Verizon Sued for Blocking Email from Around the World 2/1/2005 - 1,813 views, 2 Comments
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Just about a month ago, we reported to you that rumour had it that ISP Verizon was blocking entire countries sending email to their mail servers and, hence, their users. Shortly thereafter, we reported that an inside source had confirmed these rumours as true - was indeed blocking entire countries. The next installment in this saga is that Verizon is now being sued for their actions by one of their subscribers. The Philadelphia law firm of Kohn, Swift & Graf filed a lawsuit on behalf of one of Verizon’s DSL users at the end of January. Seeking to get the lawsuit certified as a class action, the firm is inviting other Verizon users who feel that they have suffered as a result of the blocking decision to join the lawsuit. In a follow-up to an article regarding the lawsuit on British website TheRegister.co.uk, a Verizon user posted “…I called Verizon to confirm this and they did. In consolation, they said I could build a list of domains to be permitted access. I have dozens of international contacts and am not about to go through this chore…”, and another wrote “I am a British lawyer resident in Boston. I have been affected by this nonsense Verizon policy. Even British government email accounts were blocked and my contacts there were unable to correspond with me. The Verizon netmail complaints department agreed with me and urged me to report the matter to the media. I wrote to the Verizon CEO, Ivan Seidenburg, all members of the Board of Directors and some Executive VP’s. To date, I have not received a response from any.” Of course, they won’t have the leisure of failing to respond to the lawsuit. It will be interesting to see where this goes.
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» Verizon Wireless Agrees to Compensate Customers for Lost Email to Settle Verizon Lawsuit
» Verizon and MCI: Email Refuser to Acquire Email Abuser
» Is Verizon Blocking Incoming Email from Non-U.S. Internet Domains?
For additional similar stories check out our archives on Around the World, Email Hosting, Internet Law, Internet Providers, Spam Blockers
The irony of Verizon (hosts of 65 Spamhaus listings, including Alan Ralsky, Brian Haberstroh/Atriks, Eric Reintersen, and Empire Towers) aside, it’s “their servers, their rules”.
There is no law currently on the books *anywhere* requiring an ISP to accept traffic, and this is affirmed under the You-Can-Spam act, section 8c:
“SEC. 8. EFFECT ON OTHER LAWS.
(c) NO EFFECT ON POLICIES OF PROVIDERS OF INTERNET ACCESS SERVICE- Nothing in this Act shall be construed to have any effect on the lawfulness or unlawfulness, under any other provision of law, of the adoption, implementation, or enforcement by a provider of Internet access service of a policy of declining to transmit, route, relay, handle, or store certain types of electronic mail messages.”
This *will* be interesting to watch, as it could open the doors for spammers to sue to force their traffic to be accepted.
Comment by Timmer — 2/2/2005 @ 11:26 am
there is no “guaranteed” email service on the internet. By its very nature this could not happen.
“accounts were blocked and my contacts there were unable to correspond with me” HINT: try a telephone dude, if they have internet,then they have phone service. Can You Hear Me NOW???
(where do these people come from? I wish they would go back!) Talk about frivolous lawsuits!
Comment by lee — 3/27/2008 @ 8:19 pm