At 12:51 PM 2/3/1999 -0500, Christopher Neill wrote:
On Tue, Feb 02, 1999 at 09:43:37PM -0500, Dean Anderson wrote:
The anti-spammers usually claim the abuse exception as justification for instituting a block. Its their best (though still flimsy) argument. Its flimsy since the congress has the authority to regulate or ban spam, and the congress did pass laws banning junk faxes, and limiting calls to cell phones, yet they have not yet banned spam. Nor has any court found spam by itself to be an abuse. The one spam related law that was before the congress would have placed some requirements on spammers, but would have made it specifically not an abuse for 2511. In other words, the congress doesn't agree with the anti-spammers.
I really would beg to differ--congress has the right to legistlate, certainly, and until they do legislate one way or the other on the matter its pretty much in the ISPs hands;
They did legislate; a number of times in fact. It was called the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. First created in 1968, then modified a number of times, most recently in 1996 to specifically to make it broad enough to protect email. You can see it in 18 USC 25xx (in-transit communications) and 18 USC 27xx (stored communications). One doesn't lose privacy protections merely because they are or might be doing something you don't approve of. But since we have already covered this territory, I'll refer you to the archives. --Dean ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Plain Aviation, Inc dean@av8.com LAN/WAN/UNIX/NT/TCPIP http://www.av8.com ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++