Subject: RE: Summary of RE: [Sip] Comment, SIP Privacy draft

From: "Mark Watson"<[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Apr 2002 13:28:53 +0100

> what is a subscriber and how does it differ from a user?  where is the
> term subscriber defined?

This thread has been going for a while now, and as you said in the rest of
your message, the concept of a subscriber as separate from the user is
pretty important to the arguments, which is why I keep re-describing it. 

The subscriber is just one example of a person who has an interest in a
session who does not have a 'user agent' involved in the session to
represent them. My contention is that the easiest way to represent this
person in the session is through services in the network.

See
http://www1.ietf.org/mail-archive/working-groups/sip/current/msg04720.html
for a description of why the subscriber is different from the user.

In terms of definition, the definition from the European Directive on Data
Protection intelecommunications (97/66/EC) says:

(a) 'subscriber` shall mean any natural or legal person who or which is
party to a contract with the provider of publicly available
telecommunications services for the supply of such services;
(b) 'user` shall mean any natural person using a publicly available
telecommunications service, for private or business purposes, without
necessarily having subscribed to this service;

There is a lot of information about this and data protection in
telecommunications in general at http://www.cdt.org/privacy/eudirective/

Finally, I just spotted that this directive is due to be replaced by a
revision which is explicitly intended to cover new technologies
http://europa.eu.int/eur-lex/en/com/pdf/2000/en_500PC0385.pdf. I would not
advise any Service Provider to ignore this stuff.

Regards,

Mark

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 16 Apr 2002 15:42:06 +0300

> person in the session is through services in the network.

i still fail to see the difference between a user and subscriber. in
order for the user to use my sip service, the user MUST first subscribe
the service.  the user may have any number of sip identities (uris)
associated with the subscription.

 > telecommunications services for the supply of such services;

fine.

 > necessarily having subscribed to this service;

i don't understand what the above could mean.

 a user can't use my sip service without being first subscribed to it,
 i.e., the user must have a username and a password that identify a
 valid subscription.  i don't care who made the subscription, but in
 general it is a VERY bad idea to pass a given username/password to many
 people. if you do it then there is no way to figure out who actually
 made a call.

-- juha

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