Re: [alto] Adopting two I-Ds as WG documents

["Jan Seedorf" <[e-mail]>]

Dear Greg,

Thanks for your comments. We discussed these among the editors of the problem statement draft.

We agree that the text on caching you highlight below is potentially misleading, and also that the phrasing of a "malicious" ISP is probably a bit strong. Thanks for raising these points. Accordingly, we rewrote the text on caching and parts of the security consideration section. You can check out the new text in the next version of the draft, which we will publish shortly.

Regarding content security: as Enrico has already pointed out on this list, the goal of ALTO is content-agnostic optimization. Thus, we did not address content security in the security considerations section since it is out of scope for ALTO (as stated in the ALTO charter).

Best regards,
 - Jan

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [e-mail] [mailto:[e-mail]] On Behalf Of
> DePriest, Greg (NBC Universal)
> Sent: Mittwoch, 15. April 2009 22:52
> To: Vijay K. Gurbani; alto
> Subject: Re: [alto] Adopting two I-Ds as WG documents
> 
> In the draft problem statement is the following paragraph on caching:
> 
> "2. Content awareness:  Since caches need to store the content being
> delivered, they are subject to legal issues whenever the user does not
> have the right to access or distribute such content.  This limitation
> makes caching approaches that do not (or cannot) support digital rights
> management unusable for distributing copyrighted material.  Since, it
> is
> very difficult for an abstract file sharing proxy to know all of the
> legal parameters around distributing content, this makes caching
> unusable for many file-sharing systems.  Since this is a legal and not
> technical issue, the solution would be at the legal, not network,
> layer."
> 
> Nothing prevents a cache from receiving a black list of hashes and then
> not caching those items.  This of course avoids the acceleration of
> illicit content -- the root cause of network congestion today.
> 
> In contrast to the current draft's assertion, caching can be supportive
> of both traditional DRM (i.e., encrypted files) and legal enforcement
> activities.  It *is* a technical issue.
> 
> There is also a certain strangeness in the section on Security
> Considerations where the authors, among other things, hypothesize about
> rogue ISPs: "...in cases where the ALTO service provider maliciously
> alters results returned by queries after ALTO has gained popularity..."
> 
> 
> More important is the fact that the authors' fail to address the
> fundamental issue of content security (i.e., copyrights) that
> contributes to a situation that many find undesirable, indefensible and
> inexcusable.  Consider recent observations from Eric Schmidt (Google)
> and Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber.
> 
> Mr. Schmidt noted that the Internet is fast becoming a "cesspool."
> "Let
> me just say precisely, it's a sewer out there." [Advertising Age, April
> 7, 2009]
> 
> Sir Andrew's description to the House of Lords was similar: "The
> internet is a Somalia of unregulated theft and piracy." [Media Guardian
> April 3, 2009]
> 
> Contrary to the current draft, the issue isn't the potential for a
> wayward ISP to harm an innocent P2P application (or its unblemished
> user).  Rather, it's the need for all applications to abide by some
> agreed-upon rules of the road.  Respect for the property of others is
> one such rule we'd be wise to honor.
> 
> Doing so would begin to clean up the mess we've allowed to accumulate
> and fester.
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [e-mail] [mailto:[e-mail]] On Behalf Of
> Vijay K. Gurbani
> Sent: Tuesday, April 07, 2009 10:04 AM
> To: alto
> Subject: [alto] Adopting two I-Ds as WG documents
> 
> Folks: To ratify the consensus during the IETF 74 meeting in
> SF, we will be adopting two documents as WG deliverables:
> 
> 1) draft-marocco-alto-problem-statement-05 will be adopted
> as the deliverable for the "problem statement" charter item.
> A new -00 WG version will be submitted by the editors shortly,
> and we will proceed to WGLC after that.
> 
> 2) draft-kiesel-alto-reqs-02 will be adopted as the deliverable
> for the "requirements document."  A new -00 WG version will
> be submitted by the editors shortly.  This draft will remain
> "alive" for a while as other issues (protocol, discovery, etc.)
> are worked on.  The editors will -- in a symbiotic relationship --
> track the emerging consensus  on these issues as well as contribute
> to these issues and update the requirements draft as consensus
> emerges.
> 
> Please post on the list if there is any objection to moving the
> above two drafts ahead.
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> - vijay (on behalf of Jon and Enrico)
> --
> Vijay K. Gurbani, Bell Laboratories, Alcatel-Lucent
> 1960 Lucent Lane, Rm. 9C-533, Naperville, Illinois 60566 (USA)
> Email: vkg@{alcatel-lucent.com,bell-labs.com,acm.org}
> Web:   http://ect.bell-labs.com/who/vkg/
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