Date: Thu, 17 Apr 1997 17:26:14 -0700 (PDT) From: Michael Dillon <michael@memra.com> To: isp@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Binaries in Usenet (was: News...) Message-ID: <Pine.BSI.3.93.970417171608.26558C-100000@sidhe.memra.com> In-Reply-To: <33563A4E.7494CECB@denverweb.net>
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On Thu, 17 Apr 1997, Blaine Minazzi wrote: > I think our best defense is to be involved in the process preemptivly. > If regulation is going to come, WHO do you want to be invlolved in > actually writing the laws? > Congressmen without a clue, or congressmen with some input from the > industry? It just so happens that I am on the board of directors of the ISP/C http://www.ispc.org which is attempting to represent the interests of the independent ISP industry. We are a non-profit member-run trade association. The reason I brought up this whole subject is that we do get tips about what politicians and telcos are up to. Where we can we help to explain how things REALLY are. But one of those tips recently was that there is a move by some police forces to gather evidence in preparation for laying charges. Of course, we can't be sure how accurate this is but it stands to reason that sooner or later there will be a test case to establish whether child pornography stored on an ISP's news server is subject to the laws of the land or not. My personal view happens to be that ISP's have good reason to get rid of USENET binaries entirely because USENET is the most labor intensive task most ISP's will undertake, consumes the most hardware and the most bandwidth for the smallest benefits, i.e. the percentage of customers that read news regularly is low. Of course this is just my opinion. > Lets stay regulation free as long as possible, but, when they do turn > their greedy eye > at us, we need to be organized enough to have input, and make the > regulations > actually be to our benefit. It is hard to get ISP's organized. I don't know why people won't join a trade association but so far it has been tough slogging. However the ISP/C has made a lot of accomplishments in our first year and we do have 45-50 members and some nice member discount programs like the Livingston one announced this week. But the primary reason to join a trade association is to be ready when government regulators decide to attack. Michael Dillon - Internet & ISP Consulting Memra Software Inc. - Fax: +1-250-546-3049 http://www.memra.com - E-mail: michael@memra.com
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