Comcast and SORBS

[mark at buttery.org (Mark J. Dulcey)]

Bob George wrote:

>  From what you've written, nobody is preventing from running your private
> email server. However, others running their own servers have elected not
> to accept email from servers running off of dynamic IP ranges.
> Lamentable as that is, *dealing with it* is definitely on-topic.

Although Rich is dealing with a dynamic IP situation, it's not limited 
to that. AOL won't accept email from my static Speakeasy.net address, 
which has forced me (reluctantly) to reconfigure my server to relay 
through Speakeasy. My address has not been singled out in any way; they 
apparently block ALL blocks of addresses known to belong to home users, 
dynamic or not.

And yes, the Speakeasy TOS does allow me to run servers. But the actions 
of a company that I don't even do business with has effectively deprived 
me of that right in this case.

My concern about the situation is less about privacy, and more about 
control of the medium. Changing the nature of email so that everyone has 
to work through one of a handful of big players lets those big players 
control what the medium can be used for. The historical record has shown 
that concentration of power in that way will be bad for many of us.