Re: Dr Bubonic junk (fwd)

[Derek Tearne <derek@iconz.co.nz>]

> 
> Daniel J. Phelps said:
> > 
> > If you didn't like that crap from "Dr. Bubonic", then write his
> > postmaster at Postmaster@aol.com

I did do just that.
  
> Awcome on, that's drastic. If his stuff really is deemed off-topic, our
> semi-moderator :-) should kick him off.


But, he probably never was on the list in the first place, and anyway
even if he was he wouldn't be kicked off until he'd spammed us a couple 
of times.

> The route you suggested should received only if somebody engages in
> "mail harassment," specifically, not through a mailing list.

Here in New Zealand we pay for e-mail (incoming and outgoing) by the byte.
In the UK even local telephone calls are charged.  In both cases there 
is a real financial burden to receiving e-mail _even if it's just thrown 
away_.  So I do indeed count this type of posting as mail harrassment.

So Dr Bubonic's egregiously off topic rubbish is decidedly unwelcome.
I have a policy of writing a short polite note to both the sender 
and the postmaster@whatever.zzz whenever I receive either unsolicited 
direct junk mail or junk mail sent to a list.  Spamming mailing lists
is in many ways worse than spamming lots of individual mail accounts 
because the spammer needs to send out a much smaller number of e-mails 
for widest circulation.  Very useful if one is spamming from one of 
these free introductary accounts and only has an hour to do ones
spam.

It is the responsibility of a service provider to at least attempt 
to inform it's users of appropriate behaviour.  If someone abuses 
netiquette in such a way then I feel sending a short note to the 
postmaster is a good thing to do.