MediaOne dns problems... CONCLUSION

[Randall Hofland]

    The internet is more than just a phone line that you call your family,
friends and neigbors with-- it is the first true and complete implementation
of the the rights that the First Amendment provided to all Americans. All
the dithering that lawyers put into contracts can not escape that fact.
    Even POTS services come with certain guarantees but "Broadband" promises
more and so should deliver more regardless of what the lawyers, executives
or geeks on call think they have to deliver. And I do believe that all these
services are required by Federal law to fulfill at least what is provided by
POTS carriers. Nor should they be allowed to profiteer from the exclusion or
separation of reasonably expected service expectations (ah, yes, the touch
tone issue, which unfortunately still lives, rises again!).
    That said, business is business and we should not expect to take
something for nothing because that is clearly unfair to the business in
question. But clearly false advertising on the Front Page is never excused
by any degree of manipulation in the legal fine print buried father back and
that is a standing legal precedence. If ISP A plainly offers X bandwidth
with "always on" service, then they are legally obligated to provide just
that despite what may be buried in the fine print.
    I recall a car dealer that had a misprint in their newspaper ad without
any obvious disclaimer. They had to make good on that error and learned to
print those now common disclaimer for misprints. But that would not preclude
them from liability if they falsely advertised a service or product and then
claimed a "misprint". Nor should MediaOne or any other communications
service be allowed to claim in their ads that you get a certain service and
then decide to throttle that for anything but a catastrophic failure of
their techologies.
    Let us all agree that the telephone, cable internet and DSL serivce
providers are using their semi-monopolistic opportunites to their best
advantage but that the legal landscape for internet services is still
evolving. We should all strive to encourage the political sector to correct
some of the more glaring flaws in the statutes while we also complain
vociferously to the service vendors.
    But the issue of Constitutionality regarding the free and unfettered
access to the communications capacity of the World Wide Web will not go
away, and that in particular points at the capacity to provide personal
internal web services access to outside the local and even national network
as a basis of the "Free Speech" gurantees of the U.S. Constitution as well
as every state constitution.

This has been a most interesting thread and I hope rather than attacking the
any well reasoned thoughts expressed we will all sit back and reflect on
what each has written. I certainly have found it all most enlightening! I
thank you all.

Thanks!  Randy Hofland





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