Readers' Comments

Reader Comments on Aardvark Daily 7 March 2003
Note: the comments below are the unabridged submissions of readers and do
not necessarily reflect the opinions of the publisher.
From: Kerry
For : The Editor (for publication)
Subj: ISPs monitoring users

What worries me is this quote from the IDG article :

"We note that the department and two ISPs are currently
trialling software that alerts both parties to the fact
that people were trading known objectionable material in
newsgroups."

... so, if I understand this correctly, two ISPs in NZ are
monitoring & recording the activities of its users and that
information from that monitoring is being delivered to both
the ISP and a government department. I'd sure like to know
who these ISPs are and to find out if they are complying
with the Privacy Act. At the very least all of their
customers must be informed as to exactly what information
is being collected about them, who is seeing that
information, and what that information is being used for.




From: Dominic
For : Right Of Reply (for publication)
Subj: Net reflecting NZ ideology

Those of my friends who are 50 plus say that it doesn't
surprise them that the Government wants the NZ Internet to
reflect NZ physical reality.

Replace today's politicians and business leaders with 20
somethings and the article in IDG today would be different.

I'm sorry but part of the problem with the handling of
today's Net is that those involved are treating the
Internet according to the world before it. And, I sense,
want the Internet to be more like the world before the
Internet. The Internet doesn't work that way and persons
like Ian Clarkson have gone out of their way to ensure that
the original net concept remains.

Regardless of what happens at the beehive, FreeNet will
make the Government led changes unlikely to ever rule the
(NZ) Net.




From: Edmund Good
For : The Editor (for publication)
Subj: Porn etc

It is easy to target the ISP's or the people who trade in
child porn but much harder to trace the people who produce
the stuff or send the spam. I think that the law
enforcement agencies arround the world are ill equiped to
deal with the crime that goes on in cyber space and what
they are doing is just scratching the surface. This
response is just an attack on people who are easy to
indentify and hold accountable. The people who were caught
in the UK in the recent bust were only caught it seems
because they used a credit card to pay for the "purchase"
(I stand to be corrected). In NZ it wouldn't be illegal -
you have to trade in child porn, in the UK I get the
impression that nudist pictures would be illegal(this is
another problem of different jurisdictions having different
rules and laws. In the end they are not addressing the real
problem/producers but going after people who are easy to
catch.




From: Nik
For : The Editor (for publication)
Subj: Regulation of ISP's

The government is running a game of double standards with
the proposed regulation of content across ISP networks. If
ISP's are required to manage the content traversing their
networks, what next?

Will phone companies be forced to filter out "bad"
conversations on voice calls?

Will Transit NZ be responsible for dangerous drivers?

Will banks be responsible for credit card holders
purchasing illicit goods?

Will airlines be held accountable for the crimes of their
passengers?

Will NZ Post be liable for junk mail?

These examples would be considered utterly ridiculous, yet
this is exactly the sort of thing the government is
suggesting should apply to ISP's. It is absurd to put the
onus on the network provider when it is the user that is at
fault. Illegal content buyers, sellers and hosting
providers should be targeted, not the local NZ ISP's that
are just offering network access.




From: Allister Jenks
For : The Editor (for publication)
Subj: Yesterday's Maxnet story

I have been conversing with the author of yesterday's news
item about Maxnet imposing a cap in JetStream Starter
accounts and an interesting discussion has ensued.

Can you or any Aardvark readers suggest how the accused
managed to get 128Gb of traffic in one month on a 128kbit
connection?  My calculation is a maximum of about 80Gb is
possible.




From: David McNab
For : The Editor (for publication)
Subj: They will fail because

Govt attempts to censor the internet will fail because:

1) Making something illegal tends to make it more popular

2) There is a wealth of software out there that facilitates
the circumvention of censorship.

3) A developer I know in New Zealand is presently developing
a 'cop-buster' program which will offer strong-encrypted
Peer2peer web proxying, email, text and voice chat.

4) Kiwis will take offense at the suggestion that they can't
be trusted in the information they consume and produce, and
will defy the regulations.

5) If the government cracks down on encryption, people will
just switch to steganography.

The only way to effectively stop Kiwis from trading
materials on the Internet that the government doesn't like
is to take a similar approach to that of Afghanistan and ban
all internet access.
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