At 9:03 AM +0000 1/2/13, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
On 01/01/2013 18:32, John Day wrote:
...
Not only tariffs. Historically, it was national enforcement of
international
regulations set by CCITT (now known as ITU-T) that prevented
interconnection
of leased lines**.
But creating a VPN with in an international carrier that crossed
national boundaries would not fall under that rule? Actually neither
would a VPN operating over a couple of carriers that crossed national
boundaries, would it?
That depended on how the various national monopolists chose to
interpret the rules. In Switzerland we were particularly affected
by the fact that the PTT monopoly was a specific line item in the
federal Constitution. In the US, you had the benefit of Judge Greene.
I could see it being viewed as commerce and subject to tariffs. (Not
that I think tariffs are a good idea.)
This is an arcane point today, but if CERN hadn't been
able to use its status as an international organization to bypass that
restriction in the 1980s, it's unlikely that TBL and Robert Cailliau
would
ever have been able to propagate the web. It's even unlikely that Phill
would have been able to access Usenet newsgroups while on shift as a grad
student on a CERN experiment.
;-) Actually what they don't know won't hurt them. ;-) We were moving
files from CERN to Argonne in the 70s through the 360/95 at Rutherford
over the ARPANET. Not exactly the way you want to do it but 15 years
later I am sure it was upgraded a bit.
This would probably have counted as a store-and-forward network,
which was exempted in many countries.
;-) I of course was joking. But I remember being told that it was
illegal, or maybe it was that no one was sure (we were all pretty new
to this stuff back then) and figured asking was not a good idea! ;-)
(In several reports at the time, our node was the highest user of the
Rutherford, probably of nodes on the net at the time.)
Also, it is exactly because ITU was in charge of resource allocations
such as radio spectrum and top-level POTS dialling codes that it was
a very plausible potential home for IANA in 1997-8, before ICANN was
created. Some of the ITU people who were active in that debate were just
as active in the preparation for WCIT in 2012.
Yea, this one is more dicey. Although I think there is an argument that
says that you need ccoperation among providers about assignment, but I
don't see why governments need to be involved. When phone companies
were owned by governments, then it made sense. But phone companies are
owned by governments any more.
That doesn't leave much does it? (Not a facetious question, I am asking!)
Indeed. But I think you'll find that in general, the countries that signed
the WCIT treaty are those that still have some semblance of a government-
controlled PTT monopoly.
I was wondering about that and guessing that it might be the case.
Thanks for the data.
Also, I would agree with Fred's comment on helping the police.
Although as we all know that can be hard call and one has to hope
that the proper controls are on them as well. The problem as I see
it is that it is not a good idea to try to constrain a new technology
to behave like the old technology. It is the capability they want it
shouldn't imply how.
Of course, the other problem which really wasn't present before (just
because of cost and/or availability) is that if the user chooses to
encrypt everything they send, the network provider can provide the
data but that is it.