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North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical RE: Eat this RIAA (or, the war has begun?) - Why not all ISPs?
IANAL but I the way I understand the law is that collusion among different companies to exclude another company from a particular enterprise can be considered antitrust. In a practical sense, the exclusion must be "effective" in that the excluded company would find it impossible to compete. A lot of smaller providers telling Sony to take a hike might not meet the definition but all of the large networks getting together to keep Soony sans Internet might do the trick. Once again, IANAL. -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]]On Behalf Of David Schwartz Sent: Thursday, August 22, 2002 2:59 PM To: [email protected] Cc: [email protected] Subject: Re: Eat this RIAA (or, the war has begun?) - Why not all ISPs? > Generic question related to this: > > 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? > > Do ISP/ASP/*SP's HAVE to provide services if someone knocks on the > door requesting them or can they refuse for any reason what so ever? > > Any armchair lawyers, who play one on TV, have the/an answer? > > -Rob As far as I know, yes, any company can refuse to do business with any individual or company with very few exceptions. This even applies to monopolists, providing their monopoly is legally acquired and they haven't entered into any contracts to the contrary. The only exceptions I know of involve either true discrimination unrelated to the transaction (such as racial discrimination) or life, health and safety issues. DS
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