Without attempting to actually clarify what tortious interference actually is, let's just make it clear that Bill's attempted explanation isn't it. On Thu, May 29, 2025 at 2:54 PM William Herrin via NANOG < nanog@lists.nanog.org> wrote:
On Thu, May 29, 2025 at 10:57 AM Andrew Kirch <trelane@trelane.net> wrote:
(A)any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected
Hi Andrew,
The key phrase here is "taken in good faith." After I've notified you of an error, your action stops being good faith. You've either investigated my complaint and determined your action is reasonable and correct, investigated my complaint and fixed your error, or failed to investigate my complaint. Whichever way you go, it's no longer a "good faith" matter and this section of the statute no longer applies. Your following action has to stand the test of reasonability without it.
In the Spamhaus case, their defense was: "We merely published a summary of our observations about the plaintiff's behavior." That's an objectively reasonable thing to do.
I don't have to accept your traffic. Amazon doesn't have to accept your traffic. No one has to accept your traffic. I can deny your traffic for any lawful reason even if that traffic might be otherwise constitutionally protected.
"We reserve the right to refuse service," is a very common sign but it has no force of law. If you refuse service without a reasoned and articulable cause, you run afoul of a thousand statutes and precedents which bound the lawful causes for doing so. Tortious interference is one of those precedents. It says that if you knowingly prevent third parties from completing a reasonable and lawful contract with each other, you're liable for the damage that interference causes.
There are, of course, many more lawful reasons for refusing service than unlawful ones. But you can't be arbitrary or capricious about it; you have to be able to articulate a cause for that specific refusal that a reasonable person would find sensible.
Section 230 doesn't undo the tortious interference precedents. It just reminds the judge that _knowingly_ is a part of the claim the plaintiff must prove with specificity. That your interference was unintentional is a winning affirmative defense.
tl;dr: you claim that section 230 means ISPs can legally do whatever they want blocking network traffic no matter how reckless. That's simply not the case. It protects ISPs behaving _reasonably_.
Regards, Bill Herrin
-- William Herrin bill@herrin.us https://bill.herrin.us/ _______________________________________________ NANOG mailing list
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