. Therefore, no US newspaper has any business refusing to publish this story "on the advice of legal counsel" because no law exists that forces the censorship.
How, again, does UK law apply in the US? I'm still waiting.
Doesn't necessarily matter if it applies to the NYT or not. And, again, it is NOT censorship in any case. But, consider this:
What if instead of this,
"We could get in legal trouble if we allow UK citizens to view this content. I recommend we don't,"
the NYT legal counsel said,
"Sure we *could* publish this content in the UK, because their laws don't directly apply to us. However, according UK law, publishing this content in the UK *could* conceiably result in guilty defendents going free on very serious charges. I recommend we don't."
So you must also think it's censorship when a newspaper editor, well, edits a newspaper then?
You're criticizing a newspaper's website for editing the content they provide you. Their content is, in fact, their content to manipulate as they wish.
That they publish their content is a service they choose, selectively, to provide you in print and network accessible media. They expect you to pay for the print version, even.
You may or may not find value in that service. If you do, then great. If you don't then find another news source that fits your preferences. That's it.
Really people. I'm disappointed in/. editors and posters here. Nerds should know better.
Please tell me how this is different than a NYT UK editor manually editing the printed US version of any given story prior to printing the NYT UK version? I mean, other than the medium in this case allows for an automated editing tool...
And please, tell me how the content provider can ever censor their own content? Hint: If they do omit or include any random bit of info from a piece, it's called "editing prior to publication" and it's done as a matter of daily business. If this editing induces a prejudicial bias, then so be it.
Editorial bias is not censorship. It's often harmful and/or misleading, but NOT NOT NOT censorship.
Just another typicaly ruling from a liberal judge.
That's sure a well thought out counterpoint you've got there. But why bother with facts when they don't support your side, eh?
They make their own laws on the fly
Apparently so does the exec branch.
How are we going to prevent terrorist attacks if our own government says we can't listen in on their conversations?
Oh for Chrissake. Who has a problem with wiretapping terrorists?! I have never heard anyone say they are against wiretapping terrorists. Not one.
What I have heard is that wiretapping should done within applicable laws. Even congressional leadership (from both parties) has said that. Why is this talking point, that some people are against wiretapping, so stuck in your pea-sized red brain?!
Liberals are too concerned about big brother
As is the Republican Congress who held hearings about this exact issue...
to realized that there terrorists out there laughing it up as they get ready to explode at a town near you.
Oh? I thought we were in Iraq, "fighting them over there so we didn't have to fight them here." Was that another lie then?
I've purchased several servers, routers, switches and leased-line services from other providers to build an albeit very small corner of the Internet.
The equipment cost me well over a million dollars and I pay several hundred thousand more each year to maintain it. The circuits cost another hundred grand or so each year.
If you want to use my corner of the Internet to access the rest of it, feel free to pay me just like my other customers do and have at it.
Otherwise, screw you. I'm going home and I'm taking my network with me.
Sincerely, Joe ISP
Point being, no matter how important the internet is to you, likely for pr0n, warez and OSS--in that order--it's no more public than your living room. Each small or large piece of it is owned by someone, and they have contracts with each other to connect their pieces together so that you can geek out in your parent's basement. The end.
Please excuse me for being a "Johnny-Come-Lately", as I read your post yesterday but had no time to reply until today...now behind 40 others I see.:^(
Hope you had your firesuit ready.
In any circumstance or scenario, is it ever acceptable for an owner of a work, or their duly specified agent, to protect that ownership, [etc.]
It appears this question was merely a set-up for you to comment on the implications of the answer, "No," so I'm not sure you're looking for an actual answer. In case you are actually seeking replies, here's mine:
First let me disclose that I personally have benefitted--a lot--from royatlies paid on sales of copyrighted works. For me to flatly answer "no" to your question, as worded, would be hypocritcal at best, if I was inclined to answer "no" at all.
With that disclosure out of the way, you should also know that your question is flawed in several ways that make it even more difficult to answer than it normally should be.
The first flaw is the "is it ever" modifier. The existance of even one case, however unlikely or rare the circumstance, forces an answer of "yes" making your comments on a "no" answer moot.
The second flaw is the phrase "acceptable...to protect". What is the basis of acceptence? Morality? Social mores? And what do you mean "protect"?
Depending on interpretation, the question could be, "Is it moral for one to legally protect his/her ownership and/or receive compensation for damages incurred from third-party's disregard of such ownership?"
Or it could be, "Do we, as a society, accept that ownership of trivially duplicable material is legitimate, that said ownership has a monetary value, *and* do we accept the creation and enforcement of laws to protect that value through damage compensation?"
They're similar, but fundementally different questions. And where does simple compensation for intellectual creativity and effort figure into this? You just covered compensation for damages, not base compensation for effort--i.e. is it okay for an artist to receive a dollar--or whatever--for every album sold? That's another completely different question.
Should creators be compensated fairly and completely for their creations? Absolutely.
Is it moral to take legitimate legal action to protect ownership for your creations? In most cases, yes. Probably not all cases, though.
Is the concept of intellectual property socially acceptable, do we accept IP laws and enforcement of them? Obviously yes, as the concept of IP and related laws currently exist. But herein lies the great social debate on IP. What's socially acceptable changes over time, and there is a rising tide of discontent with the current state of IP and IP law.
[No.] Fine; that represents a fundamentally different philosophical outlook on reward for one's work, if desired, and so on.
Okay...
I trust, therefore, that your disdain for such a system also means you're not a part of activity that would leave you on the receiving end of a legal suit from the RIAA.
I trust that you're equating the ideas of "distain for" and "disagreement with". I don't think they're synonymous ideas. I also don't see why you think such distain--or disagreement--implies a complete separation from a system. It is possible, and very common, to distain or disagree with a system from inside that system. It's how systems change. So I don't think your trust is well placed.
Nor do I believe it is remotely realistic to suggest that the majority of people would ever fully disconnect from current popular culture *and* create a new popular culture rather than simply circumvent and/or legally challenge roadblocks to their enjoyment of existing pop culture.
It is infinitely more likely that pop culture industries will eventually adapt to market pressures, when those pressures are great enough.
Even if a WiFi connection is NOT secured, using it without permission is theft.
Half-baked "unlocked (fill-in-the-blank)" analogies aside, receiving and transmitting content over unlicensed public radio frequencies is *not* theft, it's using a public resource in the manner in which it's meant to be used. It simply does not matter if that content is 802.11A/B/G/etc. encapsulated IP packets.
The 2.4GHz channel your access point broadcasts on and receives on doesn't belong to you. It's public. The wired network the access point connects to, however, does belong to you. Since the default behavior of most APs is to allow network access, you have no option--if you care, that is--than to secure network access.
To use your analogy, it's as if you park your unlocked bicycle on a public street *and* put a "Please Ride Me Anytime, Free" sign on it, and then call anyone who does a "thief".
That was the first I had to say on this matter. You're thinking of someone else. He's no bright bulb either.
that laws should be effect for things that happen in other countries.
What I said was that, in your example, murder was committed in Ireland and could be justly prosecuted there, regardless of the location of the victim. The victim may be in N. Ireland, but murder was committed on Irish soil. What is not clear about that?
cause and effect can span countries very easily
Isn't that exactly what I said to you?
Here's a less violent example to consider: I, in country A, where there are no littering laws whatsoever, hurl an empty bottle out my window and it incidently bounces & rolls over the border to country B, where there are extremely strict littering laws. Assume an extradition treaty exists, and the alledged crime was witnessed by country B law enforcement.
Assuming country B is quite serious about pursuing the matter and invokes the treaty, should country A--where absolutely no crime took place--extradite me to country B for prosecution?
Now assume country A has equally strict litter laws. What happens then?
I'm certain that Ireland has laws against murder, and I'm also certain that these laws apply regardless of where the victim is standing, even if between lies a jurisdictional or national border.
If the school has "*no*frickin*authority* to control the behavior of kids outside of school", then they have no authority to assign homework. Your view of student rights decimates education entirely.
That's complete--and rather bizarre--nonsense.
There is no logical relation between educators setting deadlines for school assignments, which may assume students will need to schedule work time outside the classroom, and asserting authority over non-scholastic activities outside school hours. I have no idea how you're connecting the two concepts, but just stop because you're wrong.
Once again we seem to have somebody who can't understand that "freedom of speech" doesn't mean "freedom from consequences".
I strongly agree with the idea that people need to understand that freedom doesn't exist in a void of responsibility, and that there can be negative consequences for exercizing the rights granted by our Constitution.
It remains unclear to me, though, whether this instance illustrates a violation of free speech rights, as opposed to the case you argue.
There's not really anything to see here - a kid wrote an open letter to his school using profanity and threats,
None of the articles I've read have mentioned anything more than profane criticism--which would not warrant expulsion, IMHO. The articles do quote a sideways mention of Columbine, but not from within a context that constitutes a clear threat of, or incitement to, violence.
If you can cite any evidence of a threat, please do. I'm curious, and willing to be wrong.
and the school is pushing back.
And if there was a threat, they should squash it hard. No question. If they're just pushing back on a loudmouthed teenager who dared to call them to the carpet, then they're clearly in the wrong.
It doesn't matter if it was inside or outside of school.
Absent an actual threat it would, legally and otherwise. If he's actively disrupting a classroom in-session or any school-sponsered event in process, he could legally--and validly--be punished merely for speaking on any particular topic, no matter how benign. If he is not in a school-controlled environment, he has full Constitutional protection from government prosecution--and public schools are government bodies. In that case, he can say anything short of a threat or incitement to similar. Obviously threats are a different matter.
I for one am growing pretty tired of people doing stupid things and then saying "But, it was free speech!"
Yeah, I'm pretty tired of people saying and doing stupid stuff too.
Someone please mod this AC further into the abyss.
For the last time...again:
Using the word piracy to describe copying software against copyright did NOT originate with lawyers. It is NOT a concept invented by the *AA to smear P2P filesharing.
It's been used since before I got my first Apple II in the very early '80s, and the pirate moniker was fully embraced by the earliest practioners of software cracking and copying. They even inserted their own signature boot splashscreens into cracked binaries with cartoon Jolly Rogers, ships, treasure chests, parrots etc.
Bear in mind, these folks were likely huge D&D nerds (so described affectionately) who derived satisfaction and joy from identifying themselves as nasty, rebelious buccaneers in this narrow context.
The entimology of the definition probably goes back to "pirating" of licensed radio frequencies back in radio's early days.
So please, *ENOUGH* already with the useless, ingorant rants about this definition. It is not a battle worth the time and attention you devote to it. And yes, I recognize the same is true about this post...
Keep in mind that I'm talking about source/destination blocking, not port blocking.
Er, default "deny all" rules do block by IP, not by port. The only times the firewall would look at the transport or higher layers are:
1) When there are existing entrie in its session table for internally initiated sessions that would expect return traffic. For that it would match transport layer ports and src/dst IP addrs to table entries.
2) There are exception rules superceding the default behavior. Then each packet must be inspected at layer 4 or higher to see if exceptions apply.
3) If NPAT one-to-many overloading is configured, such that every packet's layer three and four headers are updated according NPAT table entries.
How many home users realistically deny by default when it comes to addresses?
If they don't mess up their default configurations, then "many". But who knows? Home users aren't the demographic of this article.
Personally, I think that ought to be the approach to a lot of communications - email, web, IM, phones, even cable channels!
What a PITA that would be. Doesn't scale, breaks more stuff than it fixes, and generally just ugly conceptually. But to each their own...
I think we're talking past each other. To me, "configured by default," means the device comes from the factory with that behavior configured. To you, it apparently means, "a rule administrators deliberately configure to handle types of traffic that aren't specifically handled by other rules."
By default most firewalls deny all inbound traffic on an external interface and allow all outbound traffic that originated on an internal interface. Adminisitrators usually have to "break" their configurations to allow inbound from the outside "by default"--and, yes, this happens. I don't know that I'd say 80% are broken, but many are.
The following list is by no stretch exhaustive but hits many of the major enterprise level vendors available today. I'm primarily a router/switch guy, not firewall guru, but my experience reflects the same info I got from a couple quick googles:
Checkpoint: Default deny "any" where "any" is a configurable list that by default actually omits some popular types of traffic. Yuck...just...yuck. Still, most services are in the "any" list.
Cisco (by far the largest market share): Pix-OS based? Default deny external to internal. Fine. IOS-based? Default deny external to internal. Fine.
Fortinet FortiOS(all platforms): Default deny external to internal. Fine.
Juniper/Netscreen: Default deny external to internal. Fine.
So you must be talking about SOHO broadband router and/or host-based software firewalls. Woe is the mail server admin who hides behind those.
Slashdot Mirror
Seriously, the GDP of that country is less the MS makes in a year, why would they worry?
Wow. India's GDP is around $3.32 trillion dollars per year. I didn't know M$ was that profitable.
Oh, you probably meant the _state_ of Kerala's GDP Is lower the M$ profit.
Let's google that:
Kerala GDP == 89451.99 Cr ~= $18.37 billion
M$ FY2005 Net Income ~= $12.6 billion
Hm. I think you're maybe bad at geography *and* economics.
. Therefore, no US newspaper has any business refusing to publish this story "on the advice of legal counsel" because no law exists that forces the censorship.
How, again, does UK law apply in the US? I'm still waiting.
Doesn't necessarily matter if it applies to the NYT or not. And, again, it is NOT censorship in any case. But, consider this:
What if instead of this,
"We could get in legal trouble if we allow UK citizens to view this content. I recommend we don't,"
the NYT legal counsel said,
"Sure we *could* publish this content in the UK, because their laws don't directly apply to us. However, according UK law, publishing this content in the UK *could* conceiably result in guilty defendents going free on very serious charges. I recommend we don't."
So you must also think it's censorship when a newspaper editor, well, edits a newspaper then?
You're criticizing a newspaper's website for editing the content they provide you. Their content is, in fact, their content to manipulate as they wish.
That they publish their content is a service they choose, selectively, to provide you in print and network accessible media. They expect you to pay for the print version, even.
You may or may not find value in that service. If you do, then great. If you don't then find another news source that fits your preferences. That's it.
Really people. I'm disappointed in /. editors and posters here. Nerds should know better.
Please tell me how this is different than a NYT UK editor manually editing the printed US version of any given story prior to printing the NYT UK version? I mean, other than the medium in this case allows for an automated editing tool...
And please, tell me how the content provider can ever censor their own content? Hint: If they do omit or include any random bit of info from a piece, it's called "editing prior to publication" and it's done as a matter of daily business. If this editing induces a prejudicial bias, then so be it.
Editorial bias is not censorship. It's often harmful and/or misleading, but NOT NOT NOT censorship.
Then maybe we shouldn't be a democracy anymore.
i l.php?ResourceID=4
Me? I would have thought the Voice of All Reason had at least a high school quality civics education. I stand corrected.
Settle down and read this:
http://www.wallbuilders.com/resources/search/deta
You know, all I caught from this post was, "...asses.., like me."
The rest just reads "Crazy crazy loony netkooky kooky crazy..."
So the great question is, "Will the kook burn one of his precious two dailies on this one?" I can't wait to find out.
Just another typicaly ruling from a liberal judge.
That's sure a well thought out counterpoint you've got there. But why bother with facts when they don't support your side, eh?
They make their own laws on the fly
Apparently so does the exec branch.
How are we going to prevent terrorist attacks if our own government says we can't listen in on their conversations?
Oh for Chrissake. Who has a problem with wiretapping terrorists?! I have never heard anyone say they are against wiretapping terrorists. Not one.
What I have heard is that wiretapping should done within applicable laws. Even congressional leadership (from both parties) has said that. Why is this talking point, that some people are against wiretapping, so stuck in your pea-sized red brain?!
Liberals are too concerned about big brother
As is the Republican Congress who held hearings about this exact issue...
to realized that there terrorists out there laughing it up as they get ready to explode at a town near you.
Oh? I thought we were in Iraq, "fighting them over there so we didn't have to fight them here." Was that another lie then?
Dear Netkook-With-a-Persecution-Complex-and-Bloated-Sen se-of-Entitlement Troll,
I've purchased several servers, routers, switches and leased-line services from other providers to build an albeit very small corner of the Internet.
The equipment cost me well over a million dollars and I pay several hundred thousand more each year to maintain it. The circuits cost another hundred grand or so each year.
If you want to use my corner of the Internet to access the rest of it, feel free to pay me just like my other customers do and have at it.
Otherwise, screw you. I'm going home and I'm taking my network with me.
Sincerely,
Joe ISP
Point being, no matter how important the internet is to you, likely for pr0n, warez and OSS--in that order--it's no more public than your living room. Each small or large piece of it is owned by someone, and they have contracts with each other to connect their pieces together so that you can geek out in your parent's basement. The end.
Please excuse me for being a "Johnny-Come-Lately", as I read your post yesterday but had no time to reply until today...now behind 40 others I see. :^(
Hope you had your firesuit ready.
In any circumstance or scenario, is it ever acceptable for an owner of a work, or their duly specified agent, to protect that ownership, [etc.]
It appears this question was merely a set-up for you to comment on the implications of the answer, "No," so I'm not sure you're looking for an actual answer. In case you are actually seeking replies, here's mine:
First let me disclose that I personally have benefitted--a lot--from royatlies paid on sales of copyrighted works. For me to flatly answer "no" to your question, as worded, would be hypocritcal at best, if I was inclined to answer "no" at all.
With that disclosure out of the way, you should also know that your question is flawed in several ways that make it even more difficult to answer than it normally should be.
The first flaw is the "is it ever" modifier. The existance of even one case, however unlikely or rare the circumstance, forces an answer of "yes" making your comments on a "no" answer moot.
The second flaw is the phrase "acceptable...to protect". What is the basis of acceptence? Morality? Social mores? And what do you mean "protect"?
Depending on interpretation, the question could be, "Is it moral for one to legally protect his/her ownership and/or receive compensation for damages incurred from third-party's disregard of such ownership?"
Or it could be, "Do we, as a society, accept that ownership of trivially duplicable material is legitimate, that said ownership has a monetary value, *and* do we accept the creation and enforcement of laws to protect that value through damage compensation?"
They're similar, but fundementally different questions. And where does simple compensation for intellectual creativity and effort figure into this? You just covered compensation for damages, not base compensation for effort--i.e. is it okay for an artist to receive a dollar--or whatever--for every album sold? That's another completely different question.
Should creators be compensated fairly and completely for their creations? Absolutely.
Is it moral to take legitimate legal action to protect ownership for your creations? In most cases, yes. Probably not all cases, though.
Is the concept of intellectual property socially acceptable, do we accept IP laws and enforcement of them? Obviously yes, as the concept of IP and related laws currently exist. But herein lies the great social debate on IP. What's socially acceptable changes over time, and there is a rising tide of discontent with the current state of IP and IP law.
[No.] Fine; that represents a fundamentally different philosophical outlook on reward for one's work, if desired, and so on.
Okay...
I trust, therefore, that your disdain for such a system also means you're not a part of activity that would leave you on the receiving end of a legal suit from the RIAA.
I trust that you're equating the ideas of "distain for" and "disagreement with". I don't think they're synonymous ideas. I also don't see why you think such distain--or disagreement--implies a complete separation from a system. It is possible, and very common, to distain or disagree with a system from inside that system. It's how systems change. So I don't think your trust is well placed.
Nor do I believe it is remotely realistic to suggest that the majority of people would ever fully disconnect from current popular culture *and* create a new popular culture rather than simply circumvent and/or legally challenge roadblocks to their enjoyment of existing pop culture.
It is infinitely more likely that pop culture industries will eventually adapt to market pressures, when those pressures are great enough.
Simple, isn't it?
Even if a WiFi connection is NOT secured, using it without permission is theft.
Half-baked "unlocked (fill-in-the-blank)" analogies aside, receiving and transmitting content over unlicensed public radio frequencies is *not* theft, it's using a public resource in the manner in which it's meant to be used. It simply does not matter if that content is 802.11A/B/G/etc. encapsulated IP packets.
The 2.4GHz channel your access point broadcasts on and receives on doesn't belong to you. It's public. The wired network the access point connects to, however, does belong to you. Since the default behavior of most APs is to allow network access, you have no option--if you care, that is--than to secure network access.
To use your analogy, it's as if you park your unlocked bicycle on a public street *and* put a "Please Ride Me Anytime, Free" sign on it, and then call anyone who does a "thief".
It's a--IMHO--clever joke. Nice movie reference. Too bad the mods are pop culture challenged today.
Now you are saying
That was the first I had to say on this matter. You're thinking of someone else. He's no bright bulb either.
that laws should be effect for things that happen in other countries.
What I said was that, in your example, murder was committed in Ireland and could be justly prosecuted there, regardless of the location of the victim. The victim may be in N. Ireland, but murder was committed on Irish soil. What is not clear about that?
cause and effect can span countries very easily
Isn't that exactly what I said to you?
Here's a less violent example to consider: I, in country A, where there are no littering laws whatsoever, hurl an empty bottle out my window and it incidently bounces & rolls over the border to country B, where there are extremely strict littering laws. Assume an extradition treaty exists, and the alledged crime was witnessed by country B law enforcement.
Assuming country B is quite serious about pursuing the matter and invokes the treaty, should country A--where absolutely no crime took place--extradite me to country B for prosecution?
Now assume country A has equally strict litter laws. What happens then?
Let's put this stupid example to bed then, eh?
I'm certain that Ireland has laws against murder, and I'm also certain that these laws apply regardless of where the victim is standing, even if between lies a jurisdictional or national border.
If the school has "*no*frickin*authority* to control the behavior of kids outside of school", then they have no authority to assign homework. Your view of student rights decimates education entirely.
That's complete--and rather bizarre--nonsense.
There is no logical relation between educators setting deadlines for school assignments, which may assume students will need to schedule work time outside the classroom, and asserting authority over non-scholastic activities outside school hours. I have no idea how you're connecting the two concepts, but just stop because you're wrong.
Once again we seem to have somebody who can't understand that "freedom of speech" doesn't mean "freedom from consequences".
I strongly agree with the idea that people need to understand that freedom doesn't exist in a void of responsibility, and that there can be negative consequences for exercizing the rights granted by our Constitution.
It remains unclear to me, though, whether this instance illustrates a violation of free speech rights, as opposed to the case you argue.
There's not really anything to see here - a kid wrote an open letter to his school using profanity and threats,
None of the articles I've read have mentioned anything more than profane criticism--which would not warrant expulsion, IMHO. The articles do quote a sideways mention of Columbine, but not from within a context that constitutes a clear threat of, or incitement to, violence.
If you can cite any evidence of a threat, please do. I'm curious, and willing to be wrong.
and the school is pushing back.
And if there was a threat, they should squash it hard. No question. If they're just pushing back on a loudmouthed teenager who dared to call them to the carpet, then they're clearly in the wrong.
It doesn't matter if it was inside or outside of school.
Absent an actual threat it would, legally and otherwise. If he's actively disrupting a classroom in-session or any school-sponsered event in process, he could legally--and validly--be punished merely for speaking on any particular topic, no matter how benign. If he is not in a school-controlled environment, he has full Constitutional protection from government prosecution--and public schools are government bodies. In that case, he can say anything short of a threat or incitement to similar. Obviously threats are a different matter.
I for one am growing pretty tired of people doing stupid things and then saying "But, it was free speech!"
Yeah, I'm pretty tired of people saying and doing stupid stuff too.
You, apparently, are not alone. It's proven distracting for the majority of this subthread.
You mean etymology, the study of word origins,
:^)
Yep. You've abased me with your superior vocabulary.
Each year that passes absconds with more and more words I used to know well. It's a linguistic leak that has only gotten more severe over time.
That's pretty funny. :^D
Someone please mod this AC further into the abyss.
For the last time...again:
Using the word piracy to describe copying software against copyright did NOT originate with lawyers. It is NOT a concept invented by the *AA to smear P2P filesharing.
It's been used since before I got my first Apple II in the very early '80s, and the pirate moniker was fully embraced by the earliest practioners of software cracking and copying. They even inserted their own signature boot splashscreens into cracked binaries with cartoon Jolly Rogers, ships, treasure chests, parrots etc.
Bear in mind, these folks were likely huge D&D nerds (so described affectionately) who derived satisfaction and joy from identifying themselves as nasty, rebelious buccaneers in this narrow context.
The entimology of the definition probably goes back to "pirating" of licensed radio frequencies back in radio's early days.
So please, *ENOUGH* already with the useless, ingorant rants about this definition. It is not a battle worth the time and attention you devote to it. And yes, I recognize the same is true about this post...
Also, does this issue already hold true for real-life equivalents such as credit cards and banks?
Credit cards, even department store and gas cards, are issued by banks. And for them, forms 1099-* specifically come to mind...
if they're using G.729 to save bandwidth on their Cisco Call Manager based VoIP deployments?
Unlike the other ITU-T G.X voice standards, G.729 requires licensing fees to the patentholders.
Keep in mind that I'm talking about source/destination blocking, not port blocking.
Er, default "deny all" rules do block by IP, not by port. The only times the firewall would look at the transport or higher layers are:
1) When there are existing entrie in its session table for internally initiated sessions that would expect return traffic. For that it would match transport layer ports and src/dst IP addrs to table entries.
2) There are exception rules superceding the default behavior. Then each packet must be inspected at layer 4 or higher to see if exceptions apply.
3) If NPAT one-to-many overloading is configured, such that every packet's layer three and four headers are updated according NPAT table entries.
How many home users realistically deny by default when it comes to addresses?
If they don't mess up their default configurations, then "many". But who knows? Home users aren't the demographic of this article.
Personally, I think that ought to be the approach to a lot of communications - email, web, IM, phones, even cable channels!
What a PITA that would be. Doesn't scale, breaks more stuff than it fixes, and generally just ugly conceptually. But to each their own...
I think we're talking past each other. To me, "configured by default," means the device comes from the factory with that behavior configured. To you, it apparently means, "a rule administrators deliberately configure to handle types of traffic that aren't specifically handled by other rules."
By default most firewalls deny all inbound traffic on an external interface and allow all outbound traffic that originated on an internal interface. Adminisitrators usually have to "break" their configurations to allow inbound from the outside "by default"--and, yes, this happens. I don't know that I'd say 80% are broken, but many are.
The following list is by no stretch exhaustive but hits many of the major enterprise level vendors available today. I'm primarily a router/switch guy, not firewall guru, but my experience reflects the same info I got from a couple quick googles:
Checkpoint:
Default deny "any" where "any" is a configurable list that by default actually omits some popular types of traffic. Yuck...just...yuck. Still, most services are in the "any" list.
Cisco (by far the largest market share):
Pix-OS based? Default deny external to internal. Fine.
IOS-based? Default deny external to internal. Fine.
Fortinet FortiOS(all platforms):
Default deny external to internal. Fine.
Juniper/Netscreen:
Default deny external to internal. Fine.
So you must be talking about SOHO broadband router and/or host-based software firewalls. Woe is the mail server admin who hides behind those.
Perhaps you've heard of me? I'm pretty popular!
By default I block all inbound IP connections, "except what's spefically permitted."