Can ISP's arbitrarily refuse to give service to someone who tries to sign up? i.e. if everyone refused to give Sony service could they sue on some sort of discrimination/collusion charge?
IANAL but something similar has come up in conversations with my attorney (this is all US but this is also NANOG): You can pretty much choose not to do business with anyone so long as it's not motivated by race/religion/etc. and you're not operating under some specific regulatory regimen (e.g., tax-exempt, RBOCs) and of course don't explicitly represent otherwise (ads that say "no one will be turned down!" tho even that has its limits.) What you CANNOT do is collude with other businesses to do this, that's called a "business boycott" and violates anti-trust laws. Private individuals can collude on boycotts but, without good and sound reason like "xyz doesn't pay their bills", businesses cannot, particularly not to effect a change in behavior or policy which is otherwise perfectly legal (like, collude to boycott a company until they lower their prices.) Of course if you each come to that same conclusion independently no problem but I think, for example, the openly available discussion on this list might serve as evidence of a possible collusion. Then again if you believed what the RIAA was doing was illegal or harming your business you might be able to defend your decision. IANAL. -- -Barry Shein Software Tool & Die | bzs@TheWorld.com | http://www.TheWorld.com Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 617-739-0202 | Login: 617-739-WRLD The World | Public Access Internet | Since 1989 *oo*