A ISP is a business. They are not telling someone "you can never say this or do that no matter what, we control your life", they are saying "you cant do this on our network". That simply isnt censorship.

If that doesnt satisfy people who still object, every major ISP has policies that must be agreed to when signing up for services. Whazzitsname broke a binding contract. Thats pretty simple too.

A mail server functions just the same with the relay open or closed, but the difference being a open relay helps drive everyone on the internet pissy for haveing to 'deal' with it. Today, there is no reason to have a open relay.

Even still, what about the other networks that are affected? Say a spammer from one ISP network uses another ISPs open relay, hopping from ISP network to ISP network until it gets to its destination. At the very least, 2 ISPs are affected, sometimes 5 or 6, and they all have to send that one message through. Doesnt sound like a big deal, but when millions of spam messages are sent a day, thats IS a big deal. And thats not including all the bad or old email addresses that bounce back, all those ISPs have to support that too. To handle that, ISPs have to lay MORE line and put up MORE hardware and the pay for all the people to set up and maintain everything. All those costs go down to consumers. Some people can afford to pay larger sums of money for internet access or their business connections, but I seriously doubt most people can.

There is all sorts of points and counter-points, but it boils down to "would everyone on the internet rather have spam or not?". That would be a one sided vote, Im sure.

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