(UPDATE) Can a Customer take their IP's with them? (Court says yes!)

Wed Jun 30 01:17:36 UTC 2004

On Tue, Jun 29, 2004 at 07:47:54PM -0400, Alex Rubenstein wrote:
> 
> What I AM looking for is a commentary from the internet community,
> strictly relating to the fact that a judge has issued a TRO that forces an
> ISP (NAC) to allow a third-party, who WILL NOT be a Customer of NAC, to be
> able to use IP Space allocated to NAC. In other words, I am asking people
> to if they agree with my position, lawsuit or not, that non-portable IP's
> should not be portable between parties, especially by a state superior
> court ordered TRO.

As I read that TRO, for the period of time the customer continues to use
the IP space they will also be a customer of NAC (i.e. they will continue
to pay you money for IP transit and colocation services at existing
contract amounts and existing contract rates, which happen to be
significantly above current market rates).

I don't see a disconnection between the two. This is a completely
different situation from the one you describe, which is a customer who has
completed an orderly termination without an ongoing legal dispute and
simply wishes to continue using their IPs for an indefinite periods of
time, without paying you for it or buying any other services from you. It
seems that they are only asking for the orderly continuation of services
so that they can migrate their assets (both physical and virtual, servers
and IPs) to new resources without disruption of their business.

There are many instances in the business world where a court prohibits you
from disconnecting services to a customer so that their business can
continue to operate, such as during chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings. You
should really be *glad* that they ARE paying you, and especially at the
rates mentioned in their affidavit, for that much longer. Or perhaps you
are seeing something in this that I am not?

-- 
Richard A Steenbergen <ras at e-gerbil.net>       http://www.e-gerbil.net/ras
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