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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 IP addresses on the OPSSM list. Other places that refuse mail from the IP address listed on the OPSSM 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 unwanted 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 OPSSM listing, the person that owns the mail server that bounced your mail, he or she made that choice.
OPSSM users are OPSSM users by choice. They have to sign a subscription and service agreement with us, and explicitly configure their mail servers to utilize the OPSSM list. We don't make them do it. We don't want them to do it until they understand that utilizing the OPSSM may sometimes impact legitimate mail.
That's why, on http://www3.mail-abuse.org/ops/how.html, the page of information on how mail server administrators can choose to utilize the OPSSM, it explains:
The Mail Abuse Prevention System's Open Proxy Stopper List can be used by any interested party in the configuration of their own network or mail server, toward the goal of limiting receipt of unwanted spam transmitted via an open proxy. This step must not be taken lightly. A site that is being exploited because it has an insecure open proxy that is transmitting unwanted spam may have users that are not sending spam. Since the OPSSM is based only on the IP address sending the mail, non-spam mail may be rejected along with spam. If you are unwilling to lose any non-spam mail, then the MAPS OPSSM is not for you.
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 open proxy to transmit 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 proxying 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 proxy spam from your server until it's been fixed to stop proxying spam. They chose to use OPSSM.
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