Mathias Koerber wrote:
I am not an American and not really familiar with US laws and
political thinking, but why is it that it is considered OKfor someone
to break away from, ignore the DNS root system, but not for others to
blackhole a player whose traffic they don't want to see. What laws
would prohibit the latter while not affeting the former?
IANAL, so take this as one man's understanding and not necessarily the
absolute truth....
Take an analogy from the oil industry. If Exxon lowers its prices,
there's no problem. If Chevron, Hess, Citgo and Sunoco all see Exxon's
action and decide to lower their prices in turn, in order to compete
with Exxon, there's no problem. If Jim's gas-n-gulp can't compete with
those prices and goes out of business, oh well, that's business.
BUT if representatives from Exxon, Chevron, Hess, Citgo and Sunoco all
got together and agreed to lower their prices in unison for the express
purpose of running Jim's gas-n-gulp out of business, and then did it,
they would be in violation of US anti-trust laws.
Putting this in the context of the new.net discussion, if an ISP chooses
to blackhole new.net, they can. It doesn't matter what the reason is -
nobody can force anybody else to carry someone else's traffic (barring
things like common-carrier status, of course.) If a dozen or a hundred
ISPs independantly choose to do blackhole new.net, they are similarly
free to do so. And if new.net can't remain in business as a result of
this, oh well, that's business.
BUT if representatives from a dozen or a hundred ISPs meet together and
choose to blackhole new.net for the explicit purpose of running them out
of business, and then do so, they would be in violation of US anti-trust
laws.
-- David
Now there is a can of
But