North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical Re: NYT on Thing.net
To some extent, but not recently. Mostly due to child-porn, TV decoder piracy and a number of other issues.This has been a discussion item in the Swedish ISP business for quite some time (for a reason). The matter is actually a lot more complex than what you say above.How ironic, would that be because of Flashback magazine? :) Just for the record, your story above is far from complete and not true on all accounts. It is also a quite simplified version of what happened. Summary is that no matter what the ISPs (this is not UUnet alone, actually pretty much all ISPs denied service, even those that where not behind UUnet. I am not sure if the UUnet threat story is true. This is quite some time ago) would have done or said they would have got shot down by public opinion. There was quite a lot of press articles on how horrible it was that these neo-nazi sites (which is what they where) was allowed to be on the Internet without action from the providers. This is a discussion you as ISP simply can't win. First of all, in my opinion (and this seems to be pretty common), a company should be free to choose who they sign contracts and business deals with.Only within reason. You cannot excludes based on various reasons, such as religion, believes, race, sex, etc. Most countries have laws against such discrimination. Correct, no objection. Well, I can also see clear business reasons as to why I would deny a client. If I had Coca-Cola as a customer and Pepsi-cola wanted to buy a service, but Cola then threatens to leave, I should be in my full right to deny Pepsi service.The important thing is to have openly published, clear and non-discriminatory reasons for canceling/denying a contract. As an ISP, you shouldn't discriminate at all, if you ever want to be soon as a common carrier, which is what you want, unless you want to start a lawfirm instead of an ISP business. if I believe that having him as a clientYou should not! You will open yourself to threats from all your customers. Well, if that is where the money flows in from, it's not that bad. As a simple example, say you are hosting www.shell.se, and GreenpeaceYes? See my example above. I see no conflict in this. It's called a free market. The problem comes when you for example enter into content. If I as an ISP removes content based on the assumption it's illegal (let's take TV decoder information as example), I will do the role of the police and courts. I have made the judgement. This in my view requires a request from the police rather than doing this as you go buy. This will otherwise open the pandoras box you describe, where you would have to judge what is illegal political content, child porn, etc.As you stated, I doubt it is illegal to judge on content, since ISP's haveAt the same time, I as an ISP do not want to categorically based on content, ethics, morals etc deny customers or disconnect customers. Especially for content that is judged illegal. Notice the difference between judging content and choosing connectivity customers.If content is illegal that is up to the courts and police to judge and take action on.If you truly believe that, you should incorporate that in the company policy, thereby giving up the right to cancel in your sole discretion, including perhaps giving up some of your biggest customers. You can't have the cake and eat it too. - kurtis -
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