--On Saturday, August 11, 2001 11:24 AM -0700 Roy <garlic@garlic.com> wrote:
It would have been nice if we could all agreed on a DUL database that would be distributed free to anyone to use.
Naturally, I have a different perspective. ;) MAPS has developed, maintained and published these lists for a number of years, on our nickel. The "nickel" to date is to the tune of several million dollars in operational and legal expenses. That's cash folks, not donated equipment, not donated bandwidth, not volunteer efforts. Cold, hard, CASH. It didn't come from corporate donations, it didn't come from subscriptions. 99% of it came out of Dave's and Paul's pockets. MAPS as a corporation must have revenue to operate. We tried to produce that revenue with a paid service called the RBL+. We tried to produce that revenue with our outsourced abuse services. The people that could most afford to use those services chose to continue to use the free queries (at the rate of 10s of millions of queries a day for some ISPs) rather than paying their own way. That had to stop. The only way to stop it was to restrict access all access to the zones. You folks are certainly free to start your own lists, or, you could encourage your employers to financially support the organization that has been financially carrying them for all this time. The fees are based on cost, not profit. MAPS remains a not-for-profit corporation. For most mid-sized networks, the cost to them is $0.05 per user per year . For the small outfits, its less than my annual Starbuck's expenses ;) -- Margie Arbon MAPS, LLC