RE: Calling all NANOG'ers - idea for national hardware price quote registry

["Matt Bazan" <Mbazan () onelegal com>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Richard A Steenbergen [mailto:ras () e-gerbil net] 
>
> Obviously no one is wasting their time sueing you if your 
> company leaks the price of a low-end router to one or two of 
> your neighbors, it isn't worth the price of the lawyers, and 
> it isn't easy to prove. In cases of larger companies with an 
> employee who leaks the data, they simply apply political 
> pressure to have the employee fired. But if you were to start 
> publishing this data in any large scale, and especially if it 
> even impacted one of the cash-cow sales mentioned above, they 
> would come down on you like the hammer of the gods. :)

I'll state it again:  this will be the beauty of a purely anonymous
system.  Think about it.  How is anyone going to be able to prove:

a)  the quote was in fact from a particular company (sure, it may look
darn similar - but prove?  and if you're really worried, fudge some
details a bit)
        - sure, if it's a $10 million quote that's one thing.  But say a
$150,000 quote?  Those are garden variety, least where I'm from (bay
area, California).
b)  who leaked it?  it's completely anonymous.  Think of all the 'senior
government' officials that leak info all the time.  Often times they're
expressly forbidden from doing so and somehow the word still gets out.
Very rarely is someone nailed for it.  And that's hardly anonymous if
push came to shove.

Now I fully realize that it's not a light matter to put ones job on the
line for this.  However, I doubt, that in most cases, someone would get
fired for a first time offense.  And, if worried, start with something
small.  Bottom line is, the system's never been tested - anonymously.
Who knows what would happen?  It's all essentially speculation until
it's tried.

  Matt