"As this was in 2000 quite a few people were still using Yahoo Mail"
On the other hand, one of the larger IRC networks banned IBM.net due to persistent spam and ddos problems, telling complainers to take it up with IBM. By all accounts the IBM helpdesk was getting upwards of 9000 complaints per hour with IBM lasting about a week before they broke down and agreed to start policing their abusers.
I think that was one of the first real victories against the "we can't take responsibility for policing what our users are doing" (spam and DDoS attacks) mentality that large ISPs had at the time, that was turning them into abuse havens.
What all the large companies seemed to forget is that noone's being paid to _accept_ mail, so if you blow your goodwill, you can be left high and dry. Most of them seemed to just count on being 9000 pound gorillas.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
