[e2e] Fwd: Camel's nose in the tent

[John Day]

>At 01:17 PM 8/10/01 -0400, stanislav shalunov wrote:
>>While it's entirely their option to block mail based on arbitrary
>>criteria, including "From:" headers or anything else (as it is the
>>option of their users to avoid ISPs that annoy their own users), and I
>>don't see any great violation of engineering principles of SMTP here
>>(there *would* be a serious violation of these principles if they
>>replaced your "From:" line with what they think is the correct line),
>>it's definitely a poor practice.
>
>As a matter of law, it is not their option to block mail based on 
>arbitrary criteria.  In particular, the First Amendment does apply 
>here, as do a variety of telecommunications laws.
>
>As a matter of contract, ISPs claim to offer "Internet service" not 
>"whatever I feel like".  Claiming to offer Internet service while 
>not following the standards as written or as commonly understood by 
>those who maintain the could be judged as bad behavior - statutes 
>and common law about fraud, consumer fraud, etc. may well apply (I'm 
>not a lawyer, but I've been a business executive long enough to know 
>something about such limits on what one can do).

Just a thought, but does this messing with the contents of the 
messages take Verizon from being a "carrier" to being an "editor"? 
Remember when Prodigy and AOL thought they would do their customers a 
favor and censor offending material.  This had the affect of making 
them editors, not just carriers of data, and made them responsible 
for the material.

All we need is a test case . . . .

Take care,
John