[FYI] (Fwd) FC: Oklahoma ISP filters mystery bookstore newsletter as "unsuitable"

["Axel H Horns" <horns@ipjur.com>]

------- Forwarded message follows -------
Date sent:      	Tue, 16 Jul 2002 11:47:34 -0400
From:           	Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
To:             	politech@politechbot.com
Subject:        	FC: Oklahoma ISP filters mystery bookstore newsletter as "unsuitable"
Send reply to:  	declan@well.com


http://news.bookweb.org/621.html

The Mystery of the Bounced E-mails Solved: The ISP Filtered It
Bookselling This Week
Jul 10, 2002

Mary Alice Gorman and Richard Goldman, the husband and wife owners of
the Oakmont, Pennsylvania's Mystery Lovers Bookshop, are veteran
e-newsletter publishers. They understand that, when mailing out an
e-newsletter, bounced e-mails are part of the game. The reasons for
undeliverables are numerous: addresses change constantly, Internet
Service Providers [ISPs] and the Internet can be unreliable, e-mail
addresses are often written down wrong, etcetera. One reason that
never occurred to them was an ISP bouncing their e-mails on purpose.
Unfortunately, one month ago, Goldman and Gorman were shocked to
discover that at least one ISP was doing exactly that.

Sirius Systems Group, an ISP based in Lawton, Oklahoma, filtered out
Mystery Lovers Bookshop's e-mails because the bookstore's domain name,
mysterylovers.com, was deemed obscene by Sirius' filtering program,
according to Goldman. "[Sirius] filters [out e-mails with] message
lines and incoming e-mail addresses containing stuff not found in
family newsletters," he explained. "[The word] 'lover' happened to be
one of them."

Goldman found out through mystery writer Eve K. Sandstrom that Sirius
Systems was filtering its e-mails. Goldman said that e-mail
communications with Sandstrom had always been problematic. "We'd reply
[to Sandstrom], and it would bounce," he said. 

[...]



----------------------------------------------------------------------
--- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing
list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this
notice. To subscribe to Politech:
http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is
archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Declan McCullagh's photographs
are at http://www.mccullagh.org/
----------------------------------------------------------------------
--- Like Politech? Make a donation here:
http://www.politechbot.com/donate/
----------------------------------------------------------------------
---

------- End of forwarded message -------


-- 
To unsubscribe, e-mail: debate-unsubscribe@lists.fitug.de
For additional commands, e-mail: debate-help@lists.fitug.de