TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Re: Vonage's Citron Says VoIP Blocking Is 'Censorship'

Re: Vonage's Citron Says VoIP Blocking Is 'Censorship'

Dana (raff242@yahoo.com)
Sun, 06 Mar 2005 11:35:05 -0900

Isaiah Beard wrote:

>> My local convenience store and drugstore carry certain newspapers, but
>> not all for my area. Does that mean they are _censoring_ the ones
>> they don't sell? According to Vonage they are.

> You comparison is overbroad and overreaching, and compares apples to
> oranges.

No, his comparison is right on. Not carrying all possible newspapers
in an area is similar to blocking access to ports that certain
services use.

> I would think of it more this way: let's say that
> your phone company provider, be it Verizon or other LEC, decided
> that profanity should no longer be used on its phone lines, and
> installs special filters to capture and "bleep out" such speech.
> Would that be acceptable?

This is a strawman argument, as this is in no way compariable to the
situation with Vonage.

[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Actually, back in the 'teens and '20s
of the last century, Bell had a rule against using profanity on the
telephone. For example, the cover of the 1920 Chicago Telephone
Company (predecessor to Illinois Bell) had this notice on the cover of
the phone directory: "When addressing our operators, please do not use
profanity. Please address our operators in the same courteous voice
you would want them to use in their reponses to you. It is not our
operator's fault if the line you have requested is engaged or does not
respond. Would you like it if the operator responded with a curse when
telling you the number did not respond." Apparently people would ask
for the number of the train station information line (for example),
and find it always in use or slow to respond. So people would curse
out the operator and blame her for it, then slam down the reciever.

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