Re: Re[2]: [dvd-discuss] EFF opposes blacklisting spammers

[Jeme A Brelin <jeme(at)brelin.net>]

On Fri, 19 Oct 2001, Ole Craig wrote:
> 	When was the last time you got a junk fax? 

When was the last time someone forged the source of a telephone call?

It's NOT easy and certainly not as trivial as it is with email.

A punishment-based deterrent works only when one can assure that a given
person or organization committed the act.

A prescriptive system of telephone number blocking could also work for
junk faxes, but would be a real hassle to maintain over time and cause all
kinds of undesirable complications (just like blackhole lists for email).

> > And, unfortunately, due to the easily forged nature of SMTP, no system of
> > punishment after the fact can be enforced, either.
> 
> 	Bullshit. Sure, you can forge SMTP headers -- but anyone who has
> enough intelligence to read and understand RFCs can track "Received: "
> headers and identify the insertion point -- the first "real" SMTP
> transaction.

BUT can you assure that the spammer maintains that mail server?  Could we
not be screwing somebody IN A BIG WAY for having a misconfigured host or,
worse yet, getting hacked?

And spoofing at the source just makes the matters worse because a
blackhole on an upstream provider silences FAR MORE than the spammer.

Spam is not an offense worth silencing ANY legitimate speech.

> Then it's simply a matter of telling the admin at that site that
> either A] s/he has a customer who is forging headers, or B] s/he has
> an open mail relay.

And you do it by shutting them off from email communication and without
due process or any legal protections whatsoever.

This is what happens when "private" organizations make their own rules.  
The RBL is not an agency of the public working to protect speech.

> 	Spam is cost-shifting. Transmission and storage costs are borne
> by the recipient and the ISPs; the latter pass the expense on to the
> former, so in essence we are all funding spammers by paying the
> internet bill.

Yeah?  Well, I was an engineer on one of the five largest internet
backbones IN THE WORLD and we estimated that spam accounted for a
negligible amount of our traffic.  The costs you're using as justification
for squelching speech (through the failures and failings of systems like
the RBL) have been steadily decreasing in the past decade.

I hate advertising as much as anyone, I think.

I hate getting spam and I report it to the postmaster of the originating
SMTP server at a fairly high frequency.  I've been known to report the
spam to the delegated authority for the orginating IP.

But I don't threaten or flame.  You let them know that you don't
appreciate it and if they have an open relay or somesuch, they should fix
it.  That's about all an individual can do.

It's up to those of us that run mail servers to make sure our systems are
secure enough and those of us that provide bandwidth to keep our customers
in line with Terms of Service and Appropriate Use Policies.

> > We can teach against it, but some people are just going to do whatever
> > they please and we must respect their right to do so.
> 
> 	Bullshit. The flipside of a right to free speech is a right to
> not listen.

Then stop listening.  Close your mail up and drop everything on the floor,
I don't care and that's not what this is about.

I filter my spam with procmail.  I encourage other users to do the same.

But you're crossing the line when you block mail on your server destined
for recipients other than yourself unless those recipients have
specifically asked for certain filters.

J.
-- 
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     Jeme A Brelin
    jeme@brelin.net
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