alt Hacker NewsFun fact: in the US, the Supreme Court ruled that postal workers cannot filter out mail by the owner’s request.
It makes a bit of sense, since the mailer had already paid, but the main justification (iirc; it was years ago that I read the opinion) was that a postal service should be neutral and trusted to deliver.
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Not terribly persuasive because the first argument could just as well be seen as the postal service selling a service it can't deliver.
The second argument has the problem that for the whole thing to work the recipient must also have reason to trust the post office, but here their interests are not considered at all.
Fair enough. Most advertising isn't individually posted to each address because that's expensive - they hire their own guy, who isn't a postal worker, to go around and put it in everyone's mailbox. It's like paying one cent per email to prove it isn't spam.
Imagine a similar sticker saying 'service of papers is not permitted at this address'.
Should USPS be required to respect that owners wishes here?
Sensible decision I think.
Sure, the ISP _should_ deliver the packets. No worries.
The user agent should... be an agent for the user, and be able to perform actions on their behalf.
(The legality of those actions is of course assumed by the user here... if I add an automated flamethrower to my mailbox and burn my bills, well the debt collectors may come regardless if I read them or not - we cannot shift blame to the USPS here).