Wait a minute. At one point you say that blocking outbound SMTP connections from home PCs does nothing to block SPAM, and then you say that the majority of SPAM comes from home PCs on broadband connections that are part of botnets (which use SMTP to send spam). Which is it?
As for the rest of your spiel, it really doesn't make sense. The internet isn't free, it costs money to run all those lines, keep those servers running and cool, etc. Anyone who provides a service of hosting email accounts for someone is doing it with the expectation of providing some value to its users in return for some value to themselves. In the case of Yahoo, MSN, etc, it's mostly about offering a free, reliable, reasonably-spam-free, email account in return for brand loyalty and maybe some advertising revenue. If users don't like it, there is nothing at all stopping them from going to a domain registrar, registering their own domain, and then going to an ISP and buying an account that allows inbound SMTP; or going to a hosting provider and provisioning their own mail server, or paying someone else to do above for them. If you think there is censorship or collusion going on, you're wildly mistaken, and perhaps excessively paranoid. willhill wrote: > If those filters and port blocks did anything to block spam, I'd believe you. > > I can tell you that AOL and Hotmails spam filters are largely ineffective > because my wife uses one and my mom used to use the other until it became > unbearable. You and I both know that the vast majority of spam now comes > from botnets of home PCs on broadband connections and we also know that spam > outnumbers legitmate email even after filters. > > The real answer to the botnet problem is OS diversification. At least one in > four computers is part of a botnet. If ISPs really cared, they would not > still be promoting the monoculture. > > Net neutrality is ultimately an issue of political control. The ability to > filter the internet is the ability to filter opinion and it will be used that > way. That's not the way the internet is supposed to work and technically > the filters are bottlenecks that throttle performance. The example blocking > is more than Hotmail and AOL. It's all of the domains controlled by > Microsoft, AOL and Yahoo and it reeks of government induced collusion. If > you want to know what a corporate controlled, government censored internet > will look like, turn on your TV. A free internet is cutting into that > censorship and control and that's the reason the FCC came out against network > neutrality. > > TruthOut recommends dumping "free" email, but that won't get solve their > problem. If AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo all decide to filter TruthOut, they > will do it at all levels and it will work here just as well as it does in > China. > > On Thursday 20 September 2007 8:14 am, Tim Fournet wrote: > >> Also, SMTP servers blocking incoming mail from misconfigured servers, >> and ISPs blocking incoming TCP/25 connections to home IP ranges have >> nothing to do with each other, except for being two separate measures of >> blocking SPAM. >> > > _______________________________________________ > General mailing list > General at brlug.net > http://mail.brlug.net/mailman/listinfo/general_brlug.net >
