Major Labels v. Backbones

Mon Aug 19 20:16:38 UTC 2002

On 08:43 AM 8/19/02, Jeff Ogden wrote:

 >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.

If one voluntarily caves in, they will almost certainly see their sales 
plummet.  Would you buy bandwidth from a provider who has caved in to a 
demand that they not carry traffic to/from certain named offshore 
networks?  At what point would they then draw the line on where they will 
transit your packets?

If they were willing to cut off another network because of a specific type 
of traffic frequently sent to/from that network, we would have a small 
fraction of the spam problem we have today because the backbones would just 
sever access to overseas networks that are notorious for spew spam.  I'm 
sure that having a 'spam free' network would be much more of a selling 
point than having a network that can't reach a network full of MP3s.

jc