> From: Nathaniel Borenstein <nsb@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> > ... > When each ISP makes its own rules and metes out its own > vigilante-style punishment, that's not civilization, it's anarchy. And > I find it considerably scarier than the underlying offense of spam > itself. -- Nathaniel Your repeated misrepresentation of the use of blacklists by one party in a prospective SMTP transaction as vigilantism is as offensive as it it is a familiar complaint of senders of unwanted mail, including spammers and kooks. Regardless of what governments or anyone else might do about spam, and regardless of whether you and anyone else other than the targets of your mail consider it spam, your implicit claim to a right to send is wrong and scarier than any sort of Internet vigilante-style punishment. Some of us are bothered a lot more by the notion that you might be able to appeal to any third party to force the target of a prospective communication to "shut up and eat your [mail]." Your right to send mail stops at the border routers of your ISP. Whether your mail gets any farther depends entirely on the sufferance, whim, and caprice of others. If prospective targets of your mail reject it because your IP address is divisible by 91, that is entirely fair, appropriate, and not for anyone but the owners of your targeted mailboxes to judge. Customers of ISPs that want to receive your mail but can't for any reason, whether the use blacklists, the prime factors of your IP address, or standard incompetence, have and should have only one recourse, changing mail providers. If the targets of your mail reject it because you have chosen a spam friendly ISP or an ISP with the wrong number of letters in its domain name, your only recourse is and should be to change mail service providers. The consequences of your choice in hiring an ISP that subsidizes its rates by serving spammers are no one's concern but yours. The incredible notion you have repeatedly, albeit indirectly advanced, that you have a right to have your mail delivered that should be enforced by governments or at least the IETF, would surely apply to backhoe fade, power problems, misconfiguration, and all of other things that cause mail to be lost or bounced. Having governments or the IETF dictate rights of mail senders to be be heard by their targets would be BAD! Next you'll be telling me that if you telephone me, I can't hang up on you. not that I would, but I reserve the right. Vernon Schryver vjs@xxxxxxxxxxxx