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North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical Re: RBL Update (Re: Lets go vixie!! rbl)
Always a good sport, I will take bets in the MSN vs Vixie battle. ;-) I
don't think its going to be quite so easy for MSN to turn off mail
relaying, without breaking a lot of corporate customers.
Of course, Vixie didn't say when the date was to expect MSN to stop
relaying. Is it a few days or a few years?
I think its facinating that Vix can take them out of the RBL, and then
claim it was MSN who gave up. "Retreat and declare victory" I guess.
But we'll see I guess, in a few days or a few years.
Seriously Paul, I would like to have some kind of announcement made on
Nanog before you do that again, so that people can tell you not to do it.
Breaking a large service provider is definitely an operational issue. How
much do you suppose such a service interuption cost the companies who
couldn't communictate? Spam actually costs next to nothing, but being on a
trip and losing email contact with your company can be quite expensive. I
can't help but wonder if the "blockers" were only blocking email to which
they are a party under 18 USC 2511.
Of course, many know the opposing view, that RBL causes third party
relaying, and that usenet canceling causes multiple reposts of the same
message, resulting in drug-addict like behavior: More cancels result in
more reposts. Pull the cancel drug, and it hurts when one is inundated with
multiple reposts, but the anti-spam drug is the source and cause of the
problem. This sort of anti-spam activity is destructive and harmful for
the rest of us, who must put up with ever increasing volume of usenet posts
and cancels, and more creative relaying/anonymizing(new word?) techniques
by spammers. It illustrates why anti-spam is a bad idea.
Now that we are completely "addicted" to usenet cancels, how long before
the cancelers start to extort "support" money from ISPs?
I think we can and should stop the cancelers: Get rid of that addiction
now. It will not be painless, but it will only get worse. Canceling other
people's posts is abusive behavior by any definition.
What Vix is doing probably isn't illegal by itself, though it might
possibly violate trademark or the new copyright law when domain names are
used. I don't think he is likely to get sued. However, using the RBL could
be illegal if one isn't a party to the email being blocked. The
legislative history of 18 USC 2511 indicates it was specifically meant to
apply to email. I wish I knew that last year.
For example, if Above.net blocked mail betweeen company X and an MSN
customer, and they are not an agent of company X or the MSN customer, they
are probably in trouble by 2511. Of course, one of the parties to the
email has to figure out where the mail was blocked, and notice that the
blocker isn't a party to the email. Then they have to know that there is a
federal law that prohibits that. And finally, they have to seek
enforcement.
--Dean
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