Cogent cutting links to Russia?
Owen DeLong
owen at delong.com
Sat Mar 5 05:20:45 UTC 2022
> On Mar 4, 2022, at 14:03 , Matthew Petach <mpetach at netflight.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> On Fri, Mar 4, 2022 at 12:55 PM Martin Hannigan <hannigan at gmail.com <mailto:hannigan at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> I would argue they don't have much of a choice:
>
> "The economic sanctions put in place as a result of the invasion and the increasingly uncertain security situation make it impossible for Cogent to continue to provide you with service."
>
> I would expect to see others follow suit if that is the case.
>
>
> That's an interesting slope to slide along...
>
> I fully understand ISPs disconnecting customers for non-payment; we've
> all had to do that at one point or another in our careers, I'm sure.
> However, that's generally done *after* the customer has demonstrated
> an inability or unwillingness to pay their bills.
>
> This doesn't seem to indicate that any existing invoices have gone
> unpaid past their due date, but simply that there is *concern* that a
> future bill might go unpaid due to the economic sanctions.
Sanctions cut both ways, and there is the possibility that Cogent’s legal
team has said “Continue to do business with X in Russia puts you at
risk of violating sanctions.”
It’s not clear whether that’s the case or not, but I will say that if I were
doing business there and my legal team said something like that, I’d
seriously consider dropping the relevant customers quickly if it wouldn’t
be a worse consequence than violating said sanctions (which seems
unlikely).
> I'm not sure that's a good precedent for a service provider to create;
> "we may terminate your service at any point if we suspect that at an
> unspecified time in the future, you may become unable to pay future
> invoices."
Yeah, I don’t think that’s what is happening here.
Think of this more like businesses that were trading with Cuba during
the Kennedy administration. All of that abruptly stopped pretty much one
day.
> If and when bills go unpaid, I fully support turning off customers.
> I worry about the precedent of disconnecting based on suspicions
> of what might happen in the future, however.
What about “If and when it becomes clear that it’s illegal to keep those
customers”?
Owen
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