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RE: How does one make not playing nice with each other scale? (Was: net.terrorism)

  • From: Mathew Butler
  • Date: Sat Jan 13 17:37:02 2001

Title: RE: How does one make not playing nice with each other scale? (Was: net.terrorism)

I'll point out that someone banning a site for AUP violations should only be able to affect their own network, since policies are supposed to be organization-level.  (Thus, inflicting your policy decision on someone else is a very gray area, legally and ethically.)

The reason why MAPS-RBL works (and is legally protected) is because everyone who uses it must -consent- to using it, and take positive action on their end to configure it.  This means that each organization generates and enforces their own policy, though with assistance from an outside consultancy.    However, in this case, AboveNet is inflicting policy decisions on transit routes =without consent=.  (It's obvious this is without consent, otherwise this thread would never have come up.)

It brings up an interesting point, but the law has held in the past that boycotts are only effective and legal if they're voluntary, and if coercion is involved then it become "intimidation tactics" of "organized crime".  I can't for the life of me imagine how the Internet is any different -- maybe if you tried to apply turnpike or private highway rules to it, but those rules are generally based on consent, as well.

Just some thoughts...

-Mat Butler

-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Mentovai [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Saturday, January 13, 2001 10:26 AM
To: Paul Vixie
Cc: [email protected]
Subject: Re: How does one make not playing nice with each other scale?
(Was: net.terrorism)

There are a few things that would stand in the way of adoption of something
like this: first, each anti-route would require manual configuration, and
that comes with its own set of problems.  Another potential issue (this is
purely theoretical, I'm not referring to any past, present, or future
situation in particular) is that providers trying to blackhole a certain
site for AUP violations may want to negatively impact reachability as much
as possible, rather than purely keeping the offending traffic off their
network.  These folks wouldn't want to advertise anti-routes because the
resulting blackhole avoidance would encourage others to take working
alternate paths, which does less harm to the site in question.

Still, this may be a beneficial, even if little-used, addition.  Thoughts?

Mark