The last couple of months Internet Service Providers in the Netherlands have been skulking about in regards of messing with the liberties of their customers: at least two Internet Providers have decided to silently block outgoing mail traffic (SMTP). Through this draconian measure they hope to fight spam that is being sent through infected or abused workstations.
There’s a couple of things about this apparent trend in ISP-land, which is pissing me off.
First of all, this so-called anti-spam measure inhibits the liberties of their customers. Before this measure, people were free to setup and host their own mail facilities, to manage mailing lists or just simply organize their mail in different ways than your ISP can facilitate. The ISP has blocked off free traffic for these mail servers. In some cases can still host them by relaying the mail over their own mail systems, but it still limits your freedom as a consumer.
This approach is in my opinion just going back to the dark ages. These ISPs are going back in the days where the only way to prevent unwanted elements from escaping. It is called a quarantine and was enforced quite frequently during the plague heydays until everyone that could had died from it. In modern days we have such places as well, but now they are called prisons or closed institutes.
Secondly -and this is where this measure bites me in the ass – none of these ISPs took the time and effort to inform their customers about this measure. They simply implemented it silently, without any form of notification. This may not affect the majority of the customers but it sure as hell sends quite a few number of people up on shit creek.
As a direct result of this skulking I’ve had to investigate numerous reports of customers that our mail facilities were failing. Their ISP blocks outbound port 25, thus they cannot connect to my SMTP-auth facility. I’ve spend quite a few hours in debugging, testing and fishing before it became apparent that it was our customer’s ISP, which was the culprit.
This secrecy and attitude bugs the hell out of me. Imposing (for most people invisible) limitations is in my opinion a dangerous practice; if our Internet is going to be more controlled by our providers, who is going to control the providers and prevent them from abusing their position? What is ISPs to continue on this road? Maybe next year it is decided that all web traffic should be going through ISP proxies; any direct traffic should be blocked so that they can scan for hazardous data, maybe incidentally checking if you are not downloading something you are not supposed to.
In an open and free market you get to choose your products. Personally I would never choose for an ISP that imposes limits on your liberty in Internet traffic, but how can you make that choice if you don’t know that you are being limited. A prison is still a prison, even if it is an invisible one; it’s a concept that is paramount in the film The Matrix, which – while being a mediocre production – does raise some interesting questions.
I don’t approve of this development. I don’t approve of the secrecy as much as I don’t approve on the imposed limitations. If we start down this road we will end up where China is today; Internet controlled by one or a handful people. It goes against everything that makes Internet appealing to me and against a mentality, which has developed in the free western worlds over the past decennia.
I’ve already checked with my ISP (XS4ALL). They have already stated (to me) that they will not impose such draconian measures. I guess that is why I chose them over 8 years ago.