The law you cited refers only to civil damages resulting from criminal activity. In order to press a civil suit under this law, the defendant would first need to be convicted of criminal activity falling under (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), or (v) of subsection (a)(5)(B), which in turn requires a violation of (a)(5)(A) which requires unauthorized access to a protected computer. The administrator doing the blocking would be in the clear, since they are authorized to access this computer (and are in fact authorized to change this information, even if you disagree with the change.) The provider of a blocking list would not have accessed this computer at all, since they did not make the change. The desires of the intended recipient do not matter at all under this law, as they do not own the computer on which the change was made. If something has been done which violates a service agreement, you can press a civil suit based on that agreement, which falls under contract law and has nothing at all to do with 18 U.S.C. 1030. I am not a lawyer, although I did spend much time doing legal research for one. This is actually an extremely simple law, and I can say with a fair degree of certainty that it does not cover what you think it does. If you need legal advice, talk to a lawyer, you may have a civil suit if this filtering violates a contract you have with the party in question. 18 U.S.C. 1030 however, does not apply here. I hope this was helpful. -Daniel Pelstring -----Original Message----- From: owner-ietf@xxxxxxxx [mailto:owner-ietf@xxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Mike S Sent: Saturday, January 10, 2004 11:45 AM To: ietf@xxxxxxxx Subject: Re: SMTP Minimum Retry Period - Proposal To Modify Mx At 10:32 PM 1/9/2004, Ken Raeburn wrote... >Not in any mail I've seen so far, but the other traffic since implies I've missed something. Investigating that... my apologies. 18 U.S.C. 1030 >In any case, the quotations I've seen suggest you believe that the blocking is done without authorization. That is correct. Understand that I am NOT referring to UCE/spam. In the case of UCE/Spam, I will stipulate that the intended recipient may indeed have authorized upstream blocking/filtering. It is, however, irrational and incorrect to argue that the recipient has authorized blocking/filtering of email replies sent in direct response to queries they have sent. RBL/DUL makes no distinction between these types of email, and indiscriminately causes both types to be blocked. One cannot argue that general "best effort" or "no guarantees" terms of service cover this situation, since the blocking is known and deliberate. > As I said in my previous mail, I suspect the service agreement is likely to provide for it; I can only speak for the ISP agreements I've been a party to, and they do NOT authorize any upstream filtering or blocking. >And I suspect the receiving computer to which "damage" would be done would be the ISP's mail server; presumably none of this is interfering with the transmission between the ISP's mail server and the customer's machine. It is interfering with communications between sender and recipient, which is exactly what the cited law prohibits. The maintainer of the MX has publicly agreed to accept mail destined for the domain (by publishing an MX record). Blocking/refusing/filtering email bound for a protected system is a violation of U.S. law, unless specific authorization has been granted to do so, which has not occurred (see above).