At 8:26 -0400 5/16/02, Sean Brunnock wrote:
>I think it's odd that newspapers love to run stories about mailmen
>who toss mail in the trash rather than deliver it, but you never hear
>about ISPs that play games with email.
That may be because good old-fashioned mail throughout history has
carried with it a reputation of being sacred. The postal service has
an obvious obligation to make sure that mail travels along the
appointed route and is delivered at the recipient's address. Also,
there is the physical envelope, and when someone opens it and reads a
letter addressed to someone else, you know you have crossed the line,
and not just because it may be difficult to reseal it, so you can't
tell what happened. Email is often not viewed this way, but rather as
a harmless little note of no significant importance. It subsequently
matters less, if the mail occasionally falls into the wrong hands,
and if it doesn't reach the recipient, then resending it is just a
click away, or you can just write a regular letter or make a phone
call instead. The built-in monitoring tools, if you will, in
electronic systems add to this perception, tools that are readily
available to sys admins who are less encouraged to uphold the old
ethics of not crossing the line.
I think it's interesting that when we talk of large ISPs that block
mail, it's "them", and when we talk of mail servers filtering spam
and viruses from user accounts, it's "us". The latter is somehow
okay, although such blocking implies scanning, and it strikes me as
odd that only one among us has mentioned privacy, a backbone
commitment of the postal service. And no matter how many unsolicited
phone calls I get at dinner time, I don't anticipate the phone
company scanning my calls in order to track down the spammers for my
protection.
At 4:38 -0400 5/17/02, Sharon Tucci wrote:
>Can you say there is no conflict of interest when possibly the
>largest ISP worldwide is under the same ownership as a major news
>network AND this ISP is restricting mail delivery that its subscribers
>have ASKED to receive?
At 20:06 -0400 5/17/02, John R Levine wrote:
>That would require a level of sophistication and coordination that far
>exceeds anything I've seen at AOL, even though their postmaster staff is
>quite sophisticated.
>
>They're up to their eyeballs trying to keep the porn, viagra, and
>obvious financial fraud out of their users mailboxes.
You may likely respond yes if I asked you if it's fair to say that
things have gotten out of hand. But would you also respond likewise
if I asked you if it's problematic to toss basic user privacy out the
window in trying to deal with it? In other words, what is it that
sets the self-proclaimed good guys apart from the bad guys? And why
is it that we are so eager to play the hero fishing the little people
out of the pond? Is it perhaps because we receive no medals from
helping to make sure that it doesn't happen in the first place?
At 17:46 -0400 5/18/02, Nick Simicich wrote:
>I guess I do not think that technical means have failed. What has
>happened is that the stomach of ISPs to enforce spam blocks has
>failed.
>
>Spam blocks are not to stop spam - I agree that those are doomed to
>failure. Spam blocks are to shun spammers, to cause their
>legitimate customers to abandon them, and to force compliance.
It's not like we have spammer ISPs clearly defined over there and the
rest of us over here. Spammers are everywhere among us, and
"legitimate" here may mean something else somewhere else.
At 8:26 -0400 5/16/02, Sean Brunnock wrote:
>As far as I can surmise, there were no complaints
>and the ISPs did not notify their customers or us. The ISPs simply
>decided that our mail was not worthy and blocked it. We're currently
>negotiating with the ISPs to lift the blocks.
Hope it works out. In our desperate 24/7 overload society, it isn't
always easy to see who is who. People become nervous and overreact.
It happens to the best of us. There is of course also plenty of
genuine fraud out there, but just when and by whom is the line
crossed?
Mikael (who has a moment ago been encouraged to "Order Viagra,
Phentermine, and Other Drugs with a FREE Online Consultation!")
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