You do not have the right to block my mail.
We don't block your mail -- we only have the ability (and desire) to block mail on our own systems. We've chosen to refuse mail from sites on the RSS list. Other places that refuse your mail with the RSS list have made that same choice.
We believe that we are operating legally, under United States legal precedent.We are within our legal rights to use our list to restrict what traffic passes through our machines, and others are free to use our list in the same manner.
This is, in our opinion, quite similar to private delivery services (such as FedEx). For example, they have restrictions on what they will deliver for you.
Internet Service Providers do not currently fall under common carrier status, and as such, they are not compelled to deliver data that they do not wish to deliver (such as junk e-mail).
The AOL Legal web site is a great place to learn about how the law applies to private networks. Of note is the article where the court establishes that private network service providers are not common carriers, and the article that establishes that marketers do not have a first amendment right to send unsolicited advertising via electronic mail.
This is censorship!
No, this is the exercising of private property rights. If some ISP is refusing your mail, they had to choose to do so. We don't have the means or the desire to interfere with your communication. If your mail is refused due to an RSS listing, the person that owns the mail server that bounced your mail, he or she made that choice.
RSS users are RSS users by choice. Folks have to decide to explicitly configure their mail servers to utilize the RSS list. We don't make them do it. We don't want them to do it until they understand that utilizing the RSS will sometimes impact legitimate mail.
That's why, on http://www.mail-abuse.org/rss/how.html, the page of instructions on how mail server administrators can choose to utilize the RSS, it explains:
The Mail Abuse Prevention System's Relay Spam Stopper List can be used by any interested party in the configuration of their own network or mail relay, toward the goal of limiting receipt of unwanted relay spam. This step must not be taken lightly -- the MAPS RSS creates intentional loss of email connectivity for anyone who chooses to use it. Sometimes a site that is actively engaged in relaying unwanted spam to internet users may also have users that are not spammers. What actually happens is that the nonspammers share an unpleasant and negative fate with spammers in that case. In other words, if you are not willing to occasionally throw out a baby with the bathwater (figuratively speaking of course), then the MAPS RSS is not for you. Note that use of the MAPS RSS is currently free of charge.
This isn't fair! We're not sending spam!
We're not claiming that you're sending spam. We're claiming that people are using your server to relay their spam, and we've got evidence on file to back up that claim.
The servers that refuse your mail are doing so because the administrators of those server want to do so. That means that the people that run those servers have made the CHOICE that they do not want more mail from your server until it has been fixed to stop relaying spam.
We can understand that you're upset, but don't take it out on us -- it seems that your beef is with the hundreds of thousands of internet users who don't want relay spam from your server until it's been fixed to stop relaying spam. They chose to use RSS.
What you're doing is wrong and I'm going to sue you!
Well, if you really want to sue us, we can't stop you. We'd recommend that you DO NOT email us and tell us you're going to sue us -- proper notification should be sent by a lawyer via certified mail. Please note that sending us legal threats via email is not the fastest way to resolve a pending RSS listing issue. We remove sites from our list when they've been fixed to stop relaying spam -- and threatening us with legal action is not going to change that.
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