network 
will throttle or block it automatically -- and that, inasmuch as 
possible, we do not want to look at the content. Google seems to 
assert the right to inspect people's e-mail on the basis of a 
"click wrap" agreement that most users do not read at all and few 
would read all the way down to the end, where there is a very vague 
disclosure of Google's practices:

> 17.1 Some of the Services are supported by advertising revenue and 
> may display advertisements and promotions. These advertisements 
> may be targeted to the content of information stored on the 
> Services, queries made through the Services or other information.
>
> 17.2 The manner, mode and extent of advertising by Google on the 
> Services are subject to change without specific notice to you.
>
> 17.3 In consideration for Google granting you access to and use of 
> the Services, you agree that Google may place such advertising on the Services.

What's more, you inspect the contents of e-mail in an attempt to 
block spam, which requires far deeper inspection than we ever do to 
block network abuse.

How can you, as a representative of Google, repudiate our ISP for 
enforcing our terms of service and maintaining the quality of our 
service (which we spell out clearly to customers) when you do 
things that are much more invasive?

--Brett Glass

At 03:35 PM 3/7/2008, Vint Cerf wrote:

> Brett, these users voluntarily choose to use the gmail 
> application. We tell them in advance that we will select 
> advertising based on the message contents. You seem to assert the 
> right to inspect my packets even if all I am using is your packet 
> transport service. V
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Brett Glass <nnsquad@brettglass.com>
> To: Vint Cerf; Sean Donelan <sean@donelan.com>
> Cc: nnsquad@nnsquad.org <nnsquad@nnsquad.org>
> Sent: Fri Mar 07 14:21:24 2008
> Subject: Re: [ NNSquad ] Re: Civil Rights Groups Wants P2P 
> Throttling  to Preserve Rights (or something like that)
>
> At 12:59 PM 3/7/2008, Vint Cerf wrote:
>
> >the issue is whether I am using Brett's email services or not, as I
> >see it. He is right to resist abuse of email relays. He is also right
> >to limit total consumption. but I am not comfortable with the idea
> >that he could inspect my packet content and decide on the basis of
> >protocol or content what I can send.
>
> Vint:
>
> I find this highly ironic. As we are all aware, Google not only 
> inspects the contents of GMail users' highly personal e-mail but 
> uses them to target advertising at them. Certainly, this is far 
> more egregious than simply monitoring (and no more than we need 
> to!) to stop abuse.
>
> --Brett Glass