ISPs Known for Defending Their Customer's Rights?

lieumorrison asks: "With the recent examples of some US based Internet service providers going overboard in their desire to stay on the good side of the law, I ask Slashdot readers: What ISPs have a reputation of protecting their costumers by not arbitrarily giving in to C&D orders and such, without first contacting their lawyers? (ISPs hosting in the US or abroad; based on reactions in the past)"

Comments

Re:Speakeasy.net

[DarkHelmet]

Not to mention they let you run servers off your connection, won't block outgoing ports like 25 or incoming ports like 80.

If google were to be an ISP, they should buy Speakeasy, since it would go well with their "Do no evil" mantra.

Does anyone even know what their ISP policies are?

[bergeron76]

I assume this is the reason the response rate on this is so low. It's an intriguing question, though.

Re:Hurricane Electric

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

I think this gives an indication that they are clueful, but I don't know much more about their policies.

I don't know that it means that they are "clueful", maybe they just don't care. I get a huge amount of spam, port scans, and out-right hack attempts from their IP blocks, and they don't seem to really care.

Re:xs4all

[owlstead]

And they sued a dutch spammer into oblivion, tried to get cable providers to open up to other ISP's, held a conference on their 10th year on copyright issues, put some money into bits of freedom, have a large anonymous ftp server with goodies for all, provide IPv6 services... Lets just say they are on the good side. They do put letters from the Dutch RIAA through to their customers though. Anonymously, of course :)

This is not that strange, since they have sprung from a now defunct hacker magazine called hacktic. more information here

Re:The answer is simple.

[imstanny]

"You are basically saying rifle companies don't have to be responsible for your firearm actions."

That's exactly what I'm saying.

About Common Carrier status

[arete]

I am not a lawyer, but here's the very rough deal:
Someone who is transmitting information as a "common carrier" isn't responsible for that content under very broad rules.

Someone who ISN'T a common carrier still isn't automatically responsible. There's lots of ways to NOT be liable, but this is one especially broad and reliable kind of protection and companies don't want to give it up.

1. A _hosting_ company can make whatever AUP they want, and they can enforce it; they aren't acting as a common carrier anyway. A hosting company can always be liable for what they're hosting (to some extent, after they know)

2. An _access_ company is protected by common carrier rules. So if your DSL provider prevents you from seeing certain sites then they become somewhat liable for all the content passed over their lines.

It doesn't count if the filtering is optional (most family-friendly) or if it is technical (most kinds of AV protection; anything supposedly to keep bandwidth down.)

So there's a narrow techincal distinction in there somewhere, but the rough idea is that people who are _bandwidth_ providers don't want to stop you from accessing something based on content, because it reduces their protection.