From: Nico Kadel-Garcia
Sent: June 22, 2004 8:08 PM
Subject: Re: [spf-discuss] Indiustry Alliance Publish Anti-Spam
Proposals
"Please look into the history of agis.net and
Cyberpromo.com to understand the legal tangles an
ISP can get into for creating, and especially for
enforcing, such a policy. They're deathly afraid
of losing their "common carrier" status with good
cause, to protect themselves from being liable
for far more dangerous activity on their
networks. Moreover, the backbone providers
(mainly UUnet) have adopted a completely hand-off
policy towards their lower and mid-level
customers, which protects UUnet's short term
bottom line. (After all, they sell bandwidth, not
quality!).
Many smaller and more major players have now
adopted such policies, but it's not yet enforced.
Plenty of the companies sign "pink contracts"
which specifically exempt certain customers from
such anti-spam policies."
Thank you for your comments, Nico. I am familiar
with the cases you reference and the pink
contract issue, specifically involving a kafuffle
with British Telecom.
On the policy enforcement issue, my understanding
was and is that ISPs take the position, we are
not "common carriers."
Otherwise this would prevent them from
implementing and enforcing policies which in
essence say thou may not use our networks to
transmit UBE and also say thou may send UBE to
our networks.
This was the essence of certain testimony before
a recent US Senate Commerce Committee hearing
into implementation of the CAN SPAM Act of 2003.
To my understanding it is also forms the part of
the "backbone" behind the recent spate of
lawsuits brought Microsoft, Yahoo! and others
against spammers.
My understanding is this is also the Canadian
position - ISPs are not common carriers and that
ISPs can enforce negative policies.
Are you suggesting that ISPs want to be
classified as "common carriers?" This is not my
understanding. Or are you suggesting the reason
why ISPs are reluctant to enforce a negative
policy is because ISPs are concerned about being
found to be "common carriers."
My sense arising out of another thread in this
discussion is that ISPs have no problem in
enforcing a negative policy and are not concerned
about someone wanting to drag the ISP into court.
See the responses given yesterday and more
important earlier this morning by Carl.
- John
John Glube
Toronto, Canada
The FTC Calls For One Standard For Sender Authentication
http://www.learnsteps4profit.com/dne.html
---
Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
Version: 6.0.708 / Virus Database: 464 - Release Date: 18/06/2004