"Wally" wrote in message
k...
I have refused to follow the recommendations of my ISP and file
counter complaints.... since I have accepted the terms of engagement
on this group.

I don't know if counter-claims would work. While I would weigh them up as
a
tactical option, I would be tempted to avoid using them on principle. For
me, the arena is here, and not some nefarious back-stabbing crap conducted
in email between self and opponent's service provider. That BBS network I
talked about in my post to Neal - it was heavily moderated and completely
unlike usenet, but a good thing about it was that all moderation, hearing
of
complaints, and bootings/reconcilliations were done in public for the
entire
network to see.

I'm not certain how to comment on this. It seems to me that if I made a
false or marginal complaint against someone to their ISP, it would be up to
the ISP to either dismiss it out of hand or to use their best judgement
about how to react. Most ISPs respect the privacy of both the person
complaining and the person being complained against. Of course, there's
nothing that either party can do about it if they don't do that, but so far
the only "proof" Mooron has offered is his own statement that I made a
complaint. In any case, whether I did or not, it's still up to his ISP to
take it seriously or not.


I firmly believe that to blindly state that I am guilty of violations
of my TOS is a rather narrow minded and short sighted accusation....
based on the letter of the law rather than the intent.

I haven't been making statements about you, but about Neal's declared
deliberate stepping outside his provider's TOS (now softened to 'almost'
stepping outside it and being booted due to weight of complaint numbers).
As
I say, I haven't been aware of what your telling me here (kinda saw the
posts but wasn't really following what was going on).


To quote my ISP... "although we agree with your position, our hands
are tied by the regulations"... sums up what they think of the
complaints forwarded to them from Jonathan.

I wonder if Jonathan would care to comment on this? In my view, this
situation has gone beyond the "I can neither confirm nor deny" line. If
it's
true, he's completely out of order.

I have never heard of an ISP claiming such a thing. What regulations? I've
had complaints lodged against me in the past. My ISP looks at the rules
they've set down, looks at the situation, and makes a determination based on
their assessment. For example, at one point many months ago, my ISP got in
touch with me about a large volume of email that was coming from my shell
account with them. This was a clear violation of my TOS. I was mystified,
since I don't usually use my shell account for email and certain not for
large volumes of it. We both agreed that something needed to be done
immediately, and they put suspended my outgoing email service for a couple
of hours while the investigation ensued. It turned out that I made a
scripting error and multiple emails were being sent for every one received.
This is also a clear violation of my TOS, since I'm completely responsible
for scripts I create. They found the problem, called me back (I was out of
town on business), explained the problem, created a temporary fix for me,
then restarted my email.

There was another situation that happened years ago that was even worse. It
was when spam first started become a real problem and there we no elegant
solutions. I sent a spam report to PSI (large backbone). They sent me a
long-winded, automated reply, but the spam still continued. Everytime I
reported the problem, I got the same long-winded reply but no action.
Finally, I had enough and crafted a script that would return their reply to
them. This created a loop and resulted in 10,000 emails being generated in
the first hour. This was on a Sunday. I got a couple of phone calls. The
first was from PSI telling me to remove the reply filter. I told them that I
would be happy to do so as soon as they fixed their problem with generating
long-winded replies in the first place, and I hung up. The guy called back,
saying, ok, ok, they fixed their end. So, I removed the filter. The emails
stopped looping. Then, I got a call from my ISP saying that they noticed a
problem which went on for about an hour then stopped and was wondering what
happened. I told them. They told me that technically, I had violated my TOS,
but that they understood the situation and was glad it was resolved. I
offered to pay for the excessive bandwidth, which they appreciated but said
to forget it.


I stand righteous in my indignation..... so don't paint this canvas
in black and white... and do not talk down to me from a precarious
perch of pretensions.

I can assure that there is no intention for my opinions to come across as
pretentious. I understand your predicament, but I do still see it as black
and white. Hard as it may be, your circumstances have changed, and the
basic
choice that I've outlined several times still stands. For you, some of the
ledge has fallen away, and the edge now closer than it was - and that's a
damn shame. If they've changed because someone has messed around with a
real-world resource that you use, than that's plain wrong.


I have only one provider in my area..... I knew this when I entered
into the diatribe... and Jonathan was the only one to report me in
the years I've posted here. He has established himself as such......
without a doubt... beneath my contempt!

Jonathan? What say you?

What would Mooron like me to do to help? Does he want me to send an email or
call his ISP and tell him it's ok for him to do whatever he wants even if it
violates his TOS? Do you think they would listen to me? He claims that I'm
beyond contempt, but this is nothing new.

I still and will always assert that if someone violates their TOS and their
ISP decides that they have, they need to live with the result. I have done
nothing wrong.