RoadRunner nonsense

[Phil Thayer]

Whether people like it or not, the ISP's own the IP ranges that they
serve.  They can implement this type of functionality.  Whose to say
that there may be some less educated users out there that would benefit
from a "feature" such as this.  And if a user really doesn't like what
they are doing they can always switch to another ISP.  If there is not
another cable ISP then switch to DSL.  There are other options available
to most users of the internet.

As for censorship and control of the internet by an ISP like Comcast,
this is a standard practice in most countries outside of the US.  The US
has the most lenient internet access laws in the world.  There are a lot
of countries that have a single ISP servicing the entire country and
they have proxy servers that block huge amounts of content.  I lived in
a country at one time that blocked any site that had the word "sex" in
the URL.  A friend of mine who was an alumni of Middlesex University in
England could not access his colleges web pages because of it.  The ISP
that serviced the country was also the telephone company.  They blocked
all access to any IP Telephony ports or online telephone services.  They
had the right to do that because they owned the IP addresses they were
servicing.

I think the US is far from being a controlling entity on the internet.
And as for Comcast, from a marketing standpoint, they implemented a
"feature" that would be helpful to a majority of their subscribers.

Phil

> -----Original Message-----
> From: kclug-bounces at kclug.org 
> [mailto:kclug-bounces at kclug.org] On Behalf Of feba thatl
> Sent: Wednesday, February 27, 2008 8:13 PM
> To: Jonathan Hutchins; kclug at kclug.org
> Subject: Re: RoadRunner nonsense
> 
> And comcast's actions are minor the vast majority of their customers,
> obviously. Whether you consider it 'minor' or not, it's still
> absolutely unneeded. What if they started adding advertisements to the
> bottom of web pages as you load them? It would be 'minor', but that
> doesn't mean it's acceptable. There is no reason to excuse them for
> doing something because it's less bad, just as you do not excuse
> thieves because there are murderers out there.
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