Yes Virginia, ISPs Have Silently Blocked Web Sites 204
Slashdot contributor Bennett Haselton writes "A recurring theme in editorials about Net Neutrality --
broadly defined as the
principle
that ISPs may not block or degrade access to sites based on their content
or
ownership (with exceptions for clearly delineated services like parental
controls) --
is that it is a
"solution
in search of a problem",
that ISPs in the free world have never actually
blocked legal content on purpose. True, the movement is mostly motivated
by statements
by some ISPs about what they might do in the future, such as
slow down
customers'
access to sites if the sites haven't paid a fast-lane "toll".
But there was also an oft-forgotten episode in 2000 when it was
revealed that two backbone providers,
AboveNet and TeleGlobe, had been blocking users' access to certain Web
sites
for over a year -- not due to a configuration error, but by the choice of
management
within those companies. Maybe I'm biased, since one of the Web sites being
blocked
was mine. But I think this
incident
is more relevant than ever now -- not just because it shows that
prolonged violations of Net Neutrality
can happen, but because some of the people who organized or supported
AboveNet's Web filtering,
are people in fairly influential positions today, including the head of the
Internet Systems Consortium, the head
of the IRTF's
Anti-Spam
Research Group, and
the operator of Spamhaus.
Which begs the question: If they really believe
that backbone companies have the right to silently block Web sites, are
some of them headed for a rift
with Net Neutrality supporters?" Read on for the rest of his story.
