Much as I am reluctant to get into this debate, let me try to make some distinctions that might be at the root of where you and Nathaniel are not communicating...
* Your analogy to the phone system is exact as long as the system is end-to-end (see below). You have no obligation to accept a call from Nathaniel (or anyone else) and can be as rude as you like --within extremely broad limits -- if someone manages to ring your phone whom you don't want to talk with. But your carrier is generally required to accept a connection from Nathaniel's carrier: except in very rare and highly selective circumstances, neither is permitted to decide that you and Nathaniel should not communicate. * I run my own mail server(s) as, if I recall, do you. What I choose to accept or reject at that server is my business and my problem only. As you suggest, I don't believe that anyone has the right to tell me what I must accept, or how I am permitted to make those decisions. I also pay my ISP extra (relative to their cheapest accounts that offer essentially the same bandwidth, etc.) so that they don't get in the way of my servers or filter my incoming or outgoing traffic (at either the IP or applications level). I resent paying extra, especially since I am painfully aware that their base operating costs are lower for the kind of static-address, no-filters service I am buying than they are for various "protect the users" or "drive up the price" arrangements, but, until someone comes along with a better deal, that is how it goes. * But, when the victim^H^H^H^H^H^H consumer is essentially faced with a monopoly --buy the ISP's service with whatever conditions it comes with or be stuck with dialup-- and is not permitted to run mail servers, has no real control over whatever filters the ISP decides to install, etc., the situation is a lot closer to the classic "middlebox with no control by either endpoint" one (and produces variations on the same arguments). At least in the US, at bandwidth levels lower than a fractional-T1, there is typically very little choice of providers (or at least of terms and conditions). In the Boston area, as far as I know, there are a number of consumer aDSL providers, but none of them provide fixed addresses and most prohibit servers of any sort, etc., without "upgrading" to much more costly "business services". Few, if any, will permit outgoing mail except through their servers, so, if they get blocked, all of their customers get blocked ... and have little choice in the matter. For SDSL, several ISPs offer the product but, as far as I can tell, they all do it through the same last-mile provider. And cable... well, not a lot of choices there, at least choices that don't require changing one's residence, either. Go 100 miles north of here, and the options get even fewer -- buy the cable modem service (if it is even available) at whatever terms and conditions (and incompetence) the cable provider wants to offer, or put in a DS0 or above at (last I checked) $6 / air mile/ month, for 30 or 50 miles above and beyond whatever the ISP charges. "Switch carriers" is a possibility, but only a theoretical one.
Where the disagreement you and Nathaniel are having leads, I think inevitably except for timing, is into the state that you assume Nathaniel is assuming: sufficient governmental intervention to turn anyone who operates a mail relay into a common carrier, without the "right" to filter mail except in response to government-approved rituals. For many reasons, I hope we never get there, regardless of its potential advantages for controlling spam and various other sorts of bad behavior. But we don't have a free market here, with consumer choice options among ISPs who filter and ISPs who don't, at least with reasonable price differentials.
regards,
john--On Friday, 12 March, 2004 07:22 -0700 Vernon Schryver <vjs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
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