Chris writes:
The industry we are in and technology we work with is comparatively new and most legal systems are doing an very poor job and keeping up with the state of things and hence their abilities to make `reasonable' decisions and pass reasonable legislation in woefully inadequate (this isn't a slight against the people involved, these things take time).
<sigh> Civil law has nothing whatsoever to do with technology. It's entirely to do with what is agreed (or not agreed) between parties and what the contractual obligations and liabilities are. And the place to sort those issues out, where a binding ruling is needed bacause voluntary negotiation has failed, is the court. It's one of things that helps make our society work. It's not going to go away. It doesn't take a technically oriented judge to say "you don't have a contract that says you can do this so you can't do this". Technical issues may be factors to take into account in evidence, but they're not points of law, and as such generally don't need to be enshrined in law. I think the opposition to the Rogers bill demonstrated that. I don't really want to get into a debate about philosophy of law and technology on a technical list, but I do think it needs to be pointed out that there are contractual issues on all sides of the problem at hand that need to be taken into account. -- don --------- To unsubscribe from nznog, send email to majordomo(a)list.waikato.ac.nz where the body of your message reads: unsubscribe nznog
On Thu, Nov 19, 1998 at 11:48:26AM +1300, Don Stokes wrote:
Civil law has nothing whatsoever to do with technology. It's entirely to do with what is agreed (or not agreed) between parties and what the contractual obligations and liabilities are.
Provided the courts decisions and implications thereof are entirely bound to this, I completely agree.
It doesn't take a technically oriented judge to say "you don't have a contract that says you can do this so you can't do this".
No it doesn't -- but what about the situation where a contract (or court decision) requires unrealistic technical changes or constraints?
Technical issues may be factors to take into account in evidence, but they're not points of law, and as such generally don't need to be enshrined in law. I think the opposition to the Rogers bill demonstrated that.
The Roger's bill fell apart because Rogers is an incompetent moron and there was a couple of people slightly more cluefull that him on the select committee -- not to mention the fact he went of to form the Christine Fundy party or something and lost most of his support. We still have laws the make it illegal to _possess_ child pornography. Web proxy anyone?
I don't really want to get into a debate about philosophy of law and technology on a technical list, but I do think it needs to be pointed out that there are contractual issues on all sides of the problem at hand that need to be taken into account.
I have no doubts on the courts abilities to make decisions regarding contractual issues -- I'm just fearful the decisions will have ramifications of a technical nature, something I don't believe the court is equipped to deal with. What if, for arguments sake, a court decides that all network numbers are portable or that ownership of networks numbers is inferred unless explicitly stated otherwise? -cw --------- To unsubscribe from nznog, send email to majordomo(a)list.waikato.ac.nz where the body of your message reads: unsubscribe nznog
Chris writes:
What if, for arguments sake, a court decides that all network numbers are portable or that ownership of networks numbers is inferred unless explicitly stated otherwise?
apnic-011 already says that, at least for addresses allocated in the NZGate timeframe. I haven't found any other APNIC document (expired or not) that states APNIC policy toward address ownership. Do you have a clause in your service contracts that states explicitly what the position is regarding IP numbers you assign to clients? Most ISPs do (and all should). Does it matter? It does if anyone is allocating address space in new blocks without explicitly stating the "ownership" of addresses, but for the old addresses it just means that at worst the routing table space taken up by old addresses doesn't get any smaller. It also matters if an ISP wants to move a bunch old /24 prefixes over to an upstream provider that refuses to deal with them -- so far the ones that have made noises about refusing small netblocks this have backed away from that position. What can be done as a technical group is to develop a consensus on how to retire old /24 prefixes and aggregate them into larger blocks, either through the APNIC's return policy (apnic-072), or through some local arrangement, without grossly impacting on either ISP or customer operations. I think the first step in this is to get the "ownership" issues aired (I don't think it will be "solved") at the ISOCNZ conference tomorrow; at least then hopefully we'll have some idea of what various positions are. I don't think the ex-NZGate issue can be really proceeded on without that. -- don --------- To unsubscribe from nznog, send email to majordomo(a)list.waikato.ac.nz where the body of your message reads: unsubscribe nznog
participants (2)
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Chris Wedgwood -
Don Stokes