*Couple of notes. The times here are in GMT for clarity. (Mine, when I was working out the sequence of events.)

Some of the evidence links require (free) registration with Spamcop -- they're the official summaries of spam reports against specific IPs. Others are edited from my e-mail conversations with a Spamcop Deputy.

Obviously they've withheld certain info (for example, they can't tell me who submitted the spam reports in case I go around and stab them with a pikestaff or something) but we work around this, rather cleverly I think: to determine if the "spam" Mil-42s are from verified subscribers (ie, people who deliberately signed up then reported us) I ask the Spamcop Dep to compare the report e-mails against the Mil Mailing List e-mails we send out.

The Spamcop Dep is able to confirm, unequivocally, that the reported Mil-42 e-mails are all, every single last tiny final one, verified newsletters. Not the "someone's trying to subscribe this address, please verify it's you" e-mail, nor even the "thanks for verifying, you're now on the list" one, but the actual Mil's Mailing List #42 newsletter itself, sent directly by us to subscribers. In other words, people voluntarily signed up, voluntarily verified their subscription, received the newsletter they'd voluntarily subscribed to, then reported it as spam.

I mention this to MR MILLINGTON; I can't believe anyone would be such a dopey dimbo. He reveals that this happens all the time -- Mil's Mailing List is particularly popular among readers in the media, which means that after every ish MR MILLINGTON receives spittingly violent e-mails from people who express their wish to kill him through the head for spamming them. He politely replies with their timestamped certificate of subscription that's tied to their e-mail address and IP (ie, the bit we're sent by the List prog when someone verifies their sub), adding that he's removed them manually from the List. They then reply, "Oh yes, now I remember. Put me back on, would you?"

These then are MR MILLINGTON's readers. I display them a frosty back.