The idea of this is that if someone (another ISP or an edge provider) does business with Cogent under the pretense that, I don't know, Cogent won't suddenly disconnect them from the Internet, screwing over all of their customers, just because they happen to
host permit access to an over-the-top US legal drama forum:
View attachment 5579930
They can sue Cogent for damages. I don't think that saying "people making fun of me on the Internet is child porn" is a valid argument. Cogent does have a
separate AUP (
A) but I don't think that matters because the disclosures document doesn't mention ANY AUP and the disclosures document is the legal document requested by the FCC. The AUP is like YouTube Community Guidelines which doesn't mean anything anyways because Rule 0 of AUPs is that the moderator is always right and you are always wrong. Cogent says that they only block to "comply with applicable law." Cogent might go for the defamation angle. Defamation (which you should never do because you should never lie about people) is not a crime, it is not illegal, it is a tort. If Cogent wants to say that statements that some claim to be defamatory is banned from being trafficked, then they should have put that in the disclosures!