Major Labels v. Backbones

Mon Aug 19 17:16:35 UTC 2002

On Mon, 19 Aug 2002, Stephen J. Wilcox wrote:

> On Mon, 19 Aug 2002, Jeff Ogden wrote:
> > 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.
>
> Indeed, to be effective all ISPs with international connectivity from the US
> could bring this route in and they must all block the routes else it will be
> possible to reroute either automatically by BGP reconvergence or by
> intentionally taking bandwidth from a non-compliant ISP.
>
> And as you say theres a lot more ISPs that those listed with a fair number of
> them being non-US companies so how to enforce??

In interesting idea for the mix is: What if the site in question also
vhosted content that in the US is clearly protected speech on the same
IP...

The providers would be no less able to block it, but would a court order
them to do so.. considering the collateral damage.

What if this content were on Freenet, and you couldn't say for sure
where exactly it was hosted?

Even if the 'bad' content is limited to one IP.. Is is acceptable to block
every host in that same announcement? Are the providers expected to
deaggregate the netblock? If they intentionally continue to announce the
route, but insert ACLs to block the traffic, are the providers not
commiting fraud?