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North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical Re: What's going on?
On Thu, 17 Apr 1997, Sanjay Dani wrote: > >Some of the mail seems to be holding us partially culpable > >for the spam. I'm happy to report that the other ISP is taking > >action against the spam complaint, but I don't know of any > >interpretation of Netiquette that condemns commercial WWW sites. > >I don't know that I'd favor an abuse policy that encompasses > >WWW sites, even if they are listed elsewhere in spam mailings, > > Where does one draw the line? The phone company that gives > phone service to the email spammer, the gazillion dollar > software and hardware companies that sell their pc/email/browser > products to the spammers? Break into them? It is easy to > imagine the company some of the extermist anti-spammers > would be keeping, at this rate. You draw the line at what is clearly abuse of legitimate resources. Mail has a legitimate purpose. Browsers and phone company access can be used in 'legitimate' ways. Unsolicited commercial email on the Internet is an attack which makes unauthorized use of resources belonging to other people to offset advertising cost. Netscape sells its browser to everyone, and it never intended to have it used for spamming, any more than Eric intended sendmail to be used for it. (Quite the contrary, of course, I would assume.) The unsolicited email is generally obnoxious and distasteful. You won't see pornography advertisements under your windshield wiper when you come out from shopping. And the fact that the "spammers" hide their origin as cleverly as they can is the final piece of illegitimacy. There is legitimate and illegitimate use of resources, and spam is illegitimate. Whether to fight fire with fire is another question entirely, but the blame for spam clearly falls on the spammers themselves, and I would not have any sympathy for a SYN flooded web page advertised via spam. __ Matt Wallace - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
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