Interesting People mailing list archives
more on EFF: AOL Censors Email Tax Opponents
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Sat, 15 Apr 2006 13:59:53 -0400
Begin forwarded message: From: Bill Stewart <bill.stewart () pobox com> Date: April 14, 2006 2:52:15 PM EDT To: dave () farber net Subject: RE: [IP] more on EFF: AOL Censors Email Tax Opponents Jim Warren's email suggested: > Isn't it about time that we had common-carrier status for email > -- as HAS been the mandate for the telephone cartel? > Otherwise -- like AOL -- it could block all phone calls that it > could identify as being critical of it.) While I agree with Jim's frustration, I'm afraid his thinking is running a bit light here, and his suggestion has too much overbyte... Most people I know would like their email provider to do fairly aggressive spam filtering to cut down on the spam they receive, though of course with zero false positives, and it's difficult to do well unless you make fundamental changes in your approaches to email, such as well-tracked tagging. Some people really want to receive all email addressed to them and do their own filtering, but most people would rather pay somebody else to do it, and different people make different tradeoffs in what kinds of errors they're willing to accept. AOL has traditionally been very aggressive about blocking suspected spam sources, and some years does better than others about being responsive to non-spamming email senders whose mail has been rejected - other big email servers occasionally have to yell at them. When you're one of the largest email services in the business, anybody who wants to send mail does need to listen to you, and they have enough popular services that their users stay even when they go overboard about blocking real email. Blocking email content or senders because a carrier doesn't like them, without fair warning to customers, is reprehensible. But blocking it because you're too large to notice whether something really is or is not spam is just a competence problem that the market should take care of, and you can always nag your friends to get a free webmail account somewhere else to augment their AOL if it doesn't work. ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as lists-ip () insecure org To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/
Current thread:
- more on EFF: AOL Censors Email Tax Opponents David Farber (Apr 15)