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CenturyLink is blocking customer internet, saying Utah legislators told them to

richsnapp.com

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Re: CenturyLink is blocking customer internet, saying Utah legislators told them to

#71

Post by theonemind »

markovbot wrote: post #23
WorldMaker wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My ISP (Time Warner/Charter/Spectrum) DNS hijacked bing.com [0] and non-existent domains for their own "search page" [1]. Since then I've been sure to always configure my own DNS in my router. (Used Google's 8s for a while, now on Cloudflare's 1s.) It's unfortunate that I have to treat my ISP as hostile, but they are the only high speed provider to my address. I sadly can't even assume that there is anyone in managem…

That's horrible, did you call them up and ask why their DNS servers are fraudulently lying about IP addresses of certain high traffic domains?

I tried calling Earthlink about this once, back toward the beginning of the DNS hijacking craze. He didn't seem too familiar with it, and eventually matched it up in his script to something about redirecting web pages on typos. I tried to explain that I don't want to talk about the web, I want to talk about problems with their broken DNS servers, but it didn't really work.

Annoying and pointless conversation. I just cancelled.

Re: CenturyLink is blocking customer internet, saying Utah legislators told them to

#74

Post by ta2987 »

pureagave wrote: post #7
pwg wrote: post #4

And here we see the disconnect between what politicians say, and what they write into law. The bill's sponsor's response to the blog authors query: SB134 did not require that ...They were only required to notify customers of options via email or with an invoice. And here is the text of the statute that was written: (ii) A service provider may provide the notice described in Subsection (2)(b)(i): (A) by electronic com…

I agree that the fault lies with the politician, but I would argue that the real issue is that they forced all ISPs to send notice to customers. If a politician wants something communicated, they can fund a public awareness program, not force it on ISPs. That fault doesn't exonerate CentryLink's action. edited to add CentryLink responsibility

> I agree that the fault lies with the politician

You're entirely wrong.

Re: CenturyLink is blocking customer internet, saying Utah legislators told them to

#76

Post by chrisweekly »

peteradio wrote: post #35
jay-anderson wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Writing laws feels a bit like a monkey's paw. No matter how well written a law is they often have unintended consequences or are implemented manners that weren't imagined. I don't think the bill's author/sponsor is fully to blame (they aren't guiltless either). Centurylink certain did not have to implement this requirement in the way it was done. The most depressing aspect to this is the lack competition. The author…

Laws should be written specifically. It should be expected that they will go obsolete and it should be routine to expunge/replace laws as tech changes. If they meant email they should have put email.

Disagree. Lawmakers are so clueless about technology. Insisting that they take in more responsibility for specifying precise technical details is the last thing we should do.

Re: CenturyLink is blocking customer internet, saying Utah legislators told them to

#77

Post by pwg »

bashinator wrote: post #51
pwg wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> claim by CenturyLink that this particularly intrusive, access blocking method is mandated is simply false Agreed - also not the point I was making. > it's not any lawmaker’s fault that CenturyLink chose to implement pretty much the most user-hostile method imaginable Oh but it is the lawmaker's fault. It is the lawmaker's fault by writing a law that was so broadly worded as to allow Century Link to be able to perfo…

It looks to me like the use of the word "may" in the actual law lends a degree of flexibility to the implementation. A service provider *may* provide the notice [...] That does not seem like a hard requirement. Or is this a case where legalese differs from commonly-understood grammar?

That "may" there appears to refer to selecting among the choices (A), (B), or (C) within the statute.

The portion before the selection list (which I did not quote, as it can be read in full in the actual article) begins:

A service provider shall, before December 30, 2018, notify ...

This clause says they "shall" notify. So it is mandatory they notify. It is not mandatory that they perform the notification via the means they selected to perform the notification. The method is awful, but the method is allowed by at least clause (C) of the statute.

Which was my original point. The bill sponsor replied that their intent was "by email" or "with the invoice". But what they wrote as the statute not only encompasses that intent, but allows choosing a huge number of other, many very awful (as is this one), ways of 'notifying' as well. If the sponsor's intent was "email" or "with invoice" then their statute should have said "by email" or "with invoice".

Re: CenturyLink is blocking customer internet, saying Utah legislators told them to

#78

Post by [deleted] »

waffle_ss wrote: post #38

The original article title is more accurate. Replacing "CenturyLink" with "Utah ISP" as if they're some podunk lil' no-name ISP is misleading. CenturyLink is a Tier 1 ISP, and 5th largest in the country by customer count. Maybe city folk haven't heard of CenturyLink but they have monopolies over vast swathes of rural copper networks.

[deleted]

Re: CenturyLink is blocking customer internet, saying Utah legislators told them to

#79

Post by ashelmire »

pwg wrote: post #4

And here we see the disconnect between what politicians say, and what they write into law. The bill's sponsor's response to the blog authors query: SB134 did not require that ...They were only required to notify customers of options via email or with an invoice. And here is the text of the statute that was written: (ii) A service provider may provide the notice described in Subsection (2)(b)(i): (A) by electronic com…

CenturyLink did not go this route because they had to. I'm guessing they get a kickback for each person that signs up for software through them, so they made it as intrusive as possible.

Re: CenturyLink is blocking customer internet, saying Utah legislators told them to

#80

Post by behringer »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #10
api wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately enough ISPs have abused their position that treating them as hostile is where we're going. VPNs are a stopgap. The future is end-to-end encrypted protocols like QUIC that obscure even connection state information and prevent anything from being modified in transit at all, DNS over HTTPS, etc. Everything has to be encrypted and authenticated end-to-end.

Yes, men in the middle cannot be trusted. Especially ISPs. Most mean well but are incompetent. Some don't mean well and are incompetent. ISPs that mean well and actually know what they are doing are relatively rare. If you have a device with wifi, most of the time you are on untrusted networks. So, it makes no sense whatsoever to default to some random isp's DNS just because the wifi you are on is suggesting that you…

They're only rare because their CEOs go to jail:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Nacchio

https://www.bizjournals.com/denver/news/2015/04/29/joe-nacch...

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