Has Verizon Forfeited It's Common Carrier Status?
[url]http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/11/06/2054222[/url]
Basically, Verizon bowed to pressure in the US, and blocked a Canadian ISP. (it hosts a legal website which is a support group for minor-liking adults, 100% legal) Effectively censoring the net. Which isn't allowed under common carrier status. So does that mean that Verizon can now be sued for allowing spam/p2p through their networks? That was the defense used before, that telcos couldn't be sued for allowing spam/p2p, since they were "common carriers" and not responsible for the data flowing back and forth.
As predicted by UserFriendly.org back in Sept/06. when telcos were arguing that they should be allowed to filter data streams to "ensure VOIP quality", but essentionally because they wanted to charge both the customer and website owner for data flowing back and forth.
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[url]http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20060909[/url]