ISPs Free to Block Content

Nik Barron - www.virus.org - 22 June 2009Security

ISPs are free to block content from operators they have no commercial agreements with

UK IT legal specialists Pinsent Masons report that ISPs are free to block content from operators they have no commercial agreements with.

So far BT have been in the spotlight for their suggestion that the BBC should pay up for the increased traffic caused by the iPlayer "catch up" service, which has been immensely popular and made a noticeable dent in backbone capacity for many ISPs. However other ISPs are no doubt feeling the pinch.

Under UK law the ISP may amend their "fair use" policy as per the original contract, and as long as such restrictions are made clear to current and potential consumers there is no legal issue. Arbitrary filtering by ISPs is not a new issue; when the first round of Microsoft web worms came out many ISPs started blocking traffic on the relevant ports, causing headaches for customers with VPNs that did not encrypt packet headers.

Despite the steady increase in advertised bandwidth, many ISPs have significant shortfalls in their backbone capacity leading to contention issues at busy periods. A typical "business" broadband line will have a 20 or 50 to one contention ratio, meaning that performance can drop to less than 5% of the "normal" bandwidth at any time. Increasingly restrictive usage policies are likely to become the norm across the industry as data volumes creep ever upwards.

For corporate users, the increasing load on the ISPs networks makes it even more important to ensure that the company Internet link is used for business purposes only, which Smoothwall's Guardian product range can greatly simplify.

More information: www.out-law.com