On Wed, 23 May 2001, John Payne wrote:
Umm... yes. You run an open, abused mail relay, got listed in RSS and whine about it rather than fix it.
I have posted two URLs, one was to a slashdot article describing a stealth assault on Macromedia. So as to clarify the provenance of the URL previously given by others in full context. Don't see your comments there. Why? Perhaps the ACLU and those other do-good organizations command more respect than an ISP? But they're talking about the same thing! The latter was to explain our position. Let's make several things clear. First, what is the difference between an open relay and a free email account somewhere? None, absolutely none. You could subscribe as Michael Mouse today, and the emperor of China tomorrow. Yet such service, with no credit card or implant chip to validate your true identity, giving away free resources to the world, is perfectly legit in your judgement. NetSide maintains its own access control list. If a particular ip or ip range didn't abuse our servers, we feel no need to lock them out. And certainly not because you say so. Not to mention that all instances of abuse can be traced from logs to someone's ip, and there is a venue of complaint with the abuser's provider. We have a valid reason for doing so: locking our servers would prevent our customers from roaming, and we would also lose a good part of our non-local client base, some of them subscribed since 1995, who couldn't make full use of their accounts anymore. Second, open relays were the norm until Paul Vixie decided you should do otherwise. And in many cases, he convinced thy by brute force that his way is the right way is the only way. But it wasn't the legal way. Most providers bent over and silently took the punishment. We won't. Do I seem to whine here? Third, the new 'rule' MAPS just came up with now is that you must keep your server open to their 'testing', or they'll blackhole you. See for yourself: http://www.dotcomeon.com/nph-rss-remove-blocking.html That is the reason given for blocking us the second time around. No new 'evidence', just open wide for inspection and say ahhh...
Could you be more clueless?
That's just about what I was going to ask you. This is not about the merits of some technological implementation over another. It is about basic rights and freedoms shamelessly trampled upon by those that can thump their chests the loudest and have Daddy Warbucks bankroll their operation. Say you fall out of grace with the 'in' crowd tomorrow, could it be your turn?
If you want to whine some more, news.admin.net-abuse.email is over there -> and spam-l is that way <-
And you, John Payne, are here. And clearly on the side of the network operator that's deliberately destroying the connectivity of other networks. This problem won't just go away, as much as you want it swept under the rug. --Mitch NetSide