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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?
> > 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 | [email protected] | http://www.TheWorld.com
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