This story really rubs me the wrong way. They make it sound like Spamhaus has their fingers on the Internet's routing tables and at any whim can block or unblock networks that they don't like. This is simply not the case.
Spamhaus is no different from an op ed journalist or a food critic: All offer opinions about varying matters of public interest. Spamhaus, in this case, publishes an opinion in the form of a list of IP network ranges. In their opinion these networks can or may be responsible for transmitting spam or malware on the Internet.
PEOPLE ARE FREE TO USE OR NOT USE THIS INFORMATION AT THEIR DISCRETION.
But why is it that when the nutters at the Westboro Baptist church want to prance up and down the street and hold viotriolic hateful signs that all of a sudden we're so quick to point out that free speech is so vital for our society? Instead of bikeshedding over whether someone has a right to form an opinion about some Dutch ISP, how about instead we talk about how the spammers are themselves infringing on the propery rights of others by crapping on the internet? Lets stop pretending that the Internet is a public resource, it's a collection of private networks.
In any case, I have been a Spamhaus subscriber for scoring mail on my network and I appreciate the work that they do. I'd hate to imagine what the spam fighting landscape might look like today without Steve Linford and Spamhaus' efforts.
