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@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