In message <XFMail.970905005654.grep@???>, George Bonser writes:
> I have to agree that dialup users of consumer ISP's should not be allowed to
> make port 25 connection outside their network.
Alas, the arguments that justify it are flawed, since it places all the
good people in jail and leaves scot-free the outlaws that have ways of
overcoming the block. 'Just like the anti-encryption argument, which
denies privacy to the law-abiding while leaving unhindered the outlaws
on both sides of the legal fence that have no compunction in bypassing
the restrictions.
> This is NOT censorship. It does not block transmission of mail in any
> way, it simply requires that the mail go through the ISP mail server
> and is logged.
Debating word definitions is a somewhat pointless exercise IMO. It's
the action itself that interest me more than what one calls it. To
block free access to the world's mail servers is to interfere with the
transit of mail, and whether you call that censorship or interference
or just plain BOFH demagogary doesn't change the fact that what you're
doing is *not* providing to your customers the free email access to
the Internet that you enjoy yourselves. There, I've just added another
word to the list of adjectives describing your actions: discrimination.
And, to add insult to injury, you log the traffic as a means of policing
your subjective view of what is wrong and what is right. Well, there's
only one way for you to learn that it's the wrong thing to do, and that's
the hard way: one day you'll get raided by government/military/police
and on the basis of your logs, some innocent party that has been framed
by a spoofer will have his or her life ruined, and you'll be to blame.
In fact, depending on the country you live in, you might even get slammed
in jail yourself for transiting illegal material. Good luck to you mate.
Keep those logs around, make sure you back them up safely.
> SMTP is not designed for hosts with intermittant connectivity.
This has been dealt with already. SMTP works wonderfully in that setting.
> I can think of no reason that a dialup customer would ever need to
> connect to a distant host directly.
Numerous reasons have already been given in this thread. Pure and
simply, direct delivery is far and away the best method of delivering
mail, by a million miles. The fact that you don't like it merely
reflects that you feel a need to control your customers rather than
providing them with an open transit service to the Internet.
There is only one way of dealing with spam in a way that doesn't
compromise individual freedom, and that is to provide customers with
individual web-controlled filters so that *they* decide what is
passed through to them and what is junked. The typical BOFH doesn't
like that idea though, as it puts the customer in control. Sigh ...
Rich.
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