cdru
Go Colts
Premium,MVM
join:2003-05-14
Fort Wayne, IN
 ·Verizon FIOS
| Clue stick
Does anyone have a clue stick we can use to wack the good senator Waxman (D-California) with?
Note to the FBI/CIA/NSA/TLA that is monitoring this post. This post was not an attempt to cause any bodily harm to the Sen. Waxman. It's meant to point out instead that he is a complete idiot in thinking that it's any P2P software's fault that a classified information is kept in such a way that it can be so easily shared.
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swhx7
Premium
join:2006-07-23
Elbonia
 ·RoadRunner Cable
| There are good reasons for the "common carrier" principle. It assures availability of services such as transportation and internet; if carriers were liable for everything they carry, the constant threat of lawsuits would reduce the offerings in the market, and would make the terms for customers more restrictive, thereby hindering commerce in general.
There are huge technical obstacles to ISPs trying to filter everything illegal. They would have to constantly monitor all file contents in all traffic - very expensive and difficult even with the fastest network equipment. And then they would have to identify all illegal content.
Avoiding false positives would mean not assuming all file transfers are copyright-infringing; avoiding false negatives would mean identifying the content of every file in every format and variation, and mapping it all to a vast copyright database that doesn't even exist in today's world. And that's just copyright - libel, illegal pornography, "terrorist" communications and whatever else would present additional challenges.
It's not workable. But you can't explain technology to politicians. They get their simplified versions of it from interested parties - lobbyists, or this guy trying to shift the blame for what his product's users are doing. |
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cdru
Go Colts
Premium,MVM
join:2003-05-14
Fort Wayne, IN
·Verizon FIOS
| said by swhx7  :There are huge technical obstacles to ISPs trying to filter everything illegal. Just the other day I was trying to explain this to a friend of a friend while fixing their computer. They had installed some "Internet Security Suite" type of software and subsequently they were having all sorts of issues. I mentioned that I wasn't a big fan of filtering software because it's very difficult (actually impossible) to guarantee that all things were blocked that were suppose to be while also not having false positives. Right then he mentioned that it was annoying that wherever they went pages were always blocked. I tried to go to google groups and it was blocked. Turns out that they had ALL the filters and options turned on (by default). I also mention that if their teenagers really wanted to find something dirty online, they were going to do so regardless of the filter and showed how they could just kill the service.
As a side note, that same service that was also suppose to stop popups didn't (thanks spyware) and the antivirus service always failed to start with an unknown error even after a reinstall. Great stuff.
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