Verizon must comply with RIAA's DMCA subpoena

[William Allen Simpson]

With all due respect to the commentator and the tremendous amount that 
he has contributed to the community, I had to go eat a pint of ice cream 
and cool down, I was so incensed after reading his comments.  Here's my 
attempt at a rational reply:

John Young wrote:
> It will be more expensive to obey an ISP's lawyer and somewhat less 
> expensive to sell tappable service. That's the way of economic 
> intimidation.
> 
> Cheapest is to ignore the subpoena and never seek legal advice. The ISP 
> world won't collapse despite chicken little warning. And ISPs look like > cowardly shits for caving.
>... 
> ISPs are using lawyerly advice to cloak betrayal and cowardice.
> Fire the ISP lawyer, especially if in house. Pay the difference to 
> sysadmins willing to fight.
> 
I don't think we caved, or are "cowardly shits".

We're too small for an "in house" lawyer.  But I won't expect sysadmin 
employees to go to jail.  In the main, we have to work with the system 
as it exists, while we work to improve it.

Those who know me well are aware that I've a few experiences along these 
lines in my life.
 - I've been jailed for civil contempt of court.
 - I've endured FBI investigation (google for it).
 - I've survived a 7+ year IRS audit, including 2 cases taken all the way 
   to the 6th Circuit, looking to see whether my cryptographic activities 
   were financially supported by foreigners. 
 - I've been party to many other cases (primarily FOIA), setting local 
   and state precedents argued all the way to our highest state court. 
 - I've been involved in electoral politics for 25+ years, and am 
   reasonably familiar with certain elected officials and governments.

We got one of the main ACLU attorneys in our state.  We sent back the 
original because it misspelled the name of the company, then challenged 
the scope, and finally limited the records provided.  That is, we 
resisted every step of the way. 

Then, we changed our Best Current Practices so that such a subpoena would 
be more difficult to fulfill in the future.  And urged the world to follow 
our example (well, NANOG and later this list). 

Here's a little story: this week I learned that one of our valuable 
security doctoral candidates doesn't vote, and doesn't want to learn 
about or discuss politics and the political implications of what she does.  
This was particularly disturbing to me, as she is a naturalized citizen, 
coming from the old soviet union.  In other venues, new citizens are the 
most active in politics, happy to be somewhere they can participate. 
Sometimes, engineers have persistent tunnel vision....

I've always believed there's more to security than bit twiddling, and I've 
done my best to practice what I preach.

As I've written IETF drafts over the past 14 years, I was long an advocate 
of adding a "security considerations" section to everything we've done.  
And I've generally added an "operational considerations" section, too. 

We always need to think about the consequences of our work.  It needs 
to enhance security.  It needs to protect the powerless from the powerful, 
even when the users don't think they have "anything to hide".  It needs to 
be easy to use (or it won't be used).

So, in some respects, you're preaching to the choir.  But there is a 
time and place for civil disobedience.  
-- 
William Allen Simpson
    Key fingerprint =  17 40 5E 67 15 6F 31 26  DD 0D B9 9B 6A 15 2C 32

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