Major Labels v. Backbones

Tue Aug 20 21:11:07 UTC 2002

At 2:19 PM -0600 8/20/02, among other things Irwan Hadi wrote:
>BTW, if small (tier 4 - 5) ISPs can be threatened by its uplink for non
>compliance with the AUP (for example transmitting spam all the time),
>and medium ISPs (tier 3 - 4) can also be threatened by its uplink for non
>compliance with the AUP, then why tier 1 - 2 ISPs can't be threatened by
>RIAAA to comply to their AUP ?

One difference is that there are business relationships between all 
of the upstreams and their downstreams. The contracts usually require 
compliance with the AUPs.  If someone doesn't like an AUP they don't 
have to do business with that ISP and can at least try to get service 
somewhere else. ISPs don't have business relationships with the RIAA 
and don't have the option to go somewhere else if the RIAA imposes 
its will on backbone ISPs.

    -Jeff Ogden
     Merit