At 06:54 PM 8/29/03 -0700, Tim May wrote:
On Friday, August 29, 2003, at 03:28 PM, Steve Schear wrote:
All covered in my previous postings. This approach should be particularly applicable to ISPs as they generally have billing arrangement and can add this on as an extra service fee for each inquiry. Instead of court orders being a cost they become a revenue source.
This has been proposed for, but it fails for the usual reasons.
An ISP is free to say "anyone requesting a tap is required to pay a fee," just as any ISP is free to say that it will handle installation of special Carnivore equipment for a certain fee.
My (perhaps flawed) reading of Steve's post was different from Tims: the ISP bills the *tapped* person for "misc unplanned network work", not the *tappers*. The ISP puts it into their contract: if tapped by court order, we'll bill you for our effort. If your CPA has his time spent on govt things, can he bill you for it? If your ISP is hassled by RIAA, can they bill you? Certainly, if its in your contract. --- Got Mink?