Major Labels v. Backbones

Mon Aug 19 15:43:46 UTC 2002

The thing that I find most disturbing with this latest approach to 
enforcement by the RIAA is that they have targeted backbone providers 
who probably don't have any business or other relationship with the 
parties that are alleged to be infringing the RIAA's rights. Just as 
bad is the fact that if one of the backbone providers chooses or is 
required to filter or block a site, then that site will become 
unavailable to the backbone provider's downstreams and the 
downstreams won't have had any say in the matter. And, if the same 
filtering and blocking isn't done by all networks, the sites will be 
available to some people and not to others.  Sure seems like a real 
mess.

I am also concerned that the backbone providers might not put up a 
rigorous fight against the RIAA since they would mostly be defending 
the rights of people and organizations that they don't do business 
with directly. I can imagine that Worldcom may feel that it has 
better things to do with its money and its lawyers' time these days. 
But that might lead to a less that desirable outcome for everyone. 
Sorry, I don't mean to pick on Worldcom here, the same could be said 
for any of the backbone providers that have been targeted. And, 
perhaps, since several backbone providers have all been targeted, 
they will work together to put up a rigorous fight on behalf of us 
all. I sure hope so.

    -Jeff Ogden
     Merit

At 10:58 PM -0400 8/16/02, Richard A Steenbergen wrote:
>On Fri, Aug 16, 2002 at 10:03:37PM -0400, John Ferriby wrote:
>>  A number of major music labels have joined forces and are seeking relief
>>  from backbone providers, see:
>
>Ok here's a question, why are they sueing AT&T, CW, and UU? I see
>Listen4ever behind 4134 (China Telecom), who I only see buying transit
>through InterNAP. Wouldn't it be simpler for them to sue InterNAP? I guess
>it would sure be nice precedent, if they could make some big tier 1
>providers do their bidding to filter whoever they want whenever they want.
>
>Might I suggest filtering the websites of the offending "major labels" as
>an appropriate retort?
>
>--
>Richard A Steenbergen <ras at e-gerbil.net>       http://www.e-gerbil.net/ras
>PGP Key ID: 0x138EA177  (67 29 D7 BC E8 18 3E DA  B2 46 B3 D8 14 36 FE B6)