At 00:05 29.02.2004, James Seng wrote:
Neither of case are wiretap. Incompetencies are not illegal (yet).
sorry if I was unclear: I assumed maliciious intent with both scenarios.
re case 2: There is one scenario I can think of where the old number
holder knows who will be the new holder (e.g. in Austria it is cheaper
to transfer a pots line including number to a new subscriber than to
cancel+newly install one). E.g. after a divorce that isnt totally
unlikely..
re: incompetence - violating a law and claiming you didnt know it
traditionally doesnt help much in court.
Maybe it is enough to state in terms and conditions that "the right to
use services based on derived communication parameters is void as soon
as the right-to-use in the primary communication parameter expires. A
failure to comply may be qualified as a breach of privacy of other
persons."
Unfortunately, this collides with the implicit assumption what the
nature of numbers allocated from blocks held by telcos are - it seems to
me that the user has no responsibility other than to pay his bills and
other than that may claim stupidity.
This is very different from direct end-user number allocation for
service numbers where the user provably must have had knowledge about
usage T&C, so incompetence may not be claimed. It's also not a problem
with domain names, where it is very clear that the user (not ISP!) is
liable if he violates the right of third parties. It took the justice
system many years to understand the difference, but it is status quo for
domains nowadays.
-Michael
Michael Haberler wrote:
Here's a strawman for you to to shoot down:
[snip]
Taking the "technology neutral" view, I'd say both are cases of an
unlawful wiretap. For that legislation exists making the person
responsible doing that, not the telco.
Now where's the difference? I wonder if we need any regulation
against ENUM domain hijack at all.
Nevermind that case 2 is one of the more stupid forms of intentional
wiretapping as it is in most cases hard to predict who's going to be
tapped in the first place because that depends on the lucky draw of
number reassignment, leave alone the unattractive timespan between
intent and "success". But the case of "inadvertent wiretap by
negligence" remains.