[115520] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: tor
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jack Bates)
Thu Jun 25 09:40:28 2009
Date: Thu, 25 Jun 2009 08:39:40 -0500
From: Jack Bates <jbates@brightok.net>
To: Suresh Ramasubramanian <ops.lists@gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <bb0e440a0906242128g6683ac58kdbce7b25e6127b@mail.gmail.com>
Cc: NANOG list <nanog@nanog.org>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
Suresh Ramasubramanian wrote:
> ISPs are not common carriers. Geoff Huston is - as always - the guy
> who explains it best.
> http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac123/ac147/archived_issues/ipj_5-3/uncommon_carrier.html
>
Except interestingly, TOR is the common carrier at its best, not
filtering and investigating the use of the packets being transfered.
The cause for saying an ISP is not a common carrier is the handling of
abuse of the network, which could still be argued as common carrier in
that the effects of spam, port scans, etc do have an impact on an ISP if
they go unchecked and watch other networks filter them out. In addition,
there are plenty of laws designed to protect customer privacy in the
government's attempt to provide common carrier status for an ISP.
DMCA also attempts to preserve common carrier for the ISP, requiring the
ISP to extend a level of trust and act in specific a manner to maintain
those protections.
I don't think any of it is perfect, and it will take time for government
to catch up to understanding how the Internet can be handled.
Jack
