Re: [Asrg] Spam, defined, and permissions

> > ...
> there is NO feasible way for a spammer to try to sue a recipient who has 
chosen
> to refuse to accept, or read, the mail a spammer has tried to jam into the
> recipient's mailbox.  [This does NOT apply to mail that has been 'filtered' by
> some upstream authority, an ISP perhaps, based on their OWN arbitrary rules.]
> The user has still made a clear decision - one to delegate their right
to accept/refuse to the ISP. As long as the ISP's contract makes this
clear, then I believe there's no difference in the 2 cases. 

Sounds good, until the "spammer" can find a case (even just ONE) where the 
intended recipient actually WANTED the E-mail in question, and said user didn't 
feel they had in fact granted their ISP the 'right' to MIS-BLOCK mail that the 
user actually wanted. ("I only told you that you could block SPAM!  This isn't 
spam...!")  Now, perhaps you can come up with a contract/TOS that has enough 
waivers and disclaimers in it, but I still think that the "spammer"/"mailer" 
will probably have adequate claim to bring it up in court, SOMEWHERE.

> The user can exercise choice by switching to an ISP which allows greater
control by its users (and as John has pointed out, probably charges a
premium to cover the costs of offering that control).

I think you're being far, far too presumptuous about the practicality of 
switching to a different ISP.  Maybe you haven't been paying attention, but the 
ISP world has been consolidating (and especially if we're talking about 
broadband type services... okay, yes, dialup ISPs are more plentiful).

Take my case... where I have a Comcast cable connection.  I'm too far from the 
CO to get DSL, ISDN is slow (by today's standards) and badly overpriced, IDSL 
pretty much the same story, satellite Internet is expensive (here at least) and 
dialup is way too slow to satisfy me anymore.  And nobody here offers any kind 
of serious-competition (price, performance) wireless broadband.  So if I didn't 
like Comcast's terms (and I don't, for example, like their policy of blocking 
port 25, which would enable me to send mail through my own domain provider's 
SMTP server) what, exactly, are my choices for switching to a different ISP?

Meanwhile, even if one presumes that I'm therefore going to use Comcast for my 
connectivity, the fact that Comcast insists on blocking port 25 pretty well 
precludes me from signing up with a different and more-satisfactory "ISP", at 
least for outgoing SMTP-type mail service.

So, in fact, this supposed "choice" (which presumably would give the ISP a 
potential defensive claim) can be demonstrated as not being really much of a 
choice at all, at least not for significant numbers of users.

But in any case, my point remains... IF the RECIPIENT chooses the antispam 
filtering software that they like, and sets it to reject the types of spam that 
they choose to not receive or open, THEN that triage is not going to give a 
spammer/"mailer" much of a foothold to sue anybody on the basis that they are 
"interfering with the 'mailer's' 'legitimate' business".

Gordon Peterson                  http://personal.terabites.com/
1977-2002  Twenty-fifth anniversary year of Local Area Networking!
Support free and fair US elections!  http://stickers.defend-democracy.org
12/19/98: Partisan Republicans scornfully ignore the voters they "represent".
12/09/00: the date the Republican Party took down democracy in America.



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