Re: [Asrg] Anti-spam laws do work, FYI. There's proof.

[William Leibzon <william at completewhois.com>]

On Sun, 1 Aug 2004, Brian Bruns wrote:

> On Sunday, August 01, 2004 4:25 AM [EST], Roger B.A. Klorese wrote:
>
> > I didn't.
> >
> > I demanded that ISPs who contracted with people before they imposed
> > spam filtering (which, by the way, SPF allegedly is not) allow them
> > to continue not to have it,

Courts have disagreed with this opinion. They said that provider should 
give prior warning to adding new restrictions to its service and give 
to customer who does not agree an option to leave the service. But they 
do not require every ISP to provide end-users filtered and unfiltered 
services (though some ISPs may do so in order to keep customers who would 
otherwise leave). In view of courts existance of other companies providing 
same services is consistant with giving customer choice of what service 
they want to buy and if it is to be filtered or unfiltered, etc.

> >  and that new customers be made aware in
> > totally clear terms before they accept the service the things that
> > may cause legitimate mail they wish to receive not to be delivered.
>
> You have NO right to demand how other ISPs manage their mail services,

I disagree. My standard view is that as a customer I have a right to 
demand how services I buy are provided and I have right to know full
details of the services prior to buying it. I've ran my ISP business
that way and listened to what my customers were expecting. If I could not 
accomodate or thought it was not in their best interest, I would tell 
them about and why.

> much like spammers have NO right to demand that their supposed 'super
> duper opt-in' mail get through to people.

This is completely different. Customer should have right to access any 
page they want on the internet without interference of his isp (unless 
special service, such as adult block is requested by customer), but they 
have no right to expect that owner of the page will let them access the
page if they dont want to. So blocking on the receiving end of the 
unwanted transmission is perfectly reasonable. ISP per request and consent
of the customer may (and should) also block communication unwanted by the 
recepient, such as spam.

At the same time when you buy service from your ISP, ISP through its AUP
(which customer should be made aware prior to buying service) may place
restrictions on what kind of communication customers can send through its 
lines  and almost all ISPs (all in US and Europe) have clause prohibiting 
sending unsoliciting email communication.

> If you take a look at the
> fine print of ISP TOS/AUP contracts, most if not all ISPs reserve the
> right to change their service as necessary in order to keep the system
> secure and functioning properly.

This is emergency clause, not usually applied. If there is large broadcast
attack (lets say due to a virus) on certain port that is causing problems 
for ISP equipment and have possibility to shut down entire service, that 
port would be filtered even if used by some customers.

> It is unreasonable for you to expect a provider to turn off its mail
> filtering services which block spam, viruses, etc. If I were to turn
> off all filtering on mail.sosdg.org, the server would be overwhelmed
> in under 10 minutes.  That means none of my users, none of my staff,
> none of the people who use that server for various services will be
> able to do what they paid for.

Certainly. As end-service provider you have right to filter unwanted traffic
any way you see fit as long as your customers and users of your service
are aware of what you're doing.

----
William Leibzonm
william at commpletewhois.com

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