There is no such thing as the "right" of a user to all the services an
ISP provides. The user is entitled to what he's paid for. That's it.
If the ISP wishes to charge extra for certain services, or to refuse to
offer certain services, that's that. The customer is free to go
elsewhere. This is not "prejudice", "racism", or any other silly term
like that. It's "business."
Whether or not you think certain policies will hurt my business is your
opinion, and although you're certainly entitled to it, you're foolish to
say that it IS hurting my business. I've got the marketing information
and the analysis of our user base to prove the facts. If you still think
you're right and I'm wrong, you're free to set up your own ISP and offer
any kind of relaying services you want.
A number of people have suggested that blocking direct outbound mail
delivery somehow violates RFCs by deleting mail, or causes mail to be
lost, or... Refusing connections is well within the rules of every RFC
I've ever read. Very few here have even suggested that mail be accepted
and then deleted by the server, instead of just bounced or refused.
For those of you who have an "unreliable" ISP who tends to lose your mail
and still refuses to allow you outbound access - I have no sympathy for
you. Go find another ISP. It's your own money you're wasting staying at
the ISP who won't offer the services you want. I refuse to care about
your own foolishness in where you spend your money. If you want a
particular service, ask for it and offer to sign a contract with the ISP.
If they won't do it, go elsewhere.
No one here has claimed that any spam policy is a panacea. Most of us
who actually run these large systems for a living will readily admit that
fighting spam is a big pain in the ass and we'd rather not have to do it.
But what we want to do really doesn't matter, because we have to fight it
to at least some extent. We're not trying to hide our countermeasures.
Admittedly, we don't advertise in big letters "we block spam" but if a
customer calls and asks about our policies we'll gladly explain them. We
don't mind that the spammers know our countermeasures; they'd figure them
out anyway and it makes them keep trying different things we may not know
about.
In the absence of any real legal protections (and I mean practical ones
that actually discourage this kind of behavior) there will ALWAYS be
spammers. I'm not ready to admit that the problem is so bad that we need
vague laws criminalizing "commercial email," but I'm not going to wait
around while people take down my mail servers either.
shag
=====
Judd Bourgeois | CNM Network +1 (805) 520-7170
Software Architect | 1900 Los Angeles Avenue, 2nd Floor
[EMAIL PROTECTED] | Simi Valley, CA 93065
To ignore evil is to become an accomplice to it.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.
