ietf-asrg
[Top] [All Lists]

Re: [Asrg] Legal Suggestions ....

2003-04-14 02:44:29

Personaly I think it is the recipients responsability to block their own 
spam. It upsets me when I hear about legitimate mail being blocked. any 
"good faith" system using todays weak reasoning will dump some legitimate 
mail. Ulimately it is the recipients decision about what they want to 
recieve. I feel that any system to block mail, that is not agreed to by
the
recipients, should be illegal. There are substantial penalties for 
interfering with postal mail. Email should be as protected as postal mail
is
from third party interference.



This is weak. Your postal mail is afforded this kind of protection because
you place it in the hands of the state. Are you sure you want do do this
with your email? And besides, the postal service can (and does) do more
with your mail than just deliver it to the intended recipient ("Return to
sender...",
calls police if your package contains a slab of C4).

Making the postal mail / email analogy is troublesome. The two systems 
are based on radically different models. For the post/mail, 
the infrastructure is owned and controlled by the state (or a contractor). 
The email infrastructure is owned by disparate entities who interoperate
by "common consent".

If you must use an analogy, a better one might be that of a carrier not the
state postal service.  Does stuff carried by UPS (say) have this kind of
protection? Are UPS (say) within their rights to refuse to deliver items
that
(after collection) they judge are in violation of their conditions for
carriage?.
Is a consignee at liberty to refuse a delivery for whatever reason? 
Even this analogy is poor, since many 
(but not all) carriers do "end-to-end" transport which is not required in
email.

I agree that a upstream system which blocks mail should be (ideally)
operated with the *consent* of the "recipient", but this is largely 
a matter for the contractual relationship between the provider and 
their customer. The idea of common consent supports a transport entitys 
right to refuse traffic which doesn't fit their consent model 
- that's the way things are.










--
_______________________________________________
Asrg mailing list
Asrg(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/asrg