Brent, back from holliday and trying to process its huge mail queue:

A ISP that blocks port 25 forces you indeed to use its mail service. It is as Belgacom that since some years blocked access to luxembourish EPT information service (was +352017 in old times, other number I don't remember by heart now) from its own network, so that you have to use its International inquiries service, that is extreamly expensive.

This is forced sales, and supress customer freedom of choice for the provision of Internet-based services. Why not an ISP that blocks access to banking services, forcing you to open a bank account at a bank service this ISP owns and operates ? Why not blocking of search engines like Google or Yahoo, forcing you to pass though the ISP's operated search engine, that will become soon a billed value added service ?

For me, provision of an Internet access means provision of an IP address and no control on it. Other services (web hosting, mail hosting, firewall, anti-spam, ...) must remain optional service and not a forced service sale. If we accept port 25 being filtered, then we will go progressively to a limited Internet-like service, like AOL.

By the way, are there no ISPs yet that limit access to the Internet to port 80 and 443 only ?

As soon as their is no more anonymous Internet access, the authorities can enforce anti-spam laws by using records of ISPs that give correspondance between IP address/time of use and address of the user. I think this should be enough violation of privacy. We don't need in addition a restriction to our freedom of choice of supplier.

Just my 0.5 eurocent.

Eric Dondelinger a écrit :

My girlfriend had to send several important mails for her project this
day. It wasn't fun. At first I thought it was the fault of the mail
provider. If I had been informed by the ISP I could have found an
alternative (perhaps by connecting my old analog modem).


Care to explain just why you didn't follow the only sensible
measure, which is to go through your ISPs mailserver, which
*must* relay for you?
If you're on dialup, there's absolutely no reason to do it
any other way - and if you had a valid reason, wtf are you
doing on a dialup line with no fixed IP?
Also, there's a great many mailservers that are filtering
based on DULs, i.e. if you're on a dialup, there's quite
some chances that your emails won't be accepted at the other
end anyway.

-- 
Brent Frère

Private e-mail:  Brent@BFrere.net

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