On Mon, 26 Aug 2002, Greg A. Woods wrote:

...

...

Well, you might be able to pay your ISP for that kind of service, but not all ISPs need supply such service and certainly not many users really _need_ such a level of service.

...

So now I have to justify the kind of services I want to use? What's next, me having to register the words I'd like to say over the phone with my phone company?

Your analogy is pretty stupid.

Thank you for your kind words, but I have to disagree. It is not an ISP's business what's in the packets I send, just like it's not the phone company's business what I say over the phone. Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty? If they get a complaint that holds up to some scruteny, they can start looking at what I'm doing. But filtering beforehand just because I _may_ do something bad sets a big, fat, ugly precedent.

Some lame luser with a set-top box (the majority of all users, lame and otherwise) never ever needs to send arbitrary IP packets to arbitrary IP addresses.

And east germans have no reason to visit west germany, so that wall was a good think after all.

Are you trying to say that the Internet should be restricted to only those who can responsibly send arbitrary IP packets to arbitrary IP addresses?

People should be able to handle arbitrary incoming IP packets (although not necessarily arbitrary numbers of them). If you don't like receiving something, what is the smart thing to do: ask several hundred million people not to send it, or filter it out yourself? Don't try teaching pigs to sing. It wastes your time, and annoys the pig.