<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><br class=""><div><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class="">On Mar 4, 2022, at 14:03 , Matthew Petach <<a href="mailto:mpetach@netflight.com" class="">mpetach@netflight.com</a>> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><div class=""><div dir="ltr" class=""><div dir="ltr" class=""><br class=""></div><br class=""><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Fri, Mar 4, 2022 at 12:55 PM Martin Hannigan <<a href="mailto:hannigan@gmail.com" class="">hannigan@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br class=""></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr" class=""><div dir="ltr" class=""><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">I would argue they don't have much of a choice:</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">"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."</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">I would expect to see others follow suit if that is the case.</div></div></div></blockquote><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">That's an interesting slope to slide along...</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">I fully understand ISPs disconnecting customers for non-payment; we've </div><div class="">all had to do that at one point or another in our careers, I'm sure. </div><div class="">However, that's generally done *after* the customer has demonstrated </div><div class="">an inability or unwillingness to pay their bills.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">This doesn't seem to indicate that any existing invoices have gone </div><div class="">unpaid past their due date, but simply that there is *concern* that a </div><div class="">future bill might go unpaid due to the economic sanctions. </div></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br class=""></div>Sanctions cut both ways, and there is the possibility that Cogent’s legal</div><div>team has said “Continue to do business with X in Russia puts you at</div><div>risk of violating sanctions.”</div><div><br class=""></div><div>It’s not clear whether that’s the case or not, but I will say that if I were</div><div>doing business there and my legal team said something like that, I’d</div><div>seriously consider dropping the relevant customers quickly if it wouldn’t</div><div>be a worse consequence than violating said sanctions (which seems</div><div>unlikely).</div><div><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class=""><div dir="ltr" class=""><div class="gmail_quote"><div class="">I'm not sure that's a good precedent for a service provider to create; </div><div class="">"we may terminate your service at any point if we suspect that at an </div><div class="">unspecified time in the future, you may become unable to pay future </div><div class="">invoices." </div></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br class=""></div>Yeah, I don’t think that’s what is happening here.</div><div><br class=""></div><div>Think of this more like businesses that were trading with Cuba during</div><div>the Kennedy administration. All of that abruptly stopped pretty much one</div><div>day.</div><div><br class=""></div><div><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class=""><div dir="ltr" class=""><div class="gmail_quote"><div class="">If and when bills go unpaid, I fully support turning off customers. </div><div class="">I worry about the precedent of disconnecting based on suspicions </div><div class="">of what might happen in the future, however. </div></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br class=""></div>What about “If and when it becomes clear that it’s illegal to keep those</div><div>customers”?</div><div><br class=""></div><div>Owen</div><div><br class=""></div></body></html>