Whilst sell out companies like AT&T are ready to cosy up to first the government and its illegal net tapping schemes and then with the RIAA/MPAA in illegal blocking schemes its refreshing to see one company making a stand for its neutrality.
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/05/verizon-rejects-hollywoods-call-to-aid-piracy-fight/When Hollywood asked the two big phone companies to help with its fight against piracy, they responded in opposite ways. AT&T, as we wrote, is talking about developing a system that would identify and block illicitly copied material being sent over its broadband network.
Verizon, however, opposes the concept.
Mr. Tauke offered at least three objections to the concept:
1) The slippery slope.
Once you start going down the path of looking at the information going down the network, there are many that want you to play the role of policeman. Stop illegal gambling offshore. Stop pornography. Stop a whole array of other kinds of activities that some may think inappropriate.
2) It opens up potential liability for failing to block copyrighted work.
When you look back at the history of copyright legislation, there has been an effort by Hollywood to pin the liability for copyright violations on the network that transmits the material. It is no secret they think we have deeper pockets than others and we are easy-to-find targets.
3) Privacy.
Anything we do has to balance the need of copyright protection with the desire of customers for privacy.
Verizon is also wary of the sort of “traffic shaping” system adopted by Comcast that is apparently meant to slow down the exchange of files using the BitTorrent protocol, although the details aren’t fully known.
Some have suggested that Comcast sent false signals to computers in order to have computers reject the BitTorrent session. If they are in essence altering data to alter the message, that again starts you down a path you don’t want to go down.
This guy seems on the money to me, its good to hear they have invested already in fibre deployment so in essence their stand against blocking and filtering is unlikely to have impact on themselves.
Those companies still offering a service on an over subscribed network will no doubt bleat and complain instead of upgrading and investing in what they offer.
