Re: Comcast blocking mail to its customers

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: John Levine <johnl () iecc com>
Date: October 15, 2008 3:12:36 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Re: [IP] Re:      Comcast blocking mail to its customers

> Some of us depend on having our mail delivered, so we are frustrated
> with the seeming vigilantism of some in the email community to
> overreach and punish bystanders and neutral businesses.  I still
> think Comcast is doing some of that, but it's clear they are trying
> to avoid it, given their view of what an appropriate AUP for mail
> should be.

> My view is that an appropriate AUP for email should be similar to
> that of a common carrier or the USPS.  It's a critical service these
> days.  Using robotic methods or wholesale IP shutoffs to dump
> presumptive spam into the trash is not acceptable for such a
> service.

Well, you know, if your mail service is important enough to be worth
paying for, you can get whatever industrial strength service you want.
If you want to use the consumer grade mailbox that Comcast throws in
for free with a residential ISP account, you get what you get.

The mail stream that ISPs see is typically 95% spam these days.  That
means 20 spams for every real message, so if they were to accept and
store all the spam, that's more than an order of magnitude increase in
the size and cost of their mail system, which would be passed through
to the customers, most of whom don't want it.  And even if they did,
how much confidence do you have that you could manually sort it
correctly?  I've seen plausible studies that say that mechanical
filters are if anything better than humans at sorting large mail
streams, since mechanical filters' eyes don't glaze over.

We old nerds do lots of mail forwarding, but your typical residential
user doesn't, and probably wouldn't understand how to set up a forward
if he wanted.  Much though I would like my ISP to design their mail
system to serve the high-tech 1% rather than the other 99%, it's not
going to happen.  So if getting 100% of your mail is critical, go buy
good mail service that doesn't depend on your ISP's generic mail
system.  If not, well, we're done.

Regards,
John Levine, johnl () iecc com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for  
Dummies",
Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://www.johnlevine.com, ex- 
Mayor
"More Wiener schnitzel, please", said Tom, revealingly.




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