In the matter of Mr. Fuq

[Bill Stewart]

At 06:34 AM 08/06/2003 -0400, Roy M. Silvernail wrote:
>It would seem that Mencken [1] was correct, as well as Costello [2].
>[1] http://www.bartleby.com/59/3/nooneeverwen.html
>[2] http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/e/q108965.html

Yup.  Mr. Fuq is arguing at least two things:
- If Bob sends a message to Alice that Alice thinks is Spam,
         Alice has a right to sue Bob for spamming.
- If Bob sends a message to Alice the Bob thinks is legitimate,
         and Alice's ISP doesn't think so and discards it,
         this is a criminal denial of service activity.
Now, every spammer out there says that his or her mail is legitimate,
so if Alice hires her ISP to detect and discard obvious spam for her,
she's obviously hiring them to conduct a criminal act so
she's Guilty Guilty Guilty!  She can still sue Bob, but only from jail.
So remember, never Fuq with a troll.

Now, there are other people, such as the EFF,
who will discuss the problems with ISPs that are too
enthusiastic about dropping or rejecting mail,
or (much worse from an internet engineering business)
silently drop the mail without providing a proper reject message,
which is a badly broken evil nasty thing to do.
Dropping mail noisily is not so bad - market solutions let customers
tell their ISPs to be more or less aggressive,
but people who send mail at least know it's been rejected.
Things like rejecting mail from Linux users who are rude enough
to actually run Sendmail themselves instead of being dumb consumers also 
bug them.