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Vonage's CEO Says VoIP Blocking Is 'Censorship'
Avantare writes "CEO of leading VoIP provider says port blocking of VoIP traffic is one potential small step toward an unwanted future of IP-based censorship.
According to Vonage Holdings Corp. CEO Jeffrey Citron, intentional blocking of Voice over IP traffic is more than just a competitive dirty trick -- it's an act of censorship against free speech.
In an exclusive interview here Tuesday [March 1], Vonage's chief executive said the issue of the company's recent incident of having some VoIP traffic blocked reaches beyond the market for IP-based voice communications and into the realm of free speech -- and as such, should be protected by the courts, the FCC, or by new telecom regulation that ensures free and open access over the Internet."
the market will take care of this
the day my ISP blocks a voice over IP port is the day that I switch to another ISP
...just anti-competitive business practices by entrenched, government-sponsored monopolies. Still bad - but I guess "censorship" elicits the stronger, knee-jerk reacion.
Seen any BadMarketing lately?
ISPs shouldn't be required to support VOIP, any more than they're required to support email, FTP, or any other service. An ISP should be free to choose the services that it wishes to support, and a customer can then choose an ISP that offers the services that he desires. If VOIP is a good thing, then customers will punish ISPs that don't support it. If it's bad, then VOIP will die (as is natural in a competitive marketplace). The VOIP cry of censorship is just an attempt to get legislative backing for a business model.
Only governments censor. This would be anti-competitive. Semantics, yes, but an important distiction nonetheless.
You are incorrect. First anyone can censor, not just governments. Second, these corporations are given special legal protections by acting on behalf of the government as "common carriers" of communication, and as such are required to maintain impartiality in order to retain that status. An ISP is immune from prosecution for carrying child porn, only so long as it impartially transmits data, regardless of what it is, and does not attempt to police the content of its network. Whichever ISP this is just opened themselves up to prosecution for child porn, copyright infringement, libel, false advertising, etc., etc.
Ooh, private network. Good point. I guess all the telcos better give back all that funding and the tax breaks and the eminent domain right-of-way and everything else that they got because they were making something of public benefit. There are very few large corporations, and none that built, build, or maintain nationwide infrastructure, that can make a non-laughable claim that their network is "private". Hell, strictly speaking, the *only* reason corporations are even allowed to exist as legal concepts is to provide societal benefit. It's right there in the legislation.
Just because someone has an ability to do something, it is not the same as having the right, morally, ethically, legally or otherwise, to do so.
;)
Internet service can be viewed just as phone service is -- as a common carrier device. If a phone company were to block certain incoming or outgoing calls without your prior autorization simply because they can and don't want you to, for example, contact a competing company to set up service with them, they'd find themselves in a HUGE pile of doo-doo.
In this case, and I may be reading this wrong, but they are blocking a type of internet traffic for no reason other than to be anti-competitive. This harms the consumer. And before you start saying "well then they should just move to a different ISP!" there are times then they are the only broadband game in town and as such could be found to be abusing monopoly power... that's yet another big pile of doo-doo they don't want to find themselves in or else they'll end up like Microsoft and... oh wait, nevermind that is a bad example isn't it.
But seriously, if they begin blocking types of service that customers have access to, then it's time to examine the terms of service at the very least... but I think someone from the DoJ should be peeking into this affair.
"It is a private network?" Please. If a phone company started monitoring my phone calls in order to find out which brand of corn flakes I prefer, nobody would defend them by saying, "Well, it's their system."
The Internet is becoming a critical enabler of free speech, and if those who carry Internet traffic are going to start unduly mucking about with the packets I send, then it's time to make them stop.
You would have a point, if VOIP actually consumed mammoth amounts of bandwidth, or otherwise disrupted service for everyone. But it doesn't. Certainly there are much more pressing bandwidth hogs to go after. Anyways, all the quality of service issues that might be relevant to this could be handled by using simple traffic shaping against heavy users, without regard to what functions the traffic was serving.
Essentially, you're saying that if the Internet can do something, but your ISP would make more money if you were doing it a different way, it has the right to keep you from doing it over the Internet.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!