
Has AT&T Lost Its Mind? - brett
http://www.slate.com/id/2182152/fr/rss/
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mattmaroon
Couldn't offending sites simply use ssl?

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willchang
Illegal pictures of Britney Spears? I get the vague feeling that this guy
doesn't know what he's talking about.

Also, any amount of traffic filtering can be done on the side without slowing
down the traffic. You can always kill the rest of the packets after letting a
few through.

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mechanical_fish
Um, there are lots of pictures of Britney that are copyrighted and therefore
technically illegal to distribute over a network, except for purposes
protected by fair use. Indeed, I'm sure that _most_ of her pictures are under
copyright. Do you know of any CC-licensed Britney videos?

Whether or not anyone still intentionally downloads B.S. photos is another
matter... but, you know, law professors don't tend to be teenagers. They don't
keep up with these things.

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willchang
I know that on one hand, I'm nitpicking. But on the other hand, it makes me
queasy when some guy discusses the merits of IP-related policy without knowing
the facts. How can he say that AT&T has lost its mind if he doesn't even
realize that AT&T is probably after people that are torrenting movies and mp3s
around the clock, not those swapping pictures of Britney? And if AT&T is
talking to the MPAA and RIAA, part of the bargain will certainly be that AT&T
gets to keep their legal immunities, even if it means that the lobbyists are
going to have to change the law. In any case, the underground traffickers of
celebrity photos are going to stay unaffected.

There must be some subtly behind AT&T's contemplations. They may have decided
that they are losing money on certain of their customers, and as a regulated
monopoly that can't just raise prices, they may have to resort to legalities
such as this in order to eliminate customers, which as an action they deem
more efficient than laying down additional infrastructure.

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Xichekolas
As far as I know, the price regulation doesn't generally extend to internet
connectivity (it's for voice lines)... except for the lowest tier connection
they offer (that mythical dry loop 768k line for $10/mo)... and the phone reps
will actively deny that account option even exists unless you insist that you
know it does.

My guess is they want to start a content delivery system of some sort to sell
music/video to a captive audience (their customers) and just want to prepare
the ground for blocking out competing pirated content.

This guy doesn't make the best argument in the world, but I think the privacy
issues of this alone should kill it. Legal or illegal, I don't want some third
party eavesdropping on everything I do online.

