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1) Usenet != usenet.com, which is merely a host. The RIAA is not attacking a protocol. They are suing a company that hosts a lot of NNTP traffic, some of which may be infringing on copyright.

2) It's fscking hilarious that the DCMA may wind up being used against the RIAA. Kudos to Ars for thinking up that one.

3) If the DCMA doesn't help, maybe the supreme court ruling stating that an ISP is not responsible for user generated content will. Details here. (Note: The article isn't about copyright, it's about libel. But if an ISP is legally the same thing as a telephone carrier, then by extension they are not responsible for copyright content. Much in the same way you can't sue AT&T for copyright violation if a person transmits a copyrighted work through their system via modem.)

1. Bonded mail isn't just a Hotmail idea as you appear to paint it, AOL (for example) use it too, yet you're content to simply use this as an excuse to lambaste Microsoft.
2. You complain that SpamCop allows false reports; this may well be true, but you don't tell us how many reports are needed. Nor why your email may be reported; what are you doing to make subscribers complain, or make them assume the mail is spam.
3. Your assertion that if you switch to RSS then Microsoft will block your RSS feed is utter nonsense. How exactly is this going to work? Some hook into the TCP-IP stack? Does Microsoft control the RSS reader? Even the one built into IE doesn't work like this.
4. Is it legal to block email marked as spam until you pay? You know the answer to this. Their servers their rules. Adding a whitelist into the mix changes nothing and that mode of "attack" sounds like the old "free speech" argument employed by rather a lot of spammers.
5. Mislabelling your mail is libel? So are you going to sue spam assassin as well? Your nonsense of reporting someone as a felon again seems like the escalation in arguments that spammers use. Marking someone as a felon has real world consequences, marking a mail as spam doesn't. You're attempting to compare someone thing me saying "Bennett Haselton wets his bed" with "Bennett Haselton molests small children".

You've had problems with Hotmail and MAPS before when you hosted in the same IP range as spammers. You had been offered solutions before (moving IP) but didn't want to. You've sued spammers and have been promoting your anti-spam idea & thoughts for years, but never bothered to implement them.

So frankly this comes off as sour grapes again on your part. The idea that you have some god given right to use space on hotmails (or anyone else's) servers, without ever addressing what causes reporters to think your mail is spam in the first place.

Additionally, they are also in favour of spam and software patents. They're not pro-market, they're pro-big business.

Re-read the article. Rambam allegedly sued while the attack was going on: this is different from creating the attack.

I agree that the parent misstated the situation and that it is highly unlikely that Steve Rambam had anything to do with the DDoS attack on Joe Jarad.

Moreover, there is a fascinating letter at http://www.dotcomeon.com/injoewetrust.html that explains that the "DDOS" was not planned, it was the direct result of not having enough bandwidth to deal with all the DNS queries caused by the SoBig virus. The letter also explains that Mr. Joe Jared, the administrator of osirusoft.com, has been playing nasty games against the domains of quite innocent people, including poisoning the DNS for big chunks of the Internet for anyone who uses his services in a fit of pique after the DDOS.

That site, however, is run by a well known kook. Just read the link and the other pages on that site and make up your own mind. Using phrases like "People's Republic of Kalifornia", "unbalanced anarchist", "cyberextortion clearinghouse business", are enough a clue for me, but attacks on the same website against people like Paul Vixie are other good indicators that the guy is a kook.

Much of what is claimed on that site is highly selective and highly biased at best, and complete BS most of the rest of the time.

So I'm inclined to think that Mr. Rambam had nothing to do with this and is simply trying to slap down an incompetent blacklist author.

Uh, yeah, but if that was the case, Steve Rambam would have dropped the suit after Joe Jarad stopped running a DNSBL, but he didn't.

Re-read the article. Rambam allegedly sued while the attack was going on: this is different from creating the attack. Moreover, there is a fascinating letter at http://www.dotcomeon.com/injoewetrust.html that explains that the "DDOS" was not planned, it was the direct result of not having enough bandwidth to deal with all the DNS queries caused by the SoBig virus. The letter also explains that Mr. Joe Jared, the administrator of osirusoft.com, has been playing nasty games against the domains of quite innocent people, including poisoning the DNS for big chunks of the Internet for anyone who uses his services in a fit of pique after the DDOS.

These are nasty claims, but they seem to match other reports I've seen, and the claims of harassment against osirusoft.com are poorly documented at best in their own webpage. So I'm inclined to think that Mr. Rambam had nothing to do with this and is simply trying to slap down an incompetent blacklist author.

How do people deal with MAPS and other RBL services who will not cooperate or be reasonable?

Lawsuits, generally.

• ISC has rich corporate sponsors
• Expensive support contracts http://www.isc.org/index.pl?/sw/bind/
• a private bind "club" with expensive dues
  http://www.isc.org/index.pl?/sw/guild/membership.p hp
  the cost is apparently a secret
• he controls the f root server and the RFCs say that access by ISPs to the root servers can be charged for.
  Do they charge?
• he controls the volunteer-built RBL lists that he closed, took private and now charges big $$ for access
  http://www.mail-abuse.com/services/purchase.php the prices are now secret because I think he realizes that it is bad PR to show the phenomenal gouging that is going on from a community built resource.
• he has a private "club" for root/tld domain operators that charges $1500 - $50,000 to join (why is this _under_ ISC, why not a separate true peer stand alone entity? why because he wants to control it, that is the only reason why)
• he got huge government and corporate grants to upgrade bind, turned around and had Nominum, his for-profit company do the programming and then after they wrote bind 9 they took what they learned and they did a better job programming the commercial, closed source DNS server software.
• The biggest joke is that to sell their commercial software they level the same criticisms at bind that djb has been for year. To add insult to injury, they also use the architecture that djb has used (that they publicly lambasted in the past) - separate auth (ANS) and caching (CNS) servers.
• Does he own part of MFNX/AboveNet?
• This is a guy who has/controls alot of privately held businesses and associations

This is a person who has avoided scrutiny and he, his business practices, his cronies and business relationships need to be much more closely examined before people go off cheering for "ISC".

Then there is all the just weird, creepy stuff:
The Hitler reference Vixie uses third person reference to Hitler and himself
The collateral damage is really necessary quote: http://www.cctec.com/maillists/nanog/historical/97 09/msg00108.html :
The spammers are going to make it as hard as possible to block them. For a while they used to abuse "popular" relays and shell machines and so on, in the mistaken belief that nobody would block a popular and necessary host resource just to get stop spam. I think I've told the story of the firebombing of Dresden to at least a half dozen popular host resource owners in the last two years.

And all the rest of the stuff that would never fly around here...

The fiasco when bind security patches were not available to those who hadn't paid to join the club:
http://news.com.com/2100-1001_3-966666.html :
"They basically responded that they wouldn't make it available until the weekend, and then they said they had an early warning service and you have to pay money for that," Maiffret said.

http://www.centr.org/meetings/ga-9/tech-report.htm l :
The development of BIND 9 was largely funded by donations procured in 1998 from US government agencies, IT vendors and ISPs. However, it became clear this method of funding was unreliable and did not provide sufficient revenue to develop BIND on an ongoing basis. In addition, it was unclear whether ISC would be accepted as a non-profit organization by the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS), which potentially meant corporate tax would have to be paid on the donations.

http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-current /2003-June/004481.html :
Indeed, even

It's not wrong. I think it's even conservative. Unfortunately I'm struggling to find the nanae post I'm looking for.

Here's a sample of these terrorist idiots at work though here

I am also getting ready to start work on my company's next commercial product, and it looks like a spam filtering SMTP gateway is going to be it even though I've got this drop-dead idea for optimal HTTP redirects that I've been wanting to implement for about the last 14 months. Oh well, "follow the money."

Concentration of power into a single individual: It's very true that power has corrupted every individual in whom it has ever been concentrated in the history of mankind. I do not feel that I am necessarily above whatever elements of human nature give rise to that. I worry about it. Probably other people worry about it more than I do.

There are people whose judgment I trust -- folks that have been in the industry longer than I have or maybe just as long as I have, but have done different things -- where I've learned that when they argue with me, they're usually right. And I have run what I'm doing by these people, and I'll continue to do that whenever I want any change in the way that I approach it. And if I get back some horrified stare that says, `Paul you're going to be the next Hitler; you're going to take over the universe,' I'm pretty much expecting that I'm not going to tell them that their concerns aren't justified. I am as worried about this as I think is healthy, but I'm not willing, once again, to say, `Well, because concentrating power in the hands of one person has always been dangerous, we should not attempt what we're doing.'

[here, Paul, with more WWII references, refers to the fact that he is willing to block popular ISPs or sites and how it is similar to the way that people were willing to firebomb Dresden (even though the German's thought they wouldn't), as clear a reference to "acceptable collateral damage" as possible without using the phrase] ... I think I've told the story of the firebombing of Dresden to at least a half dozen popular host resource owners in the last two years. *

Do a whois on spamhaussucks.com

I've been getting spam that are originating from a domain that are using nameservers called

ns1.spamhaussucks.com and

ns2.spamhaussucks.com

Can the guy get any more blatent or confrotational than that?

And here's another interesting link, on how the poor rights of the spammers are being trampled on, and what to do about it.

Give the poor guys a break, will ya?

About 2 seconds? And how will you sue them? Which court? And if you win, how do you get the assets of a company run by some chickenboner that hijacked said insecure proxy and left no logs?

Nope. This bill will be part of the problem. False sense of security and a target for those that oppose The Lumber Cartel (tinlc).

ISPs on Anti Spam Hunt

MAPS Attack

... with the bath water is one of the problems in fighting spam.

I use Mail Washer as a pre-processor for my email accounts. It has now turned out to take more time to weed out legitimate messages.

More and more of my legitimate email from distro lists I have subscribed to from cNet, Woody's Windows Watch and even obscure lists such as Amusing Facts Daily now show up in the ORBD and other spam lists it consults.

For instance, just coming back from vacation I had 1200 messages across five accounts. 70% were tagged as spam from a spam list. 20% of those were legitimate distro lists.

The independent spam lists do a good job of catching most of the spam, but it also catches too many legitimate lists. I try to send an email to the list admin letting them know, but typically they respond that it's not worth the effort trying to get off the lists.

I've gone through a something just like it where I was Mudrered Electronically by my ISP.

This site talks about what happens when a legitimate company gets on the list.

I've seen several otherwise competent sysadmins fail to close loopholes in the first few days of running a new system. A quick phone call or e-mail would immediately have made them aware of the problem and caused it to be closed, but instead, several of the sites were RBL'd without notice.

Did they submit their systems for testing by any of the open relay blacklists when they brought them up? Did they use a third-party ISP to test the systems for open relays? I did those things, so my mail server isn't an open relay. If they did not, then they were negligent. Period.

A quick phone call or e-mail would immediately have made them aware of the problem and caused it to be closed, but instead, several of the sites were RBL'd without notice.

So now you want volunteers running open relay databases to phone all around the world to negligent sysadmins? Get a clue. These databases are run on a shoestring budget. They cannot afford to turn every open relay discovery into an expensive, labor-intensive, investigative chore. Oh, and another clue for you: Many of the open relays are in Asia. How good is your Chinese or Korean?

You are a sick, sick person if you think your "analogy" is fair.

Did you ever hear the analogy that refers to "throwing out the baby with the bath water"? Do you think that the people who use that analogy are saying that abandoning a baby to die in dirty bathwater is the moral and ethical equivalent of whatever they are drawing the analogy to? If you don't understand something as simple as analogies, you need to spend more time in school and less on Slashdot.

I'm not going to bother replying to your other points there

That's fine since your replies to them would probably have been equally as ill-conceived as those replies you did make.

Maybe where you come from. I'd love to see the precedent, though. Certainly none of the companies I've seen damaged this way (in the UK) were ever able to take action.

Then look here. Next time, do your own research before you post.

http://www.dotcomeon.com/

not only an entertaining read, but informative. give the history of the MPAS RSS project, with some interesting behind the scenes details.

Extortionate vigilante Paul Vixie doesn't even consider the WTC tragedy afternath a compelling reason to suspend blocking on humanitarian grounds:

http://www.dotcomeon.com/emergency.html

Perhaps this will reinforce your point:

http://www.dotcomeon.com/emergency.html

In the spirit of Karma Whoring :-)

Here's some history on this case. It features articles from various stages in the case. Has anyone found the text of the complaint or injunction? still looking...

--CTH

http://www.dotcomeon.com/