My initial reaction: Does the law in any way imply this mail address has to be provided for free?
If you had spent 10 seconds with Google Translate on the URL in Gadi's message, you'd already know.
(gosh that only took 12 hours to suggest) Obviously we're discussing a legal and regulatory system most of us here are unfamiliar with, there may be other considerations. But in the USofA a law like this would raise some serious trademark issues. When you manage a valuable trademark your lawyer lectures you about how a trademark has to represent a particular product of a particular quality or else a court can deem it invalid or even fraudulent. There are only two ways this sort of law is likely to be implemented: a) The original ISP continues to provide email for that address. b) Some other ISP provides that service. I suppose a third way, via a third party, is possible but I don't think that defuses the trademark issue. The exact mechanics are a different discussion. Since the first ISP is no longer being paid the practical solution seems to be (b), the original ISP cooperates and hands over service to the new provider somehow. But how can the original ISP be assured that email going out under what appears to be their mark (consider xxx@AOL.COM or xxx@MSN.COM) represents their product in any way the law requires? It would be a conflict and a potential dilution of one's mark. Particularly, as others have suggested, if that product implies availability, spam filtering, support, storage, recovery in the event of lost storage, TOS, etc. In contrast, a phone number has no such trademark implications for the provider, one generally doesn't say "oh, 555-555-1234, an AT&T phone number!" Perhaps it's possible to know this, but it's not common knowledge, it doesn't generally represent the public's view of the AT&T mark. I don't think the law would be workable in the US. I'd be surprised if the law doesn't run into similar problems in Israel. -- -Barry Shein The World | bzs@TheWorld.com | http://www.TheWorld.com Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 800-THE-WRLD | Dial-Up: US, PR, Canada Software Tool & Die | Public Access Internet | SINCE 1989 *oo*