NYT on Thing.net

Kurt Erik Lindqvist kurtis at kurtis.pp.se
Tue Jan 14 06:26:49 UTC 2003


>

(I think I am close to get a notice from Susan so this will be my last 
posting on this to Nanog)

>
> The upstream (Air2net?) basically shrugged their shoulders. Fries
> went to the upstream's upstream while at the same time he mounted

Air2net was a transit customer of KPNQwest (and not a reseller as 
Flashback claimed) and it was to them Flashback turned when they got 
cut off the first time. Air2net however only had presence in Gothenburg 
and wanted to connect their customer to KQs network, which we refused 
(actually first we did not know this was Flashback). Flashback then 
turned directly to KQ but we declined to offer services. Then he went 
on to other ISPs. Worth noting is that KQ didn't impose any  
restrictions on transit customers, but none of the (then very few 
though) transit customers accepted Flashback as customer.

> Karlskrona city lawyer, the Swedish association of ISPs (I forget
> its name; something like the Dutch NLIP, a non-mandatory,

SOF, I am the current chairman.

> non-regulatory private body in which all major and many minor
> ISPs are represented) took up the issue. At first they issued
> some kind of statement saying that they had all agreed to refuse
> nazi content and anybody carrying it. Later they took that back
> and refused to comment. Since they are a private body, nobody
> can force them to show their minutes (and nobody has leaked them
> so far). The end result was that not one single ISP was willing
> to host Flashback and Axelsson got a rather remarkable collection
> of subterfuges, "not in, he'll will call you" from people who
> never called, unreplied letters and the like.
>
To my knowledge SOF have never issued a joint statement on anything 
except the Swedish Spam-law. I was not at that SOF meeting but the 
minutes are public and on the web. From what I know the subject was 
discussed very briefly and never made it into the minutes (which I 
agree is bad though).

Flashback made complaints to a number of government bodies, all of who 
cleared the issue. I do not recollect that this would have been due to 
"not enough evidence" but I don't have the copies of the notes anymore.

Anyway, this discussion will always be biased one way or the other. I 
think that summary of Zenons and my mails probably is as close to the 
truth as you will get. Conclusions will depend on your political views 
and on which side of the table you sit. The topic that started this was 
discussions on ISPs role on judging content. The Swedish ISPs have had 
more reason to discuss recently due to child-porn, neo-nazi web-sites 
and TV decoders than we ever had with Flashback.

- kurtis -




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