[d@DCC] Appeals court affirms Grokster v MGM

[Russell McOrmond]

On Fri, 20 Aug 2004, Seth Johnson wrote:

> (Aside to Russell: one thing one can say to ISPs that disallow
> servers, is ask questions like what about Instant Messenger? 
> That's a server.  It listens for incoming connections and answers
> them.)

  I would rather let the courts sort this out, assuming they will apply 
existing rulings consistently to future situations.

  If you are allowing your customers to "listen" on some ports, but
disallowing other ports, then that means you are making *policy* choices
about the type of content that your customers are exchanging.  This should
open the ISP up to partial liability for that policy, and thus the
activities of "downstream" nodes.

  This is the same for NAT.  The owner of the NAT box is the person who
should be considered to be responsible for the packets sent from that node
over the network, not any private-network host.  If the ISP is doing the
NAT, then the ISP should *NOT* be able to claim safe harbour provisions.

  A fair interpretation of existing court cases to the realities of the
technology would be a good solution to the problem.  This would force
certain ISPs to balance legal costs against the theoretical costs of
customers being competitors (which is the real reason why NAT/Firewalls
are pushed -- yet another example of attempts to get around competition
laws).

-- 
 Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://www.flora.ca/> 
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