philosophical question about gmail

[Bill McGonigle]

On Aug 5, 2004, at 09:17, Jeff Kinz wrote:

> Anybody know what ISP's real status is vis-a-vis being/not being
> a Common Carrier?

Most of the articles I've read say the cable plant does not fall under 
common carrier provisions but data lines provisioned through telcos do.

So they can do port blocking, prioritize their conglomerate's traffic, 
turn off service without notice (Remember @Home?),  etc.

Where it could get interesting is that common carriers receive special 
protections when it comes to questionable content.  They get to claim 
that they're not the "publisher" of given content, they're just a 
common carrier.  I suspect if the parent companies of the cable 
providers weren't themselves RIAA members this issue would have been 
pressed already.

The cable companies want to have it both ways.  For the right amount of 
money appropriate legislation can probably make it so.

-Bill

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