Slashdot Mirror
Fairpoint Pledges To Violate Net Neutrality
wytcld writes "Fairpoint Communications, which has taken over Verizon's landline business in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont, has announced that on February 6, 'AOL, Yahoo! and MSN subscribers will continue to have access to content but will no longer be able to access their e-mail through the third-party Web site. Instead, Yahoo! and other third-party e-mail will be accessed directly at the MyFairPoint.net portal.' Since Verizon spun off its lines to Fairpoint in a maneuver that got debt off of Verizon's balance sheets by saddling Fairpoint with it, there was concern by the public service boards of the three states about how Fairpoint would deal with that debt. Fairpoint's profit plan: force all Webmail users through Fairpoint's portal, by blocking all direct access to Webmail portals other than its own. Will Fairpoint's own search engine portal be next? What can stop them?"
And as soon as there support lines are ringing non-stop, and they start losing some of thier bigger customers, that will stop pretty soon.
watching their customers dropping like flies...
Which is why I'm not looking for a new provider right now.
if it did, I'd be looking up new plans in my area. Thats just rediculous. They are altering and restricting service, with no added benefits anywhere?
The competitors should be advertising that they arent fairpoint as their best marketing campaign ever.
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
Fairpoint contact addresses:
Northern New England
521 E. Morehead Street,
Suite 240 Box #29,
Charlotte, NC 28202
Email: information@fairpoint.com
Corporate
521 E. Morehead Street,
Suite 250 Box F,
Charlotte, NC 28202
Email: information@fairpoint.com
Also tell everyone you know about, Streisand effect, tor, ssh tunnels, and other anti censorship tools.
I think that ultimately this is good for the case for Net Neutrality. It is a blatant move that blocks access rather than slowing it which will provoke an outcry even from the computer illiterate. This gives a real world example of what can happen without Net Neutrality to hit back against tiered internet supporters who claim that there will be no real downsides if we allow companies to boost their bottom lines at the expense of consumers.
Did anyone read the article???
Verizon provided a service to IT'S customers where they can read webmail of another provider on their web page. Fairpoint is saying that after x date that if you still want that kind of service you have to go through THEIR web page. You can still go to Yahoo, Gmail, AOL, and Hotmail, and read your mail from those pages directly.
This is NOT a net neutrality issue. It is an added feature provided by the provider.
I for instance have NEVER used any of my ISP features, as I have separate email provider. Nothing Changes.
Shenanigans!
Happy New Year
Let's not forget New Hampshire's "Live Free or Die."
It's sad when choosing an installation directory on your own qualifies you as an "advanced user."
No, no, there is no secret sauce; let me have a crack at it for you:
1) Irritate your customers by reducing their connectivity
2) get into greater debt
3) ask for Govt. bailout package
4) profit
5) get bought by competition to salvage the broken pieces
6) more profit
Sure, just have the government hand me a monopoly and free lines and I'll get started!
93rd rule of Slashdot: No matter how obvious my sarcasm is, my comment will be taken seriously by someone.
Maybe they don't acknowledge beta products.
And as someone currently in NH who lived in VT for most of his life, I'll point out that, by and large, the only people who actually believe in those mottos are growing-pot-on-the-porch hippie types that nobody takes seriously, and suffice to say aren't exactly internet-savvy.
FWIW, I did see a bumper sticker on a Verizon service van saying something to the general effect of "Fairpoint is the only company worse than we are!" and had to agree. Even still, you're lucky to have one option for a broadband provider in many parts of VT and NH, let alone two. I can't speak for Maine but assume it's about the same.
HOWEVER, after looking at TFA (ignore sig, please), it looks like a quote has been pulled wildly out of context:
Sounds like all that's going to happen is Verizon will be killing off their portal which was previously doing some level of integration w/ AOL, Y!, and MSN, and those who have been bought out by Fairpoint will no longer be able to use it. Which makes sense, as they're no longer Verizon customers.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
I'll reserve my judgment until I see this reported in a better source. This article is written so poorly I suspect the author has no idea what his misstatement implies. If FairPoint is planning to block major webmail sites, the Rutland Herald missed out on a huge story. They seem to be the only news source with this information.
Look at what other sites are reporting about this deal. "In Maine, regulators have alerted FairPoint that it will be scrutinized more closely than probably any other utility in the state's history." If true, the details will come to light quickly as this hits the major news outlets.
I see this as an experimental issue from them, and that means that if they don't have an outrage from their users then it's OK to not have a net neutrality and that we soon will see others following them.
Personally I think that they are shooting themselves in the foot just to later discover that they have burnt all their bridges.
So in order to complain about this I think that anybody disagreeing should send an email to their contact email address: information@fairpoint.com.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
I got their mailer and here what it says :
Yahoo!, AOL and MSN or Other Third-Party Portal Users
On Jan 31, 2009, you'll still have access to Yahoo!, AOL, and MSN content, but you'll no longer be able to access your email directly through the third-party portal. Instead, you'll now have access to the new MyFairPoint.net portal.
Beginning January 1, 2009, we'll start the migration of all Verizon-Yahoo! emails and settings to your new FairPoint WebMail account. You'll be able to access your FairPoint WebMail on this date, but your Verizon-Yahoo! messages may not be transferred until later in the month. Please check your new inbox periodically to find out when your messages are moved. The migration is expected to be complete by January 31, 2009.
From http://www.cybertelecom.org/ip/dmca.htm:
Common carrier law establishes, among other things, that the carrier is not liable for the contents of the goods carried. Common carriers have historically come in many flavors: roadhouses (hotels), trucks, trains, telegraph networks, postal services, and telephone networks.
In recent history, common carrier law has had a focus on communications networks. Communications common carriers (aka telephone networks or historically Ma Bell) are regulated under the Communications Act of 1934. [Title 47 United States Code] In the communications context, Internet networks are not common carriers and are therefore not regulate by the FCC. This created a tension. Internet networks looked, tasted, and smelled like classic common carriers, transporting goods without ownership of or responsibility for the goods transported. But Internet networks did not wish to be considered common carriers in the communications context. This has led to a schizophrenic legal approach that has addressed the liability of networks on a case by case basis, avoiding any classification of common carriage. Congress has consistently concluded that Internet networks should not be liable for the third party content that they carry. The Communications Decency Act created a defense to liability for third party content in the context of liable and defamation. Legislative proposals with regard to Internet gambling generally provide a defense to prosecution for networks that merely provide access to content including Internet gambling without being responsible for that content. And the Digital Millennium Copyright Act created defenses to liability for third party content where ISPs comply with certain provisions of the DMCA.
This has created an interesting dichotomy where, with regard to the content transmitted, ISPs are essentially common carriers; with regard to the communications networks underneath the Internet ISPs are not common carriers.
Slashdot - The great and glorious cluster fuck of Internet wisdom.
I don't see the problem with what Fairpoint is doing. They have every right to filter all communications through their portal if they so wish. I think Fairpoint's upstream providers should do the same so that we'll see this soon:
A spokesperson from Level 3 Communications had the following to say, "We wholeheartedly endorse Fairpoint's limitations they are imposing on their Internet users by requiring them to access common webmail sites through the MyFairPoint.net portal." The spokesperson continued, "Following their example, we are pleased to announce that access to the MyFairPoint.net portal will only be allowed through the MyLevel3.net portal and are working with Fairpoint's other upstream providers to implement similar restrictions."
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Well, the "Fair" in Fairpoint's name is a bit like the "Honest" in Honest John's Used Cars.
Blancmange
If you read far enough down in the replies, you'll find out that the entire Slashdot story is completely bogus. They're shutting down access to Verizon's web portal. Users will get their ISP email from a different site. Users of MSN, Yahoo, etc. will no longer be able to use those services' IMAP support to get their email from Verizon because the company is no longer part of Verizon. Therefore, if they are using a third-party site to access their Verizon email, they will now have to use the Fairpoint webmail interface for their webmail.
This, of course, raises questions about why they can't just use IMAP from the Fairpoint servers, which probably implies that the new Fairpoint service doesn't provide IMAP from outside the network, but while that would suck, it's hardly on the same scale as blocking web portals to dozens of web-based email services, some of which cannot realistically be re-served using a Fairpoint web front end because they don't provide IMAP..... The "violate net neutrality" interpretation of the article makes absolutely zero sense....
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Or as Cacadril wrote right below this while I was composing my previous message, it may well be that the Verizon service provided integrated access to MSN/Yahoo/GMail from within their webmail and that they'll have to use the new ISP's version of that service instead of Verizon's because they're losing access to the Verizon portal. I find that explanation a little dubious since AFAIK MSN doesn't provide IMAP (making a Verizon-provided web front end difficult), but that is a million times more plausible an explanation than the ridiculous notion that an ISP would deliberately block access to MSN, Yahoo, and Google's webmail services....
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
The summary is inaccurate. Verizon offers MSN and Yahoo! "extras", which basically integrate MSN and Yahoo into their own portal. (I know this, as I am a customer.) All they're saying is that, instead of using Verizon's web portal, they'll be using Fairpoint's, since they're now being served by Fairpoint instead of Verizon.
There is no network neutrality violation here.
ttuttle is a rankmaniac