decoded.legal and the seven OSI layers for Internet, telecoms, and tech legal advice
Blake E Reid, an excellent US tech/telecoms law professor, tweeted:
This is a good argument for Internet law folks to take telecom law, where the environmental impacts of Internet infrastructure become vastly more obvious.
I'm often surprised how many "Internet lawyers" don't get into the operation of Internet access services - they're mostly "layer 7 lawyers", not that there is anything wrong with that - and so I thought it would be a bit of fun to break down my work into the various layers of the OSI model.
(It's not easy to give a precise delineation of what work fits into what layer, so I've done my best.)
| Layer number | Layer name | decoded.legal's experience |
|---|---|---|
| 8 | Users | Support in designing services in a user-centric manner, UK GDPR compliance, help handling complaints, handling UK GDPR subject access requests, dealing with requests for alternative dispute resolution and very basic litigation, broadband refund requests, rights licensing / acquisition |
| 7 | Application | Advice on service design, preparation of terms of service, API licensing, data protection impact assessments and (UK) GDPR reviews, DNS filtering, agreements for the provision of VoIP services and compliance advice, wholesale / white-labelling agreements, agreements for outsourced hosting, advice on the application of the investigatory powers framework and national security requirements, software licensing (including Free / open source software) and contract negotiation, call recording |
| 6 | Presentation | Advice on deployment of encryption to messaging services, advice on operation of dns-over-https resolvers, advice on operation of mailservers (arguably layer 7?) |
| 5 | Session | Operation and maintenance of SIP infrastructure, wholesale and retail service agreements and their negotiation, compliance with Ofcom's general conditions of entitlement, API licensing, terms for provision of L2TP service |
| 4 | Transport | Advice on QoS and net neutrality |
| 3 | Network | Advice to Internet access providers on service operations, compliance with Ofcom's general conditions of entitlement, issues of liability for content of communications, advice on IP-based blocking, security incident handling, automatic compensation for customers, (UK) GDPR and ePrivacy Regs advice, advice on application of the investigatory powers framework, hardware procurement and sales, telecoms security and resiliency advice, guidance on HLR lookups and location services, advice on deployment of wireless access points, traffic analytics and monitoring, peering agreements, number range hosting advice and agreements |
| 2 | Data link | Advice on wholesale ethernet access arrangements and contract negotiations, the occasional billing dispute |
| 1 | Physical | Advice on deployment and operation of network infrastructure (including cellular, fixed line, and fixed wireless), dealing with installation issues |
Just a bit of fun, but also quite interesting to see the broad range of things I get to work with!
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By Neil Brown: Internet, telecoms, and tech lawyer
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