i came across this as im trying to figure out how to skip a 'bad hop' if anybodys wondering why so late a post..
and im thankful mweaver for your explanation as to the difference between broken and non-functional in a hop.
im also the most conservative, pro business rights person you will meet, but i have to disagree though with your concept of business responsibility.
although customers have a right to choose another business, once a business takes a customer's money in return for a service, they have an obligation to provide that service. if they decide to change the service, by contract law (and basic morality) they are required to 1) notify the customer so he has a right to choose whether to continue paying and 2) refund money to the customer if they are no longer providing the service the customer has paid for.
in the cases described, where ISPs arbitrarily block services, protocols, IPs, etc, the customer is almost never (unfortunately although its likely, i cant say never definitively) notified of the restrictions to his service. when he does notice the restrictions, he is often confounded in his attempts to find out if he is being restricted (witness the above poster who eventually got his ISP to own up) so he can *make* the decision to leave and find another provider. (therefore the ISP is holding his money effectively hostage, preventing him from looking elsewhere). this is not acceptable in any sense of legal or business ethics practice and is the cause of most customer consternation, despair and sometimes outrage.
i understand that business needs/ personnel resource issues/ sheer workload/ maybe security requirements will make it impossible to do due diligence toward the customers, but i think it is unfortunate that reasonable intelligent systems administrators are not aware of this basic issue.
there are real issues when a customer has his services arbitrarily disrupted without his knowledge.
1) by the time a customer calls, he has usually spent 1 to 6 hours of his time (depeding on his technical skill and the consistency of the issue) trying to diagnose the issue himself. that is *all* lost productivity and time
2) his call usually requires him to go through level 1 and level 2 support which usually requires him to reboot and restart all of his systems before that level is convinced it is actually a ISP issue and can send it to the next level. This usually means he has to restart all of his work after the call, and assuming his wait/diagnostic time is (generously) 1 hour, thats another hour of work (usually much longer) lost.
3) then he has to wait for level 3/4 support. this can be 24 hours to 2 weeks depending on ISP and is all time where he cannot decide to take his money elsewhere or make other decisions.
4) and, worst case, if the disruption occurred during a critical internet activity (like a web site database upgrade) there is the potential for tremendous loss to the individual or small business when even a *little* warning and customer care from the ISP could have prevented the entire loss
so 10-20 hours, tied up funds and unlikely but possible catastrophic damage for a service which was already paid for is not an acceptable situation for most consumers. i think most business would not put up with such from their suppliers either.
yes, it's a private business, they can do whatever they want, your rights include not using them and finding someone who WILL let you. The business has to decide where to draw the line. For instance, I doubt your ISP is blocking web sites, as randomly blocking sites would drive customers away. They MIGHT block you from doing P2P, as it's a small minority of users, it costs them more then they user pays, and slows down the network for other users, so by blocking P2P, and the customer leaving, they lower costs, increase service for other customers, and don't really lose any money.
Please don't think that you have a "right" to do anything you want when it comes to networks. The Internet is NOT an inalienable human right.