Michael Snow wrote:
David Gerard wrote:
Nicholas Knight (nknight(a)runawaynet.com) [050206
03:51]:
Contact her ISP. If you can't get them to
drop her, call the upstream
provider(s). If that doesn't work, block every IP range associated
with the ISP and tell anyone affected to complain to the ISP.
Wikipedia is getting big, it's time to start throwing some weight
around when users are engaging in wildly abusive activities.
Contacting ISPs is a step I'm really not comfortable with. Even in the
case
of Michael, when he was vandalising continuously, the only reason for
contacting AOL was that their network was effectively one large
anonymiser.
CD is nothing like at that level. Also, there really is no reason to
presume an ISP will necessarily give a shit. We're not paying her fees.
The one situation in which I could imagine an ISP being willing to
cancel the account of a banned user is if it's being used for something
illegal. A simple example would be uploading child pornography. So it
Since when is trespassing not illegal?
might work against the likes of Brother Larry (or
whatever name the
diaper guy was using last), but not against CheeseDreams.
ISPs have a long history of terminating users that violate their user
agreements.
From BT's TOS:
10.1 You must take all reasonable precautions to ensure that no one
(including you) uses the service:
...
(b) to send, knowingly receive, upload, download or use any
material which is offensive, abusive, indecent, defamatory, obscene or
menacing, or in breach of copyright, confidence, privacy or any other
rights;
(c) to cause annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety;
...
(e) in an unlawful manner, in contravention of any legislation,
laws, licence or third party rights or in contravention of our
Acceptable Use Policies located at
http://www.abuse-guidance.com as may
be amended from time to time (The Acceptable Use Policies also specify
actions we may take to ensure your compliance and by accepting these
terms you authorise us to take such actions);
...
Complaining to an ISP that they're allowing
somebody to edit Wikipedia
while banned would only produce incredulous responses like, "Well, you
do let anybody edit, what did you expect?" They won't think it's any of
Only if you contact management instead of someone with a brain.
Senior system and network admins in large ISPs have a great deal of
power to terminate abusive users.
their business to enforce our internal rules for us.
Nor do I think
It is their business to enforce basic netiquette, as ISPs have been
doing for years.
Wikipedia has any real weight to throw around here; if
we tried to make
a public issue out of it, the publicity would do more damage to
Wikipedia than to the ISP.
How?