The thing that I find most disturbing with this latest approach to enforcement by the RIAA is that they have targeted backbone providers who probably don't have any business or other relationship with the parties that are alleged to be infringing the RIAA's rights. Just as bad is the fact that if one of the backbone providers chooses or is required to filter or block a site, then that site will become unavailable to the backbone provider's downstreams and the downstreams won't have had any say in the matter. And, if the same filtering and blocking isn't done by all networks, the sites will be available to some people and not to others. Sure seems like a real mess. I am also concerned that the backbone providers might not put up a rigorous fight against the RIAA since they would mostly be defending the rights of people and organizations that they don't do business with directly. I can imagine that Worldcom may feel that it has better things to do with its money and its lawyers' time these days. But that might lead to a less that desirable outcome for everyone. Sorry, I don't mean to pick on Worldcom here, the same could be said for any of the backbone providers that have been targeted. And, perhaps, since several backbone providers have all been targeted, they will work together to put up a rigorous fight on behalf of us all. I sure hope so. -Jeff Ogden Merit At 10:58 PM -0400 8/16/02, Richard A Steenbergen wrote:
On Fri, Aug 16, 2002 at 10:03:37PM -0400, John Ferriby wrote:
A number of major music labels have joined forces and are seeking relief from backbone providers, see:
Ok here's a question, why are they sueing AT&T, CW, and UU? I see Listen4ever behind 4134 (China Telecom), who I only see buying transit through InterNAP. Wouldn't it be simpler for them to sue InterNAP? I guess it would sure be nice precedent, if they could make some big tier 1 providers do their bidding to filter whoever they want whenever they want.
Might I suggest filtering the websites of the offending "major labels" as an appropriate retort?
-- Richard A Steenbergen <ras@e-gerbil.net> http://www.e-gerbil.net/ras PGP Key ID: 0x138EA177 (67 29 D7 BC E8 18 3E DA B2 46 B3 D8 14 36 FE B6)