At 20:43 -0400 4/15/03, waltdnes(_at_)waltdnes(_dot_)org wrote:
I am very disturbed by an undercurrent on this discussion group
regarding whether ISPs should be forced to accept email traffic against
their will.
[...]
There comes a point where one has to draw a line in the sand. I don't
demand to control what other people can get in their inboxes if it's
legal. I do not recognize anyone else's alleged "right" to force
anything into my inbox. Can we have agreement on this basic principle ?
ISPs already have policies about mail they will accept. At the very least,
most have max message size limits.
Some ISPs do block, e.g. outgoing SMTP connections. They could as easily block
access to external POPs e.g. to force customers to use "@thisisp.com"
style e-mail
addresses. Why would an ISP do this? To lock in customers and reduce
churn. So fetching
your mail from across the continent may not always be an option.
Customers would not tolerate a return to the AOL/CompuServe/Prodigy
days of walled-off
systems, even in the name of "stopping spam," so it probably doesn't
require a formal mandate.
The best things ISP could do would be to know their customers and
close accounts
after any spamming incident... and then banning spammers from
becoming customers.
For some reason _some_ (usually large) ISPs have so far not had the
will to crack down.
I really can't figure it out. They do know exactly who's sending the
spam. Perhaps it
is simply that there is negative economic incentive to do anything
about a spammer.
A threat of fines for inaction is probably the only thing that can
change that balance.
I believe a non-technological repair for the present spamming problem
would be to
simply allow some assignment of responsibility to ISPs (look, they are already
responsible for DMCA enforcement, FBI wiretaps, subpoenas for any
reason) so that
ISPs would be obligated to act when complaints are received.
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