one-to-many messaging

[Roland Perry]

In article <034401c89e53$c7c72350$1601010a@neos.tv>, Tom Thomson
<cmt@btinternet.com> writes
>The "is the port number traffic data" question is about whether the port
>number is used by the public telecommunications system to determine the
>DTE to which the communication is addressed

More precisely (in a RIPA context) it's about "any data identifying, or
purporting to identify, any person, apparatus or location to or from
which the communication is or may be transmitted", and I think you might
be confusing that with whether or not the public network is necessarily
doing *all* of the routing to that [final destination] apparatus.

Or put another way:

        "any conduct that takes place in relation only to so much of the
        communication as consists in any traffic data comprised in or
        attached to a communication (whether by the sender or otherwise)
        for the purposes of ANY postal service or telecommunication
        system by means of which it is being or may be transmitted",

not     "... for the purposes of THAT ... telecommunication system by
         means of which it is being ... transmitted"

Because the telecommunications systems include private ones (at the
edges of the network).

> - I reckon that choosing between different apparatus beyond the DTE is
>going on outside the public telecommunications system,

It's still a telecommunications system.

>so even where that happens (it will for most internet traffic, I
>imagine) that doesn't make the port number traffic data.

Or maybe it does. (I think I've got the analysis right, but please speak
up if you disagree).

>I agree with what you said elsewhere, that the traffic-data versus
>content split is very unclear - not only in RIPA, but also in many minds
>and in many other contexts, because I remember laughing really hard when
>I saw (many years ago, now) that the URL up to the first single slash
>was considered by many to be traffic data

The debates I was involved with were the other way round, that
everything *after* the first slash was content. It's actually quite easy
to produce counterexamples of both - but the objective was to try to
find a "consumer friendly" limit to the data that could be disclosed
under the less stringent Ch2 rules, rather than try to work out what was
criminalised under Ch1.

>(that did include the port number)

URLs can and frequently do, contain a port number before the first
slash. Especially when using tunnelling. But that wasn't the man focus
of the debate.

>because of course (a) the URL as typed is not transmitted, so
>that description is not useful within the public telecommunication
>system

It was a starting point to define what other test would be better
expressed in the legislation. Having pored over rfcs in Lord Bassam's
office (and rejected their jargon), we eventually got the famous
tailpiece.
-- 
Roland Perry