[e2e] disintermediation?

[Lynne]

NAT as publishing? Amusing idea. Fortunately, NAT modifies the IP header, not the "contents of the data". (But since NAT changes the address on the piece of mail, it seems to more be analogous to the post office rerouting mail).

Joe brings up an interesting observation, however. If the receiver of the information presented is unaware of modification of the contents, and the sender of the information is unaware of modification of the contents, and the ISP is the source of the modification, then disintermediation can occur.

For example, say Yahoo sold banner ads at a premium position/price. And say CheapISP intercepted those packets, and replaced Yahoo's banner ads with their ads for inexpensive coffee stirrers.

In this case, legally there would be no difference from CheapISP taking a big banner featuring coffee stirrers and throwing it over Yahoo's billboard. This is content "hijacking". CheapISP has disintermediated Yahoo's advertisers, and in the process could direct them to other sites, while both Yahoo and the customer are unaware.

You could also use disintermediation to steal a customer from another cab in line to your Gypsy Moth cab. Same principle. However, both areas are actionable and illegal.

If the customer "filters" the ads (through the use of software programs available), then there is no disintermediation of the business process.

One item to note -- many content providers no longer provide the desired content *until* the ads are downloaded and consumed. In this case these websites cannot tell (yet) if the customer might have actually seen them.

Theoretically (and very easily) one could create an ActiveX or Java applet which reports whether ads made it to the screen, and make decisions accordingly as to whether or what kind of content should be shown.

The upshot - get ready to pay for your content one way or another. :-)

Lynne Jolitz.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bob Hinden [mailto:hinden at iprg.nokia.com]
> Sent: Friday, October 12, 2001 4:08 PM
> To: Lynne
> Cc: end2end-interest at postel.org
> Subject: RE: [e2e] disintermediation?
> 
> 
> I wonder if a NAT would constitute "publication" by this definition?  The 
> IP payload is being modified.
> 
> Bob
> 
> At 02:38 PM 10/12/2001, Lynne wrote:
> >You're talking about publishing. An ISP is not responsible for 
> the content 
> >of the data as long as they do not edit the data. If they edit the data, 
> >they become a publisher, subject to a different set of laws and rules. 
> >Contracts with providers of information and publishers are specifically 
> >designed to deal with issues such as liability in these cases.
> >
> >A transport provider simply gets the bits from one place to 
> another. They 
> >do not edit the contents of that data. If the contents of the data is 
> >"edited" in-transit by the ISP, that's called an "error". :-)
>