Spammers hapless fate = ISP toil and sweat

Much as I wouldn't like to be seen agreeing with Neil, but his last point
below is the most constructive comment to date. The delivery of email is a
co-operative process, spammers (who don't relay through you) are NOT stealing
your resources. They are using a valid distribution method to deliver email
to your customers. If they generate all their spam via their own server (and
I know some [most?] don't) then I think you are obliged to deliver it.

Also any ISP who black-holes parts of the 'net is in danger of having their
competitors use it against them in marketing material...


Matt.

--
Views expressed at not necessarily those of my employer.


"Neil J. McRae" <neil at colt.net> added to the discussion:
> 
> I don't remember you being named out apart from the action given to you
> on the previous LINX meeting.
> 
> As for spam, the first and most important issue regarding this is 
> to educate users and vendors into securing their mail transport agents
> so that they _DO_NOT_ automatically relay any email that is sent to them.
> 
> Microsoft, sendmail and others are all guilty of this, [mostly for 
> backwards compatibility reasons]. Fix that and then the spammers
> have to pay for their own resources...
> 
> Regards,
> Neil
>