David Honig <honig@otc.net> writes:
At 07:53 AM 12/3/97 EST, Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM wrote:
Bill Stewart <stewarts@ix.netcom.com> writes:
The real problem, besides the emotional distress some people feel at the abuse they get in response to forged postings, and the potential loss of reputation capital, is that people keep trying to call their ISP to get them shut down, and some ISPs do this sort of thing, squashing abusive-sounding customers first and asking questions later. Ok, soon-to-be-ex customers...
Yes, this is one of the problems. Earlier this year pedophile Chris Lewis from Northern Telecom forged a bunch of spam e-mail to look like it came from dm.com (my domain). I got about 500 obnoxious e-mails, which I semi-automatically responded to, and had a rather unpleasant conversation with the assholes at my upstrea (PSI): "If you prove that this e-mail didn't originate at your site, you will not be held responsible".
If you could find a competant jury you would be able to show breach of contract had they done anything, because they should know better than to believe forgeries. Admittedly this is a major hassle you should not have to endure. I suspect that if the assholes at PSI pulled my plug and I sued them for breach of contract, the case would never get to the jury. A judge would toss it. You see, I'm an ISP. Most ISP's contracts with their backbones say explicitly that the backbone can pull the plug any time it wants to for no reason and with no warning. There are very few backbones and they all talk to each other and basically have a cartel. it's not like if you don't like PSI's standard ISP contract, you can go to Sprint and get a better one; they're a cartel with very little competition. Indeed, it's highly unusual even to have a language requiring the backbone to give a notice before pulling your plug.
I might have a good cause of action against Chris Lewis, but the asshole is in Canada. (I found out the forger's home address. I hope someone blows his fucking brains out, for he surely deserves to die.) In what court would I sue him (for interfering with my contractual relations with PSI)? If you're an individual user and check your contract with your ISP, you'll likely see that the ISP too can pull your plug any time it feels like it for no reason, and doesn't even have to turn over to you your files, e-mail, etc. If a forger (like Chris Lewis) forges something objectionable in a user's name and the ISP has to spend a lot of time responding to the complaints, it's not unusual for the ISP to get rid of the controversial user even though the user hasn't posted the traffic that's causing the complaints. If there was more competition in the field, the ISP would have to demonstrate abuse by the user to pull the user's plug. --- Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps