North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical Re: Sorbs.net
On Sun, Mar 27, 2005 at 05:57:13PM -0500, Dean Anderson wrote: > >Look, if I want to publish a blocklist of all domains with the > >string "er" in them and all IP addresses ending in .7, that would be > >a silly thing to do: but after all, it's just a list. > > There are consequences, of course, to doing irresponsible things, and to > misleading your subscribers, and to blocking email that your subscribers > didn't authorize you to block. Well, you know, as much as a pain as everyone seems to think SORBS is, this approach to the thing has a certain baby/bathwater feel to me, Dean: it seems to make running a blacklist *at all* A Bad Thing... which, my perception is, is *not* the sense of the Net. As for "didn't authorize you to block", two thoughts come to mind: first, the person with the last clear chance in a mail blacklisting situation is the mail admin in question, is it not? If you're running blacklists, and you're concerned about what they block, I should think it would be up to you to back-check the judgement of the BL operator by doing end-to-end testing. And second, to the extent that you *are* using a given list, I suspect (and IANAL, of course), that you are -- constructively -- allowing them to act as your agent for the purpose of deciding which mail to block (absent caselaw to the contrary, which I'll admit I haven't researched), which gives you a lot less leeway to be mad at them. And of course, the only *real* liability you ought to have in the first place is to *your users*, and as long as you're disclosing to them that you use mail BL's, then that one's a bit arguable, as well. Cheers, -- jr 'IANAI,E' a -- Jay R. Ashworth [email protected] Designer Baylink RFC 2100 Ashworth & Associates The Things I Think '87 e24 St Petersburg FL USA http://baylink.pitas.com +1 727 647 1274 If you can read this... thank a system administrator. Or two. --me
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