Cisco/Level3 takedown

Sat Apr 11 07:37:07 UTC 2015

On 9 April 2015 at 19:16, Randy Bush <randy at psg.com> wrote:
>> It does make one wonder why Cisco or Level 3 is involved, why they
>> feel they have the authority to hijack someone else's IP space, and
>> why they didn't go through law enforcement. This is especially true
>> for the second netblock (43.255.190.0/23), announced by a US company
>> (AS26484).
>
> vigilantes always wear white hats.
>
> randy

It seems to me from reading the article that the "defence" to this is
to set up a legitimate hosting company in the same IP space, even if
it only has 1 customer. Then if you get blocked you turn around and
shout and scream that level3 are abusing their market dominance to
prevent a rival firms customers (this legitimate hosting company)
being able to use the Internet.

How screwed would they be in in court? I suspect it won't be a US
court that gets to side with a US company and ignore everyone else, I
suspect it would be an EU court case where there are actual
consequences to a company trying to abuse their market dominance to
force others to do what they want. This specific group might not have
the balls to try sueing level3, but if they make a habit of blocking
peoples access to the internet then ambulance chasing lawyers will
likely try to trick them in to screwing up and blocking their clients.

- Mike