> From: Nathaniel Borenstein <nsb@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> > > That would be relevant to your situation if you had any contract > > with those intermediaries, or if you had deigned to buy real Internet > > access instead of some sort of data service that happens to use > > TCP/IP and parts of the Internet. > > I don't care to argue over terminology, but when I say "Internet" I am > explicitly including the consumer-level services that are what 99.99% > of human beings think of as the Internet. I think you're numbers are wrong, but that's irrelevant. The label used by 500,000,000 users don't change the nature things. That 400,000,000 point point to a monitor and talk about "the computer" doesn't change difference between a CRT and a CPU. What you are calling Internet access is not. It differs from the real thing by both price and features. > > That is a straw man. Other than some governments, no third parties > > are interferring with your mail. There are ISPs acting in accordance > > with contracts with their customers to block your mail. You are > > demanding that ISPs violate their agreements with their customers > > and pass your mail. > > And *that* is disingenious. A take-it-or-leave it contract from a near > monopoly is not a meaningful contract. You are equating $30/month whatever-you-call-it with Internet access. Then you claim that since the real Internet access available to you costs more than $30/month, it is not available. I think that is not just disingenious but dishonest. > > from telephone companies. Qwest sells various kinds of call blocking. > > By your reasoning, it is ok for Qwest to block telemarketing calls > > with inevitiably grossly inaccurate CID filters but not for Qwest to > > block email with much more accurate mechanisms. > > If they sell it to me and I *choose* to buy it, that's one thing. If > I'm given no alternative it's something else. -- Nathaniel You are misrepresenting your situation when claim that you have no alternative. You do have a choice, but it it is not only between nothing and $30/month not-Internet-access. You could buy real Internet access, although it would cost as much as $400/month. You compound your misrepresentations by implicitly claiming that the same outfits that sell you $30/month not-Internet-access won't sell you real Internet access. Some of them won't, but many will. If you can get DSL, then you can get real Internet access. That 200 kbit/sec or more of Internet access generally costs more than $100/month does not justify your complaints about whatever you get for $30/month. I don't owe you the subsidies for your Internet access that are demanding. You want me to subsidize your access with my money and in my spam loads. If you were willing to pay what broadband Internet access reall costs, your ISP could afford real abuse instead of just letting the spam flow from your fellow $30/month lusers, and it could afford to give you spam filtering than the worst DNS blacklists. Vernon Schryver vjs@xxxxxxxxxxxx