Posts by Devil's Advocate

US lawmaker wants health warnings on video games

Police State?

What ever happened to a PARENT'S RESPONSIBILITY in any of these matters?

What about AGE OF CONSENT? Are we supposed to accept that factors like these are somehow, suddenly "insufficient"??

The more stuff like this I hear, the more I believe the whole frikkin' world is headed for a Police State.

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Governments mandate "warnings" on things like cigarettes, but continue to collect tax revenue from these "hazardous products". That's FUCKED! If they were really sincere in conveying the message that smoking is a confirmed health hazard, they would move to ban the substance and forget the tax revenue. (As if...!)

Virginia de-convicts AOL junk mailer Jeremy Jaynes

The "Free Speech" Defense?!?

I can't believe I'm hearing this argument being revived by a court!

I remember spammers, after having their accounts canceled, threatening to sue ISPs, citing "Free Speech" sometime back, before any formal anti-spam laws came about in North America. The providers basically said "Go for it!".

Very few of these spammers actually tried following through with the threat. I think this was mostly because they damned-well knew such a defense was feeble at best. The few that tried, got nowhere, as predicted.

Physically, Free Speech ends at your property line. If someone penetrates that line and knocks at your door, you have the right to decide if they can speak to you.

Your postal mailbox and your e-mail inbox have the same status.

You decide whether anything placed in them is acceptable. You have the right to request the cancellation of any ongoing postal mail that doesn't fit that description (albeit, that is probably an exercise in futility), and you have the right to deny e-mail from any source that you determine is just spamming you. This right always existed - why there was never a proper mechanism to actually have it enforced is anyone's guess.

I find it odd that - at a time when America's Constitution (and Canada's) is being constantly trashed at every turn by its own government - a court would suddenly decide a prolific, convicted, repeat spammer deserved protection under the First Amendment.

American cable giant joins data pimping club

The default is always "opt-out"

"opt-out has become the norm for all targeting on the Internet."

I just love that statement. (Well, not really.)

And just HOW did opt-out "become" taken as a "norm", and by WHOM?!...

1) Because marketers WANT that to be the case, and can't wrap their heads around the more respectful concept of OPT-IN, only MARKETERS take it as a norm.

2) Because marketers continue to play it that way, hoping one day everyone will just accept it as normal.

3) Because opt-out creates so many false (unwanted) leads that help to justify their existence.

4) Because opt-out helps to "justify" another practice that only marketers think is an acceptable "norm"... collecting personal info without actual consent!

Bell Canada chokes P2P and privacy?

Encryption changes nothing with Bell's DPI

I'm on Bell Sympatico and have my encryption on. BitTorrent still levels off at 30KB, no matter what encryption or other options are used.

I was reading up on the Ellacoya DPI hardware Bell uses. It doesn't need to care about encryption, as it drills into the payload of every data packet and reassembles the content, thereby knowing what it is. Further proof that Bell is using DPI to look at more than just "headers".

I just love the way these DPI-driven providers keep saying "We don't use this technology to examine the actual content, and we completely respect everyone's privacy." If either statement was actually true, then WHY USE IT?!! (And, why the secrecy?)

I wouldn't put it past Bell to also be offering the extracted personal info to any number of marketing firms.

Out of all the ISPs, I think Bell is THE monster that needs to be taken down, back to the level of the "Common Carrier" it is supposed to be. These blatant privacy and competition violations, on top of an already-poisoned relationship with Canadian consumers, just begs for a complete rethinking of how much latitude should be given to this publicly-owned company.

Bell has been doing a shitload of questionable things over the years, always without any discussion, and thumbing their noses at us all with impunity!

They should never have been allowed, as a common carrier, to even consider offering their own content, without at least a firm set of regulatory rules.