3 brief comments on this thread:
 
* Listserv ownership has nothing to do with international law.
  I volunteer my time to manage lists which would not have come
  into existence - or which would have died on the vine - without
  my effort. That effort is appreciated by longstanding participants.
  They know how I maintain the list and I've nearly never had a
  complaint.  For anyone to talk about applying legal standards
  to regulating access to volunteer-driven processes is, well,
  missing the point, to put it mildly.
 
* I shoot first and ask questions later on full-mailbox messages,
  user unknown messages, etc., unless that person is known to me
  by participating on the list. Often the first message is a
  harbinger of dozens more over the following days, per user.
  If I had an hour a day to futz around, I'd do it differently.
 
* I'm on AOL, eWorld, CompuSpend, Freenet, student accts at SUNYAB,
  a work account in Poland, and I pay for PPP through AlterDial.
  I have very few subscribers from CompuSpend, some from Freenet,
  but a growing number from AOL.
  AOL provides easier and more comprehensive access to the net
  than the other large services (okay, WWW's in beta), but it doesnt
  orient its users to (e.g.,) NOT subscribe to 20 active email lists
  and then not check mail for a week or two... I know this, so
  even if I had the time, I'd nuke individual subscribers from AOL
  on full mailbox messages.  But I wouldn't nuke AOL across the
  board, unless I felt its postmasters to be irresponsible, and
  from the internet folks I've had contact with there, I think
  they're sensible and hardworking. They've got the problem of
  socializing 2 million mostly new netters over a short time, which
  is probably about what all US universities have done viz. internet
  to date.
 
-Dave Phillips