[ale] firewalls, encryption & NAT to be illegal?

[Dan Newcombe]

I was thinking on this at lunch, at I can see one use for it - if I had a
broadband connection and decided to allow my neighboor to share my
connection.    At that point I am depriving the company of potential
revenue.

But the more than one computer argument I think has too many precedents.
The Cable Reform Act of 1992 did away with the extra charges for more than
one tv (I think)

A while ago, you had to pay ma bell for extra phones in your house...now
you just pay for the line coming in.  (Of course, you had to rent the
phones from MaBell as well)

It seems that the laws end up saying that if you are not giving the
consumer extra resources, then you can't charge.


If I use my TV on one set or 4 sets, I still have one cable coming in the
house, and I have the same signal coming in.  If I have my phone, no
matter if I pick up one handset or 20, I still have one line and one
signal and one phone number.  If I have one computer or 100 computers, I
can still only get one IP address and only use my 512k of bandwidth.

If I want an extra phone number, I pay.  If I want an extra IP/bandwidth,
I pay.   The broadband companies may arge that with multiple computers I
could keep the 512k sustained, as opposed to that being a max burst rate.
a) I can do that with one computer and b) there shouldn't be a law to
protect a crappy business model.

Also, with the push towards teleworking, this could be a problem (as
someone already said).  What if two people in the house need to telework?
What if mom's teleworking and junior needs to do research?

Now...anyone wanna write up all that ranting into something parsable that
can be sent to a state rep.
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