Now just include the insructions for this with every machine and in such a way that it is understandable and will be done by a non technical user who can barely match the colors of conenctors (a big step forward already, before colored conenctors they were not able to connect it at all) for connecting their box. With all respect, as logn as computers are sold as devices similar to a TV or dishwasher, ie, somethign that just works once you luhhed it in, requiring people to change (for them) obscure security settings is simply asking for something that will never ever work. If this problem is to be solved the solution has to come from somewhere else because this is not a technical problem (the technical side oif it has been solved as you show correctly) but a problem of how things are sold and to whom, and in what kind of configuration.
> That it isn't turned on by default was a mistake but to say that XP out of the box will be infected before you have the ability to update is outright incorrect.
It is entirely correct, out of the box it will be infected in no time, and preventing it requires you to change its configuration to something that is no longer 'out of the box'.
You are right that the problem can be prevented, and can be prevented without need for 3rd party software, but OUT OF THE BOX, XP will be infected in no time.
Of course reading is very difficult and all.. but still..
The fact is that they were testing what people are using TODAY, not what shops should be selling and people might be using in the future.
With regards to SP1, the following quote from the article seems somewhat relevant:
Many computers around the world are still running Windows SP 1, though exact numbers are hard to come by. Gartner research director Michael Silver estimates that by the end of 2005, half of the world's desktops used in businesses will still be using SP 1.
So, while you are right that people should be running SP2 if they use Windows at all, many people are not doign so, and are extremely unlikely to start doing so in a reasonable amount of time. Hence looking at what a substantial part of the users is running is a very good idea. With regards to this, Win2k SP4 should have been tested as well.
> I don't know if I'd say that government regulation is a good idea but I think the government should allow anyone to compete freely. The phone companies, cable companies, etc often have government sponsored monopolies or use anti-competitive practices to keep smaller companies or community-groups from becoming competition.
I fully agree.
The regulation that is in place here now is actually an efford to undo the situation of government granted monopoly that existed before. Ideally, the regulation can go over time once the monopolies have been undone.
Well, the ISP I am using gives FIXED IPs, yet they are listed by blacklists that supposedly list dynamic IPs. Asking blacklist operators about it gets the simple reply that it is a consumer DSL block so they block it regardless of it being static.
So, while what you say is true, it is also true that the blacklist operators are being overly broad with what they list.
That you block port 69 access to routers and your own servers is fine. There is no reason whatsoever to block port 69 on your customers connection however, and there are very good reasons not to. VOIP is one, but tftp is a service that has its use, and you as ISP are not the one to tell if this is usefull for a customer or not.
Hrm, the argument about port 25 is at best a half truth.
Normally, those blocks of IPs that are known to be consumer DSL end up at so many blacklists already that they are pretty useless for sending out mail anyway, regardless of spam and virus infected mail being sent out or not from the netblock.
The consequence of this is just that ISPs now have a choke point where they can rate limit outgoing mail.
The real problem however is not ISPs but blacklist operators not using some fine grained selection for what to list.
To me it seems that lack of competition between telcos as well as between network providers (ISPs) is a large part of the problem.
I live outside the USA, in the somehwat tiny country called the Netherlands. Where I live, I have a choice between at least 3 telcos, at least 5 DSL ISPs (using one of the 3 telcos, and one offering the alternative of cable)
My ISP started years ago as a 'free' internet provider, and is in fact a part of one of the 3 telcos. Now, I happen to use some other telco, but can still get their services (and DSL) despite it not going through their own lines.
They just upgraded my connection to 8mbit down and 1mbit up, give fixed IPs, allow running servers explicitly (not unusual overhere actually), have a fair use policy, but despite using 100s of gigabytes/month I have yet to run into the limits of that policy. They are also not an exception here, and competition forces them to keep this up.
The interesting thing is that part of this is a consequuence of government interference, specifically, forcing telcos to carry DSL for any ISP and not just their own.
The telco that my ISP belongs to has to allow others on their network, but in turn, their ISP is also allowed on the network of other telcos, so in the end it evens out nicely ad both have the possibility to deliver services quicker and with less investement.
Regulation that serves a clear purpose and is implemented well can do a lot of good for an otherwise free market, and can in fact make that market more free.
I know that doing it yourself is the American way in this, but on behalf of its citizens, the overnment could in theory do a lot of good here.
First of all, the assumption that not liking your service is the reason people switch is at least not always correct. Getting offered a better alternative is most likely the most common reason for people to switch. Now, instead of only being a bit on the expensive side (or offering a bit less for the same money) you also spoil your reputation.
B is definitely not the correct business answer for a company that offers a service.
That is actually an option my ISP offers. They get me bandwidth, no more and no less (and they do that very well for that matter)
Yes you can get spam filtering and virus protection if you want and tell them to turn it on (which may cost a bit depending on situation, for the average consumer it will NOT cost)
This odel opens a market for companies specialiying in virus protection and spam filtering, and allows an ISP customer to select the more appropriate solution.
With regards to SSN, no, the entire problem is that it is used to authenticate things instead of as identification. Identification would still require authentication to take place and that makes a SSN a lot less usefull for criminals. You are right about that CC companies should prevent replay attacks based on numbers and that numbers dont provide good authentication. I find it a bit strange that you then argue that the SSN (wich is vulnerable in the exact same way) should be used as authentication.
The problem is not that a creditcard is indentified by a number, but that that number is all you need to authoriye a payment (so, it also authenticates it) and the same applies to SSNs and any other such numbers.
I happen to live in Europe, and if I want to withdraw money from my bankaccount, I need 2 things: - something that identifies the account I want to withdraw money from - Proof of my own identity
The later can be a simple number (bad) or some challange response mechanism that requires me to be in physical possesion of an item as well as having knowledge about some secret (a lot better)
> Can't anyone see a down side to making your "personal" information your property? Say goodbye to phonebooks and directory assistance.
Eh? so, I give permission to publish my name and number if I want to be found, and if not then I cant be found. I really fail to see any problem here whatsoever.
> What about arrest records? Will it be illegal for me to know if the guy down the street is a sex offender?
The flipside of that is that such knowledge actually gives people very little choice other then contibuig beign criminal after punnishment. Why? because they have no fucking chance to build a normal life if everyone will turn them down based on such information. From an individual point of view I understand your comment, but for society as a whole it might actually be better if such information was not public.
> is that it requires the granting of "copyright" and the associated powers to individuals, and not the ??AA. Or other money-grubbing corporations. Who's gonna support that?
Since quite some time every individual in the USA will get automatic copyright on their creations, ??AA or not.
The issue here is that it would require asignment of copyright on what is merely a collection of information information instead of a creation.
Uhm, yeah.. ask Apple to give itself a license to enable bytecode in the freetype library they distribute...
This simply has nothing to do with them not allowing OSS to use their patents, Freetype includes the code, but you have to obtain the license when turning it on.
Of course the above is a problem, just a different oen from Apple not grantng itself a license obviously.
> I sincerely hope that most government and corporate support techs are knowledgable users and that the average users have little or nothing to do with software installation.
So do I, I try to make a living from exactly that. OIn the meantime, established Windows users pay most of my bills tho.
> As for day-to-day ease of use, there is almost no difference between Windows, Mac or Linux desktops. Even retraining is on the order of "You used to click the blue circle, now you click the orange star."
Heh.. for most things, yes, and for business use this is quite feasable.
There is an interesting thing to this whole desktop market however, it is dominated by commodity software, and as a result, the home user is all important. Not because of the money a single home user has to spend but for the force they present when it comes to mass selling things. Forget those and you automatically reduce yourself to niche markets. There is little wrong with that in itself of course.
> Of course there will be resistance to changing systems but, as long as you are on the MS treadmill, you get that every two to three years anyways. Assuming the users' apps are more or less the same, their stress should be no worse than the "acceptable" level produced by an MS-MS transition (for the average user there are more differences between '98 and XP than between XP and KDE).
As long as you stay away from configuring/managing the system? there are very few differences between 95 and 2k, more with xp, but with a preconfigured desktop, many people will not notice those either. The actual 'feel' of applications is the same as it has been for almost a decade now, the look is a bit different indeed.
When comparing Windows XP with KDE, at first there is little difference because KDE can be made to act and look a lot like XP. How applications will behave is an entirely different matter and depends a lot on what toolkit the app uses and how it is configured (if at all)
Again, I see little in the way of using Linux or FreeBSD or similar systems in environments that are large enough a dedicated system admin anyway, and that don't allow user modifications to installed systems.
For the small business and home user you basicly need a 'plug and play' computer that just works with whatever 'plug and play' device they connect, and does their basic browsing, emailing and word processing and a bit of a spreadsheet. Something only OS X does well enough imho, but it has this pricetag of requiring Apple hardware.. WIndows? it tries to, and often good enough for most people, and better then many Linux distros.
Of course the Debian install did this for all hardware it supports out of the box, which is everythign except for my video card, wireless network card and the scanner of a hp multifunction device. A few apt-gets, a cvs get, some reading and compiling 1 (or 2 in my case due to running a kernel for which there is no binary nvidia module) modules further and all worked.
Could Joe sixpack have gone out to the shop, buy a wireless thingy for the pc, and just expect it to work? (and no, that doesn't matter in a business environment, I know)
> Why should they, if they can get away without taking the time?
Except for the few cases where such applications are actually better (asterisk comes to mind) or the comemrcial applications are very expensive (and the user does not want to pirate the software), none for the average user. The argument that the applications don't exist is usually not true however.
For some users having a lot more control over what their computer runs is a good argument either for technical or political or ideological reasons.
> I would INSTANTLY switch to "open source" operating systems and applications if I could find some that met my needs.
I did so years ago, and seldom if ever have a need to boot Windows due to applications that I need myself.. I do have a need for Windows due to customers using it tho.
> Who wouldn't?
Obviously many people.
There are applications to suit the needs of the average user in many cases, but the average user is not willing to invest the time in making those work and learning to use them. I did because I already had another need for open source software (well, actually for a Unix like system, and buying a sun/sgi/hp/ibm unix box was out of the question for me at that time)
What people often forget is that OSS software might be free as in beer, but you have to work a bit harder to use it for now.
Linux and FreeBSD and similar systems have come to a point where for a knowledgable user, they may be as easy or easier to install and use then Windows and even OS X, but that doesn't really help the average user. Fetting a machine with a reinstalled and preconfigured Linux desktop and modern installers for comemrcial software for Linux go a long way to making this a possibility, but as long as the default offer from your average computer shop is some x86 box with XP home, it will take a long time to get there.
Oh, and even for those who do know a bit about computers in general, a different system still takes a bit of time to get used to, and not all of them are prepared to put in that time.
> thats was my point neither is really secure, but with email, at least no one can read it, because it's just sitting on the coffe table ( unless it was printed of course).
If you are on a cable or dsl network, chances are your neighbor can just read it as easily while you are reading it..
Also, replace coffeetable with server, and 'someone' with 'cracker' or 'admin', and you have some more people who could, and in cases will read it.
> More broadly, I think my arguments are reasons not to allow this. Frankly, if you want to protect access to your data, keep your passwords in your safety deposit box. Put them in your will. Whatever. By establishing a service like this (storage of your email) as a property, we're creating a decidedly difficult legal knot.
I did understand you consider it undesirable to treat email stored by yahoo and similar as 'property'.
The legal issues I see are ones that need to be answered anyway, and have to do with the concept of 'virtual property', ie, can you 'own' soemthign that consists of stored 1s and 0s only (beyond the scope of copyright and other forms of interlectual property).
On the other side, if you leave your letters in a box and then deposit it at some place, the box is and remaisn your property, and after you die, that of your heirs. I see no reason whatsoever to not have the same happen with email. THe whole 'it is stored electronically, it is a service, it is not something physical' etc etc are in my opinion bad arguments and at best point at the issue about virtual property. They are not a good reason to change the situation when compared with 'normal' mail because they have to do purely with technicalities regarding transport and storage and not with the mail and its content, senders or intended receipients.
> Can one spouse claim family ownership of it, and demand access to the account even if the other spouse had never explicitly shared the password of the account?
That should depend on the terms of the marriage, but I do not see a problem as such, rather, I do see reason to not use your 'private' email accounts for cheating. Its not like the government can't read whats in there anyway if they want to, you trust them, why not the person you previously promissed to share your life with? Oh, it went wrong? well, big deal.
> Suppose alternately that the email account is property, and the email-provider goes out of business, taking the account down with it, can you sue for damages for loss of property?
I think that would be a go0od thing.
So.. counter examples of what? More like one somewhat irrelevant but supportive argument and one good argument to do exactly as suggested, treat it as property.
Slashdot Mirror
Now just include the insructions for this with every machine and in such a way that it is understandable and will be done by a non technical user who can barely match the colors of conenctors (a big step forward already, before colored conenctors they were not able to connect it at all) for connecting their box. With all respect, as logn as computers are sold as devices similar to a TV or dishwasher, ie, somethign that just works once you luhhed it in, requiring people to change (for them) obscure security settings is simply asking for something that will never ever work. If this problem is to be solved the solution has to come from somewhere else because this is not a technical problem (the technical side oif it has been solved as you show correctly) but a problem of how things are sold and to whom, and in what kind of configuration.
> That it isn't turned on by default was a mistake but to say that XP out of the box will be infected before you have the ability to update is outright incorrect.
It is entirely correct, out of the box it will be infected in no time, and preventing it requires you to change its configuration to something that is no longer 'out of the box'.
You are right that the problem can be prevented, and can be prevented without need for 3rd party software, but OUT OF THE BOX, XP will be infected in no time.
Of course reading is very difficult and all.. but still..
The fact is that they were testing what people are using TODAY, not what shops should be selling and people might be using in the future.
With regards to SP1, the following quote from the article seems somewhat relevant:
So, while you are right that people should be running SP2 if they use Windows at all, many people are not doign so, and are extremely unlikely to start doing so in a reasonable amount of time. Hence looking at what a substantial part of the users is running is a very good idea. With regards to this, Win2k SP4 should have been tested as well.
> I don't know if I'd say that government regulation is a good idea but I think the government should allow anyone to compete freely. The phone companies, cable companies, etc often have government sponsored monopolies or use anti-competitive practices to keep smaller companies or community-groups from becoming competition.
I fully agree.
The regulation that is in place here now is actually an efford to undo the situation of government granted monopoly that existed before. Ideally, the regulation can go over time once the monopolies have been undone.
Well, the ISP I am using gives FIXED IPs, yet they are listed by blacklists that supposedly list dynamic IPs. Asking blacklist operators about it gets the simple reply that it is a consumer DSL block so they block it regardless of it being static.
So, while what you say is true, it is also true that the blacklist operators are being overly broad with what they list.
That you block port 69 access to routers and your own servers is fine. There is no reason whatsoever to block port 69 on your customers connection however, and there are very good reasons not to. VOIP is one, but tftp is a service that has its use, and you as ISP are not the one to tell if this is usefull for a customer or not.
Hrm, the argument about port 25 is at best a half truth.
Normally, those blocks of IPs that are known to be consumer DSL end up at so many blacklists already that they are pretty useless for sending out mail anyway, regardless of spam and virus infected mail being sent out or not from the netblock.
The consequence of this is just that ISPs now have a choke point where they can rate limit outgoing mail.
The real problem however is not ISPs but blacklist operators not using some fine grained selection for what to list.
To me it seems that lack of competition between telcos as well as between network providers (ISPs) is a large part of the problem.
I live outside the USA, in the somehwat tiny country called the Netherlands. Where I live, I have a choice between at least 3 telcos, at least 5 DSL ISPs (using one of the 3 telcos, and one offering the alternative of cable)
My ISP started years ago as a 'free' internet provider, and is in fact a part of one of the 3 telcos. Now, I happen to use some other telco, but can still get their services (and DSL) despite it not going through their own lines.
They just upgraded my connection to 8mbit down and 1mbit up, give fixed IPs, allow running servers explicitly (not unusual overhere actually), have a fair use policy, but despite using 100s of gigabytes/month I have yet to run into the limits of that policy. They are also not an exception here, and competition forces them to keep this up.
The interesting thing is that part of this is a consequuence of government interference, specifically, forcing telcos to carry DSL for any ISP and not just their own.
The telco that my ISP belongs to has to allow others on their network, but in turn, their ISP is also allowed on the network of other telcos, so in the end it evens out nicely ad both have the possibility to deliver services quicker and with less investement.
Regulation that serves a clear purpose and is implemented well can do a lot of good for an otherwise free market, and can in fact make that market more free.
I know that doing it yourself is the American way in this, but on behalf of its citizens, the overnment could in theory do a lot of good here.
First of all, the assumption that not liking your service is the reason people switch is at least not always correct. Getting offered a better alternative is most likely the most common reason for people to switch. Now, instead of only being a bit on the expensive side (or offering a bit less for the same money) you also spoil your reputation.
B is definitely not the correct business answer for a company that offers a service.
That is actually an option my ISP offers. They get me bandwidth, no more and no less (and they do that very well for that matter)
Yes you can get spam filtering and virus protection if you want and tell them to turn it on (which may cost a bit depending on situation, for the average consumer it will NOT cost)
This odel opens a market for companies specialiying in virus protection and spam filtering, and allows an ISP customer to select the more appropriate solution.
So.. I fail to see a problem here really.
With regards to SSN, no, the entire problem is that it is used to authenticate things instead of as identification. Identification would still require authentication to take place and that makes a SSN a lot less usefull for criminals. You are right about that CC companies should prevent replay attacks based on numbers and that numbers dont provide good authentication. I find it a bit strange that you then argue that the SSN (wich is vulnerable in the exact same way) should be used as authentication.
The problem is not that a creditcard is indentified by a number, but that that number is all you need to authoriye a payment (so, it also authenticates it) and the same applies to SSNs and any other such numbers.
I happen to live in Europe, and if I want to withdraw money from my bankaccount, I need 2 things:
- something that identifies the account I want to withdraw money from
- Proof of my own identity
The later can be a simple number (bad) or some challange response mechanism that requires me to be in physical possesion of an item as well as having knowledge about some secret (a lot better)
Yeah, I completely agree (but then, I think they should keep it private unless you give explicit permission to publish it anyway)
Well, only marginally secured does not make for a good faith efford, so what is the problem exactly?
> Can't anyone see a down side to making your "personal" information your property? Say goodbye to phonebooks and directory assistance.
Eh? so, I give permission to publish my name and number if I want to be found, and if not then I cant be found. I really fail to see any problem here whatsoever.
> What about arrest records? Will it be illegal for me to know if the guy down the street is a sex offender?
The flipside of that is that such knowledge actually gives people very little choice other then contibuig beign criminal after punnishment. Why? because they have no fucking chance to build a normal life if everyone will turn them down based on such information. From an individual point of view I understand your comment, but for society as a whole it might actually be better if such information was not public.
> is that it requires the granting of "copyright" and the associated powers to individuals, and not the ??AA. Or other money-grubbing corporations. Who's gonna support that?
Since quite some time every individual in the USA will get automatic copyright on their creations, ??AA or not.
The issue here is that it would require asignment of copyright on what is merely a collection of information information instead of a creation.
While I wouldnt call Slashdot mission critical in anz waz, I would not call it a low frequented blog either.
Your post was stored using MySQL with InnoDB because that is what slashdot uses.
Hmm yes, lets argue about the quality of news on American TV...
> I misspoke. OpenBSD doesn't do SMP
As of version 3.6, it actually does support SMP
Uhm, yeah.. ask Apple to give itself a license to enable bytecode in the freetype library they distribute...
This simply has nothing to do with them not allowing OSS to use their patents, Freetype includes the code, but you have to obtain the license when turning it on.
Of course the above is a problem, just a different oen from Apple not grantng itself a license obviously.
> I sincerely hope that most government and corporate support techs are knowledgable users and that the average users have little or nothing to do with software installation.
So do I, I try to make a living from exactly that.
OIn the meantime, established Windows users pay most of my bills tho.
> As for day-to-day ease of use, there is almost no difference between Windows, Mac or Linux desktops. Even retraining is on the order of "You used to click the blue circle, now you click the orange star."
Heh.. for most things, yes, and for business use this is quite feasable.
There is an interesting thing to this whole desktop market however, it is dominated by commodity software, and as a result, the home user is all important. Not because of the money a single home user has to spend but for the force they present when it comes to mass selling things. Forget those and you automatically reduce yourself to niche markets. There is little wrong with that in itself of course.
> Of course there will be resistance to changing systems but, as long as you are on the MS treadmill, you get that every two to three years anyways. Assuming the users' apps are more or less the same, their stress should be no worse than the "acceptable" level produced by an MS-MS transition (for the average user there are more differences between '98 and XP than between XP and KDE).
As long as you stay away from configuring/managing the system? there are very few differences between 95 and 2k, more with xp, but with a preconfigured desktop, many people will not notice those either. The actual 'feel' of applications is the same as it has been for almost a decade now, the look is a bit different indeed.
When comparing Windows XP with KDE, at first there is little difference because KDE can be made to act and look a lot like XP. How applications will behave is an entirely different matter and depends a lot on what toolkit the app uses and how it is configured (if at all)
Again, I see little in the way of using Linux or FreeBSD or similar systems in environments that are large enough a dedicated system admin anyway, and that don't allow user modifications to installed systems.
For the small business and home user you basicly need a 'plug and play' computer that just works with whatever 'plug and play' device they connect, and does their basic browsing, emailing and word processing and a bit of a spreadsheet. Something only OS X does well enough imho, but it has this pricetag of requiring Apple hardware.. WIndows? it tries to, and often good enough for most people, and better then many Linux distros.
Of course the Debian install did this for all hardware it supports out of the box, which is everythign except for my video card, wireless network card and the scanner of a hp multifunction device. A few apt-gets, a cvs get, some reading and compiling 1 (or 2 in my case due to running a kernel for which there is no binary nvidia module) modules further and all worked.
Could Joe sixpack have gone out to the shop, buy a wireless thingy for the pc, and just expect it to work? (and no, that doesn't matter in a business environment, I know)
> Why should they, if they can get away without taking the time?
Except for the few cases where such applications are actually better (asterisk comes to mind) or the comemrcial applications are very expensive (and the user does not want to pirate the software), none for the average user. The argument that the applications don't exist is usually not true however.
For some users having a lot more control over what their computer runs is a good argument either for technical or political or ideological reasons.
> I would INSTANTLY switch to "open source" operating systems and applications if I could find some that met my needs.
I did so years ago, and seldom if ever have a need to boot Windows due to applications that I need myself.. I do have a need for Windows due to customers using it tho.
> Who wouldn't?
Obviously many people.
There are applications to suit the needs of the average user in many cases, but the average user is not willing to invest the time in making those work and learning to use them. I did because I already had another need for open source software (well, actually for a Unix like system, and buying a sun/sgi/hp/ibm unix box was out of the question for me at that time)
What people often forget is that OSS software might be free as in beer, but you have to work a bit harder to use it for now.
Linux and FreeBSD and similar systems have come to a point where for a knowledgable user, they may be as easy or easier to install and use then Windows and even OS X, but that doesn't really help the average user. Fetting a machine with a reinstalled and preconfigured Linux desktop and modern installers for comemrcial software for Linux go a long way to making this a possibility, but as long as the default offer from your average computer shop is some x86 box with XP home, it will take a long time to get there.
Oh, and even for those who do know a bit about computers in general, a different system still takes a bit of time to get used to, and not all of them are prepared to put in that time.
> thats was my point neither is really secure, but with email, at least no one can read it, because it's just sitting on the coffe table ( unless it was printed of course).
If you are on a cable or dsl network, chances are your neighbor can just read it as easily while you are reading it..
Also, replace coffeetable with server, and 'someone' with 'cracker' or 'admin', and you have some more people who could, and in cases will read it.
If you want to keep a secret, don't tell ANYONE.
> More broadly, I think my arguments are reasons not to allow this. Frankly, if you want to protect access to your data, keep your passwords in your safety deposit box. Put them in your will. Whatever. By establishing a service like this (storage of your email) as a property, we're creating a decidedly difficult legal knot.
I did understand you consider it undesirable to treat email stored by yahoo and similar as 'property'.
The legal issues I see are ones that need to be answered anyway, and have to do with the concept of 'virtual property', ie, can you 'own' soemthign that consists of stored 1s and 0s only (beyond the scope of copyright and other forms of interlectual property).
On the other side, if you leave your letters in a box and then deposit it at some place, the box is and remaisn your property, and after you die, that of your heirs. I see no reason whatsoever to not have the same happen with email. THe whole 'it is stored electronically, it is a service, it is not something physical' etc etc are in my opinion bad arguments and at best point at the issue about virtual property. They are not a good reason to change the situation when compared with 'normal' mail because they have to do purely with technicalities regarding transport and storage and not with the mail and its content, senders or intended receipients.
> Can one spouse claim family ownership of it, and demand access to the account even if the other spouse had never explicitly shared the password of the account?
That should depend on the terms of the marriage, but I do not see a problem as such, rather, I do see reason to not use your 'private' email accounts for cheating. Its not like the government can't read whats in there anyway if they want to, you trust them, why not the person you previously promissed to share your life with? Oh, it went wrong? well, big deal.
> Suppose alternately that the email account is property, and the email-provider goes out of business, taking the account down with it, can you sue for damages for loss of property?
I think that would be a go0od thing.
So.. counter examples of what? More like one somewhat irrelevant but supportive argument and one good argument to do exactly as suggested, treat it as property.