Was a frequent NANOG participant during the time of these activities.
ISC.ORG hosts SORBS.NET, on 204.152.186.189, an address which traceroutes indicate belongs to ISC.ORG. Traceroutes further indicate that traffic to this address passes on an IP address belonging to EP.NET.
XO had already booted SORBS.NET due to AUP violations, and they then found a home on ISC.ORG. So we tried to complain about SORBS.NET defamatory statements to ISC.ORG, which refused the mail--their abuse contact used SORBS. We then contacted one of the associated upstreams indicated by the traceroute, EP.NET.
Bill Manning, the contact for EP.NET's address block, which assigned an IP address to ISC.ORG, then made some rather interesting dissembling that we couldn't prove any relationship with ISC.ORG. We even offered to hire EP.NET to perform its responsibilities for abuse handling, but Manning didn't want to do that.
ISC.ORG was founded by Paul Vixie, who has worked closely with Bill Manning on various projects including the Palo Alto Internet Exchange (PAIX). Manning would immediately know who and what ISC.ORG was, and there are clearly a number of relationships between Manning, Vixie, PAIX, and ISC.ORG. All that Manning has to do is forward the complaint to the ISC.ORG contact, with whom he is no doubt very familiar.
I noted that neither ISC.ORG nor EP.NET had any published AUP, despite Paul Vixie and others exhorting that all service providers should have such a document.
Here are some emails between Bill Manning and myself.