Right. It's a cost-benefit analysis. Bob may pick up some of Alice's bad blocks, and there's a cost to that. But if the benefit of spam reduction outweighs the possibly-minimal cost, well, Bob's got a good thing going and he's quite happy to continue with that practice. -Declan On Tue, Jun 12, 2001 at 04:01:58PM -0700, Ray Dillinger wrote: > You know what? If Alice puts up a list of all the sites > she's blocking mail from, there is no problem with that. > She is not coercing anyone. She can block any site for any > reason she wants -- maybe she has intestinal gas, or maybe > she just doesn't like somebody. Tough toenails. > > If Bob reads this list and copies it, there is no problem > with that either -- Bob's not coercing anyone. > > Bob winds up blocking the people Alice blocked, even if she > blocked them for no good reason. But Bob is evidently okay > with that, or at least unable to find a better source of > information. > > If Alice were in a competitive business, and people paid for > better or more well-founded recommendations about blocking > lists, she'd probably be driven out of business. But whatever; > nobody else got into the business, so there's no competition. > Alice has a money-losing monopoly that provides marginal > service. > > The only problem arises because Alice started using scans and > listings as weapons. That's not wrong per se, as it's not > stealing or coercion -- it's just rude. But scans themselves > are perfectly acceptable and necessary as the only reliable > means of providing this service. > > I think ORBS was exactly the kind of "reputation service" most > folks here argue in favor of, and while some of us may have > despised it, that's not sufficient reason to interfere with > someone else's ability to publish whatever the hell they want > to publish. > > Or, I'll even go further. It was an example of "private law", > where the "law merchant" publishes a list of people who break > the laws they sell and then lets the market punish or not as > they choose. However flawed the list, and however obnoxious > the merchant was about the testing to create it, isn't that > exactly what many of you have been arguing for the right to do? > > Bear