Re: [silk] John Gilmore (of the EFF) on theregister.co.uk - sad, really

[Suresh Ramasubramanian <silk@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

root got onto a soapbox and declaimed:

> Gilmore is right. Verio is being short sighted and stupid. He oughta
> take his biz elsewhere. How can you hold the owner of a door
> responsible for the actions of everyone that passes through it?
 
Simple.  Your door / your house != Private networks - and the 'net is a
connection of private networks owned and operated by ISPs.  Open relays,
smurf amps and such are a security hazard on the 'net - and as such, most
ISP's terms of service agreements (which all users have to read and agree to)
forbid their customers from running such servers, and hold them responsible
for security on their servers.

Your right to run smurf amps / open relays etc ends where your pipe to the
ISP begins.  Within your network, within an RFC 1918 (reserved) address
space, run whatever you like - nobody will object to it at all - least of all
your ISP.

If John Gilmore leases a T-1 from Verio, he's using verio's property - and
has to respect their terms of service.  The "Free Speech" and "Common Carrier
status for ISPs" arguments he's trotting out are straw-man arguments, nothing
more.

> And airport security checks suck, too.

They do - but I suppose it's better than letting an armed hijacker walk onto
a plane and take it over.

hth
--s

-- 
Suresh Ramasubramanian + silk@xxxxxxxxxxx
People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction
rather than surrender any material part of their advantage.
		-- John Kenneth Galbraith