Re: [wg-review] A Reply to Miles B. Whitener... Re: The owners of "the Internet" must manage it for their own benefit

[Robin Miller <robin@minervan.com>]

Kent Crispin wrote:
> 
> On Sun, Jan 14, 2001 at 08:26:01AM +0100, Robin Miller wrote:
> > Kent Crispin wrote:
> > > You don't eat what you please, you eat what the restaurant cooks, or you
> > > go elsewhere.  The waiter has nothing to do with it -- the waiter is a
> > > flunky who works for the guy that owns the restaurant, and it is the guy
> > > who owns the restaurant that calls the shots.
> >
> > geez, where do you live, the DDR?
> >if the guy that owns the restaurant doesn't please his clientele, he's pretty
> >quickly out of biz around here.
> 
> Yep, and that's true of ISP's, as well.  That is totally beside the
> point.  Let me repeat the point, since it seems to have gotten lost in
> restaurant analogies: your ability to find a service provider that will
> host your site comes through market forces; because someone makes the
> CHOICE to offer that service.  It does NOT happen because you have a
> "right" to have your site on the net, because you most emphatically do
> not have that right -- if no one wants to host you, you are out of luck,
> and you can't go to a court and say "that ISP has to host my site because
> I have a *right* to have it hosted".

sure, but the hosters want to get my business, I'm the customer, remember?
Sure, they can refuse my business. Sure, they can starve on purpose. :) 

Now if I were to say they have to host me for FREE - thats another story. But
I'm paying for services, and my money talks. :) If they don't like my money,
someone else sure will.


> Indeed, your ISP wants to do business with you, but you have no right to
> FORCE it to do business with you.  Moreover, if your ISP doesn't like
> what you put on your website (say you are a spammer), it can boot you
> off (*).  Therefore, it follows that you in fact have no "right" to free
> speech on the Net -- there is free speech on the net because there is a
> market for it, not because there is a right to free speech on the net.

actually you're a little bit wrong here. MOST professional webhost ISPs have no
interest in controlling content of a website. If they do so, they can get
slammed with a lawsuit like Prodigy had to endure - being considered a
publisher instead of a communications provider.

Even AOL does not monitor private email or a private chatroom unless forced to
by a court. Their family-friendly PG-13 policies extend to their public forums,
public online service and webpages, and they do have rules on spam abuse. The
email rules on spam are not to abrogate free speech, but to deal with abuse of
the mail servers. I'm pretty familiar with AOL rules and how it runs its
network. (for better or worse)

My webhoster for my domain has one special content guideline - no pornography.
This is not because they do not like pornography - its because of the traffic
that such a site generates and my host doesn't want to pay for the bandwidth.
That's ok - there are adult hosters out there that offer similar services. If I
want to have a site like that, I can shop somewhere else and pay for the extra
bandwidth.

Deutsche Telekom cannot dictate my content because I'm using my webhoster's
services for that. They provide my ISDN dialup connection and telephone
services and no more than that. If I want to buy telephone services from
Telekom, they have to provide them. They can't just say no - they are providing
telecommunications services regulated by the government. (Telekom is the only
game in town for a telephone line) They can say that the service is not
available yet - but they have to provide it to me as soon as the service
becomes available.  And Telekom cannot monitor my telephone conversations for
content - only the police is allowed to do that for obvious reasons!! 

My webhoster does not monitor my emails - I can very nearly say anything I want
within what the law considers legal speech. Now, I am a decent human being
(most of the time lol) and do not subject people to abominations like spam,
abusive or unsolicited commercial email. Personally I don't think spam is
covered under free speech - to me its like someone walking up to your door and
forcing you to listen to their sales pitch. I have every right to bar or kick
that person off the private domain of my porch in reality and should have that
right to do it on the Net as well.

Now, communication networks and its servers are property of the owners, surely.
(or leased property of their tenants, who have certain contract rights too) I
won't argue that point. But its a market, and the market will tend to provide
products and services as the customers want. Its a give and take situation.

all the best, Robin
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