Internet Vigilantism

from the Renesys Blog (recently a few posts on Nanog had addressed the same problem):

>>Atrivo (aka Intercage), a Concord, California-based Internet hosting service, disappeared from the Internet for around two days recently. They didn't go bankrupt or suffer a physical catastrophe. Their providers simply shut them down by refusing their traffic. This might very well be the first time in history that the Internet community, a cooperative association of networks with no governing body, has collectively put someone out of business, if only briefly. The alleged sins of Atrivo have been documented extensively, both in the popular media (e.g., the Washington Post) and in technical forums (e.g., Spamhaus and numerous postings to the NANOG mailing list). It is clear that emotions run high with respect to Atrivo, long accused of benefiting from cyber-crime by hosting purveyors of malware, adware, spam, viruses and other cyber-surges. In this blog, we'll take a quick look at their brief demise and make a few observations.