[AusNOG] Telstra manipulating DNS to block botnets

[Joshua D'Alton]

No.. it isn't just protecting them from themselves at all. It is directly
useful to the business. Can you imagine how many support calls Telstra is
saving themselves? Can you imagine the millions of spam emails they are
potentially not sending? Not having customers with viruses or whatever *is*
directly part of the integrity of the network and the integrity of the
business at large. Think bottom line.

Until we are in some Gibson style global-net where there aren't really ISPs
any more, this sort of utopia is a very naive ideal that will only cause it
to take longer to reach that globenet. The internet is extremely disjointed
and disconnected in general, and even more so when you look at geopolitical
borders. And it will only keep growing in that direction. Most of the
traffic might be between US/EU now, given that is where the content is
generated, but with new pipes going all over the globe, it won't be very
long until the traffic figures come more in line. Australia might be a
content importer now, (well including local caching, actual traffic on the
international pipes is not nearly as asynchronous), but that will cease to
be the case in the next 10 years especially with NBN.

This isn't about protecting customers, it is about protecting business for
offering whatever access they want to the "internet". To give an extreme
example, if someone wants to run a NBN ISP that *only* connects those
customers in some sort of national peering WAN, let them (actually I
believe there are a couple ISPs that already do this on an exchange-level
basis). Complaining they don't provide 'internet' access is just as
absurdly archaic as the media companies ideals on copyright.

On Fri, Jun 15, 2012 at 2:49 PM, Rod Veith <rod at rb.net.au> wrote:

> I don't like the idea of protecting customers from themselves. We are not a
> nanny state and I don't want to live in one. People have to learn to take
> responsibility for their own actions. We are all supposed to be adults or
> adults supervising kids access. If people are too lazy to protect
> themselves
> that is their problem. Too many times I've heard courts be lenient because
> people say "I didn't know that could happen, I didn't understand what I was
> doing, I was too drunk/drugged when I hit him that hard, but I was only
> looking at my phone when I stepped in front of the car etc etc" and courts
> actually lend some weight to their excuses.
>
> It seems that some in our industry want to extend the reasoning "people
> have
> to be protected from themselves" to the internet. I clearly and
> unequivocally reject this. If people expect they have rights, they need to
> also accept the responsibilities that come with the rights.
>
> I believe we and the Government have a duty to inform people of the risks
> when connecting to the internet and how people can minimise risk, but not
> to
> control what they access or what they do or don't do to protect themselves.
>
> I can understand network operators taking action to protect the integrity
> and uptime of their networks but that action must only be for that reason.
> It must not be to protect customers from the customers own
> actions/inactions.
>
> My 4 cents.
>
> Rod
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ausnog-bounces at lists.ausnog.net
> [mailto:ausnog-bounces at lists.ausnog.net] On Behalf Of Paul Brooks
> Sent: Friday, 15 June 2012 2:01 PM
> To: ausnog at lists.ausnog.net
> Subject: Re: [AusNOG] Telstra manipulating DNS to block botnets
>
> On 15/06/2012 12:56 PM, Martin - StudioCoast wrote:
> >
> >
> > My view is there are numerous options available to an ISP to deal with
> > these sorts of issues without putting a sledgehammer to net neutrality.
> >
> > Contacting the customer for example....
>
> Would be nice if contacting the customer was easy, but its not.
> Apparently only around 1 customer in 7 reads their ISP-provided email
> address, and most don't read a monthly invoice because of automatic direct
> debit.
> Plus we've taught them to ignore calls from call centres claiming 'Hi, I'm
> from (large
> ISP) and I'm here to help you, we've detected that your machine is infected
> with a virus, let me step you through the steps to clean it" while
> occasionally the call gets reported to the ACCC ScamWatch site.
>
> Apart from sending a tech around to knock on the customer's door,
> contacting
> the customer isn't always easy or automatable.
>
> P.
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