{bleep}ING SPAMMERS!!!!!

[Piru]

Do everyone a favour, go after the spammer *and* SpamCop. I'm sick of playing games with email because some anti-spam fascist dictates how we are allowed to use email.

Fining for speeding and jaywalking. That's bad! I mean you were in a hurry and no-one was in danger. I don't need to respect that stop sign, it's stupid! Damn fascist police dictating how to behave in the society!

Lets have a world without rules, just anarchy...

...or maybe not.

Smapcop does NOT block anything unless if someone volunteerily uses the service (individual or ISP). Spamcop is not blocking anything, the receiver is. So you blame the wrong party from the beginning...

Even if spamcop occasionally block some large servers, it still pays off in the end. The ratio of crap blocked per problems caused is fair enough. Also, if some large ISP gets into spamcop blacklist, it IMO is just a wakeup call for the adminstrators to do better job. Usually when this happens they check and fix all mailservers in their control, to make sure this embarrassement doesn't happen ever again.

[Piru]

Do I blame anti-spammer for escalating the problem, yes. I blame them for censoring email for other people based upon their values.

...and herein lies the fault in your reasoning:
Spamcop is not blocking anything, whoever uses spamcop is.

You should blame the receiver (individual or ISP) using spamcop (or other filtering measure), not spamcop itself.

Suing spamcop does not solve the problem.

This reminds me of DMCA. The marker pens should be banned because they can be used to circumvent audio CD protection? How about attacking the actual action, not the tool?

[Piru]

@macto

Then again, I would like to reiterate that they are doing this because legal means of spamming people are being cut off.

They do it because it's
a) cheap (bandwidth cost goes to 3rd party)
b) safe (blame goes to 3rd party)
c) untraceable in most cases (going thru several open proxies / other owned boxes to control the hosts)

There is no legal way to distribute spam because spam is illegal in most civiliced parts of the globe.

Because the ISP is frequently doing it without the knowledge, let alone permission, of the user.

I urge you and everyone questioning the validity of ISPs actions to read the fine-print of the contract.

Because the organisation is making the decisions for you? Consider how much people would argue against this if the government made the list (in fact, there was a comment to that effect earlier). If some private enterprise makes the decision, it is suddenly acceptable.

Yet again, let me re-iterate, anti-spammers (like spamcop) didn't do the decision, but the ISP / individual of the receiving party. Spamcop merely is the tool that is made available.

You will also note that I was most strongly objecting to the ISP or network admin imposing those decisions upon the user. If a user does it to themself, I can (grudgingly) accept it.

You can always switch service provider.

[Piru]

@macto

my problems are with ISPs who impose these restrictions.

So, the recipient doesn't get the email. There is nothing you can do, get over it. Last time I checked email has no guarantee of delivery, anyway. If the message is crucial you use some other means of delivery with receive verifications.

If the spam filtering stops 99% of the spam and in addition one or two legit mails get stopped occasionally, I can't see how that is bad in any way. No system is perfect. Typically society has to compromise between freedom and limitations, and I see this as such a case.

Or are opinions not allowed to change through discourse?

Naturally.