[LINK] Excitable Nanny & Scumware

[Galen Townson]

Am I missing something? These articles seem to be blowing it out of
proportion through conjecture.

I've only ever read Optus will "investigate claims". How does that then
extrapolate somehow into "scanning it's customers Internet activity" or
monitoring traffic and content.

As a similar ISP/AUP-related example, if someone complains or reports
abusive activity, eg. DoS'ing, mail bombs, etc. but can't for some reason
provide evidence to substantiate that claim, eg. their PC or mail client
crashed or they deleted the email without saving a copy of the full
headers... then is it a problem for the ISP to investigate further under
suspicious behaviour directly affecting its services and clients, or is that
considered 'policing its own acceptable use policy'?

Is Optus neglecting its duty by not investigating claims if illegal activity
of piracy, ie. complacency after knowledge?

... or is the real concern that Optus is trying to dodge traffic capping and
thereby maintain its marketable position. In which case shouldn't that be
the point made, or isn't that newsworthy enough - "Optus tries to control
costs by profiling high use clients and announcing disincentives!" :(

What's the practical application of this if Optus _is_ wanting to curtail
high use individuals trafficking pirate software and movies - I'm curious
how they'll sustainably identify the contents of multiple 10-hr Gnutella or
IRC DCC transfers through random monitoring. I guess they could always get a
staffer to complain about the highest use individuals from a private email
account and justify letting loose the netadmins? Muhahahaha, I can just see
them running wild with policing glee in all their spare time!

--
Galen
galen@townson.net


> -----Original Message-----
> From: jeff.evans@dsd.vic.gov.au [mailto:jeff.evans@dsd.vic.gov.au]
> Sent: Tuesday, 4 September 2001 10:12 AM
> To: link@www.anu.edu.au
> Subject: [LINK] Excitable Nanny & Scumware
> 
> 
> Two recent stories that may be of interest to LINKers
> 
> Australian Excite as Your Net Nanny
> The days when your ISP becomes your censor have arrived, at least Down
> Under. The Australian ExciteAtHome broadband provider is apparently
> randomly checking what its customers download by snooping 
> their traffic. If
> it decides a customer is downloading protected content, it 
> terminates that
> account without warning. There's some speculation that the 
> policy is simply
> in place to limit bandwidth usage among customers. The policy 
> is written
> into Excite's Acceptable Use Policy, so an informed consumer 
> can decide not
> to use their service. What's really at issue is that this 
> behavior creates
> a precedent for other ISPs, which may eventually be codified 
> as law. The
> vast majority of ISPs in Western countries cringe at the prospect of
> becoming content censors, so Excite's behavior is not likely 
> to be popular
> in the industry.
>  http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2093559,00.html
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