Sprint Cuts Cogent Off the Internet

superbus1929 writes "I work as a security analyst at an internet security company. While troubleshooting an issue, we learned why our customer couldn't keep his site-to-site VPN going from any location that uses Sprint as its ISP: Sprint has decided not to route traffic to Cogent due to litigation. This has a chilling effect; already, this person I worked with cannot communicate between a few sites of his, and since Sprint is stopping the connections cold (my traceroutes showed as complete, and not as timing out), it means that there is no backup plan; anyone going to Cogent from a Sprint ISP is crap out of luck."

Comments

Oh, good.

[FooAtWFU]

I'd been considering cancelling my laptop's EVDO service with Sprint for a while now (it's a little pricey and I don't really need it). This will be a great excuse to tell them when I call them up. :)

Re:Oh, good.

[Anonymous Coward]

except that wireless customers cant get to cogent either.

Re:Oh, good.

[nyu2]

Agree. When a company builds up a brand, then puts lots of things under that brand, they do it so that you'll carry over goodwill from one product to the next. It seems only fair to carry over the badwill as well.

Asshats

[seanadams.com]

I wonder how many customers these two companies will have to lose before they realize that the right solution is to sack the lawyers.

Guess what?

[caitsith01]

Lawyers don't cause litigation. Parties cause litigation.

IAAL. The matters which go to court are the ones where the parties are unreasonable, overly aggressive, or genuinely have a dispute about something which is worth money to both of them. It may also amaze you to learn that sometimes parties actually do breach contracts or otherwise fuck one another over, and yet when caught out they don't automatically roll over and return what they owe to the person they have wronged.

I have no influence whatsoever over whether they end up in Court. I advise my clients about their rights and prospects, and follow their instructions.

On the whole, reasonable, intelligent parties = no ligitation = no lawyers.

Re:Guess what?

[debrain]

Lawyers, however, enable litigation. In fact, for some lawyers, that *is* their business. You can talk in abstractions all you like, but the main difference between mathematicians and lawyers is that the mathematician's love for bizarre, pedantic arguments stays in the ivory towers. Lawyers do the same thing having massively damaging affects on the real world. Sure, some douche hired a lawyer to push some ludicrous case, and he's a douche. No argument there, but when a lawyer who's good enough at his trade argues a bullshit case convincingly that can change the way the law is applied to everyone in incredibly destructive ways. Take the mockery that's been made of the interstate commerce clause alone. Bad lawyers doing bad things that has cost the country incalculable amounts of money, integrity and damn near anything else you'd care to mention.

I am a lawyer (a litigator, specifically) and a mathematician, so I question your dichotomy between the two. To over-generalize the contributions of one profession or the other on society is specious. To rebut your bald statement about the destructive nature of lawyers, it's worth noting that lawyers are responsible for: creating civil liberties such as the right for women and the right for 'colored' people to vote and attend school with white people; writing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; defending Galileo Galilei when he published a "truth" (mathematics) when the church persecuted him for challenging their proprietary access to absolute "truth". As a generalization, mathematicians contributed to the discovery of the atomic bomb, and every other weapon ever created. More accurately, both have positive and negative effects on society (though economists might argue that because more lawyers are employed than mathematicians and generally better remunerated, they by definition have a more positive effect on society; the counter-argument is that they, like big corporations, rent-seek, vis-a-vis Ann Kruger's thesis)

Further, litigation is convincing a state (which has a monopoly on legal force) that they should enact legal force in your favour. Lawyers don't enable litigation as a form of enforceable dispute resolution, the rule of law does (i.e. the grant of state monopoly over legal force). What are the alternatives? Vigilantism? As well, the vast, vast, vast majority of lawyers don't practice any form of litigation. Only barristers (i.e. counselors-at-law) litigate; around 90% o lawyers practice as solicitors (attorneys-at-law) and never see the inside of a courtroom.

Finally, some attribute the commerce clause (and WTO/GATT-like reductions in interstate discriminatory trade practices) with the creation of more wealth in the United States than any other law in the US federation. I believe Thatcher argued that it was civil liberties. I imagine it was a combination of those two.

But your calculation is incomplete. Why aren't the ridiculous cases refused? Because while *you* might possess ethics, there are plenty of people who don't. Some of those people are lawyers. So even if the rest of the people were sane and decent, the sleazebag lawyers would be chasing those ambulances and working to convince the weak willed and stupid that they're owed. That's how they make a living, after all.

Points relevant:
1. The vast, vast majority of lawyers are ethical and have ethical clients, and to deny these people legal representation is to deny them access to justice;
2. It is unethical to deny legal representation to someone just because you do not agree with their position - it is the duty of legal counsel to advise them why you believe their position is wrong;
3. Defending a position is not the same as agreeing with it- unpopular positions (e.g. insurance companies defending against injured people making claims) have important functions (i.e. keeping insurance rates low, preventing fraud ---- fraud on insurance companies is a much, much, much bigger problem than fraud by insurance com

Re:Lawyers and clients

[ultranova]

However were he possessed of even the slightest hint of ethics he would have quit on the spot, called a press conference, told the public that the president was a traitor who intended to be a monarch, and that we needed to pull a Louis XVI to save the Republic.

Therefore betraying both his client and his professional duty. It wouldn't have been a very ethical thing to do at all, and certainly wouldn't have given him any grounds to call anyone else a traitor.

But the fame and potential wealth he could get by defending a traitor outweighed any integrity that scumbag might once have had.

The legal system is built on the premises that no one is guilty until proven so in a court of law, and that even traitors deserve to have defence counsel, especially when they haven't yet been proven to be traitors by said court. What you are suggesting is a lynch mob killing people they have deemed enemies of state without giving them a chance to defend themselves.

The lawyer did his duty, which was also the right thing to do. Hate Nixon and his deeds as much as you want, but that is no excuse to suppress his right to a fair trial. The second you do so, for any reason, your precious Republic is already gone and replaced with rule by arbitrary whims of whoever happens to be the most powerful at the moment; no different than Louis's France, really.

Any non-dictatorial form of government requires rule of law, because the only alternative is rule by someone's whims. Rule of law requires fair trials even to the worst scumbags, because otherwise it can be circumvented by declaring someone a scumbag. Fair trial requires that your defense attorney and everyone else acting on your behalf keep on doing that work to the best of their ability, no matter how many vomit bags they might need to use in the process, because otherwise declaring you scumbag tilts the odds against you, thus circumventing the rule of law.

Re:So what is Sprint providing its customers?

[SQLGuru]

You and everyone in your neighborhood has a car. You and that hot MILF down the street decide to install CB Radios so that your wife won't see you hooking up with the MILF by looking at your cell phone bill. That goes on for a while and then the MILF wants to set up a threesome with her best friend Jane, so Jane gets a CB, too. Eventually y'all progress to a huge orgy, so everyone in the neighborhood has a CB Radio. Now *THAT'S* the Internet (in more ways than one).

Layne