Bottom line to me: Mr. Felten is foaming at the mouth. His problem is with his ISP, not with SpamCop. If his ISP had checked with him, the worst that would have happened is SpamCop customers would have emails from that list send to their "hold" box for a week.

Actually the worst is considerably worse than that. I think we're discussing the SpamCop DNS list - which, since it runs on IP addresses, means that all of the ISPs customers may have their outbound emails dropped when
they reach a SpamCop-DNS using system. This may be a different way of operating than the SpamCop that you are using.

I agree that the ISP is reaching too far - but keep in mind that the downside they are facing is that their outbound SMTP gateway is currently listed as a spam source, potentially causing undetectable dropping of mail every moment. The ISP wants to head off that problem FAST.

I think part of the problem goes to SpamCop's attitude toward email - that is, it's ok if this problem fixes itself in a week. This roughly implies that it is OK to silently drop inbound email for a week. A week? Excuse me?

The ISP may have been assuming that SpamCop did some due diligence on the spammer. SpamCop needs to make its policy
about single complaint blackholing much more clear.