Philosophically I think the EFF is right. Blocking a single legitimate e-mail is very bad, and should be avoided at all costs.
Bad for whom? Only for the sender? Does this sender have rights which should supercede the property rights of recipients and of infrastructure owners? If so then who gets to decide whether mail is legitimate or not? The sender again? If so then why should anyone ever be allowed to filter out "spam", either as a recipient, or as an infrastructure owner? That way lies madness. Senders have no such rights, and the determination of a message's legitimacy lies with recipients (and perhaps infrastructure owners) NOT senders. A sender's rights are determined by their contract with their ISP, and an ISP's rights are determined by their contracts with their peers and transit providers.
Practically I think that the tactics of MAPS and ORBS and other blacklists are necessary right now. I'd like nothing better than to see them go away because better technology has come along.
Agreed. (And note that I no longer have an operational role at MAPS.)
Legally (eg, if congress were going to pass a new law) I'm very much on the side of the EFF, because the law must be pure and true, because anything less impinges on our civil liberties.
I also want the law to be pure and true, but there is no civil liberty involving the transmission of e-mail or any other traffic whose cost of delivery is paid in any way by anyone other than that sender.