OT: Political Spam - what can you do about it?

Timothy Payne tim at tmpco.com
Fri Oct 29 04:25:33 UTC 2004


On Thu, 2004-10-28 at 09:14, Guy Fraser wrote:
> redhat wrote:
> 
> >I have a customer on our system (we're local ISP) that fancies himself
> >quite the political spinmeister.  He absolutely inundates people with
> >his (what I call) SPAM email.  We have received numerous complaints
> >about this guy from all over the US (mostly colleges that he targets)
> >requesting that this guy be shut down.  He even "attacked" me one day
> >not knowing who I was and told me that he would sue us if we tried to
> >take his email privileges away and gave me a link to some government
> >site with various documents on what "is" email spam and what is "not"
> >email spam.  
> >
> Not having read that document I can't comment on it specifically, but in
> Canada you can not withhold a customers ability to receive their mail, but
> you are allowed to suspend or terminate their account, as long as you
> disable their mailbox with an error indicating the mailbox is suspended
> or that the account no longer exists if the account is terminated. You are
> not allowed to continue accepting mail for an account that is suspended or
> terminated without providing the customer access to their mail.
> 
> >Apparently (I read all of the docs) when the lawmakers
> >created this anti-spam law they removed the label "spam" from anything
> >that is political in nature (so they could use it themselves and be
> >above the law).  It would appear that this guy has me beaten but I just
> >can't stand to sit back and watch this guy annoy other domains the way
> >that he does.  Does anyone else out there have any "knowledge" or
> >insight on this issue or can give me a link to some good resources? I
> >have already scoured the ".gov" sites and it doesn't look good.
> >thanks,
> >Doug
> >  
> >
> As many others have said, make sure your AUP {Acceptable Use Policy}
> or TOS {Terms Of Service} agreements what ever you call it allow you to
> terminate the contract due to verified complaints due to the delivery of
> Unsolicited Email. Make sure that if your policy does not indicate that it
> may be updated at any time without notice that you make all reasonable
> attempts to inform your customers of the new change by including the
> updated information or a pointer to the new policy with the customers bill,
> or deliver it to their mailbox. Keep all the delivery receipts from the
> mail log, and any delivery service notifications you get when the customers
> read their mail. Then when a complaint comes in make sure it originated
> from that customer and document the evidence keeping all pertinent log
> entries and you will be within your right to terminate the customers access.
> 
> The content of any message does not determine if it is Unsolicited, make
> sure you ban the transmission of Unsolicited Messages not SPAM . I have
> had complaints about NEWS Postings, and IRC chatter and comments
> put in forms on websites, so don't be overly specific about what kinds
> messages can be considered Unsolicited . You may also want to ban
> messages with content that is unacceptable or inappropriate for the
> recipient whether content or recipient was intended or not.
> 
> -- 
> Guy Fraser
> 
I'm not an expert on law, but are you not a land (digital) lord?  If you
have a tenant that causes you and others ( band width ) hog, problems,
can't you simply ask them to leave?  With an apartment in Washington
state all the land lord has to give is 20 days notice to leave for what
ever reason.  If you don't pay your rent it's only 3 days.

I'd say "get lost your a problem", sue me if you like, or you can call
my Mom and complain to her :-)  No State or city let's people file a law
suit for free, so he'll just go away and annoy another ISP.

Tim...

The worst thing that could happen is you have to show up in court, and
when you hand the judge the letters of complaint he will most likely
tell the guy to go away.  "Your Honor, I'm sorry but he is a pain in the
ass." :-)  Well... maybe pain in the ass is not appropriate for court. 
Maybe... he's causing problems for other customers.




More information about the fedora-list mailing list