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Politech is the oldest Internet resource devoted to politics and technology. Launched in 1994 by Declan McCullagh, the mailing list has chronicled the growing intersection of culture, technology, politics, and law. Since 2000, so has the Politech web site.
[A few points: (a) Seems to me this is, or at least should be, a straightfroward contractual dispute, not a sign of the impending apocalypse. If you want your ISP to handle email in a special way, shop around. If there's sufficient demand, ISPs will offer different options. (b) This illustrates why it's good to own your own domain name and use it for email. If you have a billing dispute, point your domain name to another ISP. (c) I suspect this is hardly unprecedented or raises novel issues. I'd wager that some commercial voicemail or mail-receiving services take a similar pay-overdue-bills-to-gain-access approach. (d) Let's be careful about using emotionally-laden terms like "hijacks." Perhaps it could be described better as "stores incoming email until customer pays up their overdue bill." --Declan] --- Date: Sat, 2 Nov 2002 08:58:13 -0800 Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v546) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Subject: ISP hijacks woman's email From: Paul Schreiber <shrub@mac.com> To: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-Id: <46668F80-EE84-11D6-88CF-00039301A02E@mac.com> > The Toronto-based freelance TV producer has been battling U.S.-based > Inter.net Group for the past 16 months over a billing dispute she says > may have cost her a lucrative job opportunity. Now she wants $110,000 in > damages over a policy that led Inter.net's Canadian subsidiary to keep > her ISP account open for incoming e-mail even while denying her access to > the account. > >Beyond the money, Carter said she wants to change the way ISPs handle >suspended and canceled e-mail accounts. At stake, she asserts, is an >industrywide practice that amounts to extortion, in which ISPs may hold >private communications hostage until bills are settled up. Privacy commisioner's report: http://www.privcom.gc.ca/cf-dc/cf-dc_020828_e.asp From cryptonome: http://cryptome.org/isp-hijack.htm Slashdot thread: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/11/02/167234&mode=nested CNet article: http://news.com.com/2100-1023-963631.html?tag=fd_lede2_hed Paul shad 96c / uw cs 2001 / mac activist / fumbler / eda / headliner / navy-souper fan of / sophie b. / steve poltz / habs / bills / 49ers / "To disable the Internet to save EMI and Disney is the moral equivalent of burning down the library of Alexandria to ensure the livelihood of monastic scribes." --Jon Ippolito, of the Guggenheim, on the CBDTPA ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Like Politech? Make a donation here: http://www.politechbot.com/donate/ Recent CNET News.com articles: http://news.search.com/search?q=declan -------------------------------------------------------------------------