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w3timmyc

Listed below are comments made by w3timmyc between Thursday, 26th June 2008 and Thursday, 26th June 2008.

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Should ISPs Be Fined... 5:23pm on 26 Jun 2008 I always find this topic interesting and slightly amusing. I work for an ISP who don’t provide any connectivity (at least not since dialup became pretty much obsolete), just your basic web services – most of our business is in design.

However, we do have a huge volume of mail traffic that we handle on behalf of many clients. Similar, and more specific suggestions have been made that we should be monitoring email traffic for illegal materials.

What has been said in previous posts is true, it is impossible to be truly confident of what content is legal or illegal using automated processes. The ones that come close are so processor intensive that it raises operational costs considerably. We have enough difficulty in dealing with the unbelievably amount of SPAM out there – approximately 98% of all the emails that hit our servers don’t make it through. To do it manually is simply out of the question so how an ISP can be accused of “knowingly carrying illegal content” is beyond me.

More than that, although I’m not a fan of the post office comparison – there are certain ethical and security decisions. I don’t want someone rummaging through my mail looking for a photocopy of something that was done without proper permission. How can I trust that that person won’t open my bank statements and steal information useful for assuming my identity?

Much of this traffic is protected via SSL and other secure encrypted systems – but if responsibility has to be assumed by ISPs then they will have to block this kind of traffic just in case it’s some P2P client using an encrypted system.

Personally, I think it’s stupid to try and blame the ISPs. It’s so hard to do anything without being watched these days. Even if you’re doing something that isn’t illegal, it’s nice to know that you have some anonymity - something that would be taken away if ISPs were forced to start monitoring everything.
BBC iPlayer 2.0: Promotional Video 4:59pm on 26 Jun 2008 christownsend - I've not seen it mentioned so far - I'd have thought they would have made quite a point of talking about it too if it was to be included in this upcoming release.

It's not such an issue for me as a I'm mainly a MS based user. That said, I do use bit of linux, mac and have an iPod touch too.

In short - if you don't end up with a full response from the Beeb, my opinion is that it's highly unlikely.
BBC iPlayer 2.0: Promotional Video 3:29pm on 26 Jun 2008 Video seems to work for me too.

and echo to what allybalder asked - how do we access the iPlayer beta? I tried bbc.co.uk/iplayerbeta just in case - but was prompted for username and password. I assume this is related - but it's worth a question I think.

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