Your contract with the water company is for them to deliver you water. They make a best effort to do just that, but, inherently, there's stuff besides dihydrogen-oxide in your water. In most parts of the US, for the most part, the other stuff isn't significant and nobody worries about it. However, if you have a broken toilet that leaks, there is not a single water company on the planet that will forgive your bill for the water that leaked through it. On the other hand, generally, your contract with your ISP says that you expect them to deliver packets destined for your IP address to your system and that you expect them to accept packets from your computer system and deliver them to the rest of the internet. You've contracted for the internet, not for water. The internet contains worms, viruses, hackers, spammers, and the like. It is well known, and, expected behavior of the internet. You have not contracted your ISP to run your system for you. You have contracted them to deliver packets. In the scenario described, the "victim" was a victim of his own actions. The ISP was generous in forgiving his bill(s) at first, but, he chose not to fix the toilet. He could have fixed the toilet at any time and yet, for months, he chose not to. Why should the ISP pay the costs incurred because he chose to continue to run a system he knew was infected and chose not to fix? Owen