Susan,
There are three points in your post: your school blocking something, an ISP blocking access to certain information and the potential for ISPs to block certain services. I’ll leave you school aside as I have no idea what relationship schools have to anything in the US. But with the latter two I wonder if you see these as different issues.

That is, is (1) a putative right of access (or right to deny access) to a given information baring source just the same, in regulatory / legal terms, as (2) access to a service.

(1) seems to imply motivations that are related to particular content or sources of content. But I wonder if (2) does. If we take the Jacques Ellul’s line that “Technical development is neither good, bad, nor neutral” then we might argue that these are the same kind of decision, even if they happen to be less particular. But would we; well, you, take that kind of line, or should we regulate differently?

Ren -- these are different examples of a larger trend. Blocking a service and blocking access to a site are both examples of network providers going up the protocol stack in discriminatory ways. A service is one level below the content of a site -- but they're both above the level of transport. Many people think that network providers should stick to nondiscriminatory transport of bits. The network providers don't agree.
Susan

Susan > these are different examples of a larger trend. Blocking a service and blocking access to a site are both examples of network providers going up the protocol stack in discriminatory ways.

OK, If you want to frame it in terms of protocol stack levels, fine (though I think that blocking an IP address is actually a Network layer change which is below Transport, but I take you point that, in this case, its impact is higher /geek-ing).

Though I think my question still stands: are you suggesting that any discriminatory acts above the transport layer should be regulated equally. Or are acts that discriminate against particular sites / people etc, different from those that discriminate against services?

In the examples you give, is stopping people from seeing a union site just the same, in regulatory / legal terms, as stopping people talking ‘freely’ on Skype?

What I'm saying is this: if you want to hide something from the impotence clinic, buy viagra you just have to put it in a book. The impotence clinic decidedly dropped a clanger by admitting that I have nothing more to say on that issue.

More importantly, why are you always championing the freedom of the user and the openness of the internet to do whatever you want in terms of putting your little server out there to do anything you can dream of - but if a provider of some service (who I contend is just an ordinary user gone bigtime) starts restricting access in some way through his domain you think it is a mortal sin?

For someone who seems to decry any kind of regulation of the net you always want to see some efforts being made to keep service providers from mucking around with the status quo. Although, I admit you don't want regulatory bodies doing this, you prefer a consensus model etc. But the upshot is the same I think.

Hi, Jon --

If there were many providers of network access, I'd agree with you. The market would allow people who want choices about publishing their own things and accessing any service they want to do that.

But in a world of highly constrained network access, where the providers are ganging together to make sure they can monetize their networks, those choices won't be available.

So what changes this situation for me is that these network providers aren't just offering services through "their domain," they're mandating them for all users.

I'm uncomfortable, as I've said before, with "network neutrality" regulation. It seems pernicious to me (for the reasons you understand!). But there need to be adequate choices of access, including plain-vanilla but highspeed access. Right now, that seems impossible.

Susan

Susan > where the providers are ganging together to make sure they can monetize their networks

Is it the ‘ganging’, the ‘monetize[ing]’ or the combination that you object to? I assume it’s not the ‘ganging’ as the basis of the internet as a single-seeming network is peering agreements, which is certainly grouping, if not quite ganging. If its monetising then you don’t seem to have an argument as the only reason that most of these things is built is so that they can be monetized. So I guess is the principle that of an oligopoly.

But it would seem that doing something like blocking skype traffic is a sensible (if short sighted) decision for most network / telco players. If they all come to the same decision independently, there is no ‘ganging’ – so would that be OK?

Also, how does this work with Mobile Phone networks. Should SMS and MMS be available across all networks? What about roving, should that be a right?

Or maybe you believe in the some what European principle that there are certain social goods that should not be left to the market as there are some (or possibly many) things that markets are very bad sorting out.

Suppose that a bunch of railroads got together and decided that they wouldn't accept passengers who were enroute from a non-railroad carrier destined to transfer to another non-railroad mode of travel? Wouldn't that be interesting, if not different. Or, try substituting airlines for railroads.

Its not only wrong, but providers doing this do in fact pay a noticable performance penalty. Having done things like this, its definetly not free with respect to performance. The further up the protocol stack you go and the more you filter, the bigger a penalty you pay. Also, you can't always throw harware (aka "Moore's law") at the problem to solve it, either. End users, like businesses running commercial web sites with hundreds of millions of hits a day can *easily* tell if one provider is having a performance issue, and drop them fast.

Further, to throw water on conspirancy theories, I've seen these major providers (Sprint, MCI, TimeWarner, IBM, etc) try to cooperate to solve simple bread-and-butter types of problems, and fail until someone tells each player along the way exactly what to do in order to accomplish some larger goal. The bigger the players, it seems the poorer they are at actually cooperatively getting things done. If big providers did 'gang up', I can see where they could easily agree on what they wanted (like preventing anyone but themselves from providing VOIP), but I have a hard time believing them capable of working together to accomplish it.

Just thought I'd provide a perspective from someone who's implemented things like this...

I'm not taking the part of either of you. Restricting access to some services in school is not that bad. In my college years (not too long ago) I used to speak with my mates instead of doing what I had to or at least pay attention. I know feel I disrespected my professors and I should have been a better student.
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