Slashdot Mirror

etrnl writes "The spam-l mailing list has an interesting post from Nick Nicholas about a recent lawsuit between MAPS, LLC. and Gordon Fecyk, who had arranged with Paul Vixie to host the DUL with MAPS in 1998. Even more interesting is that Nick was the Executive Director of MAPS who hired Gordon at MAPS in 1999. Notable quote from Nick: 'I find it extremely ironic that an organization which is currently soliciting donations to its own legal defense fund would now be using its limited resources to pursue litigation against a former employee.'" MAPS wants a temporary restraining order on two separate copyright claims: first, that Feyck can't use the DUL database, and second, that he can't run a too-similar website (now down). The bone of contention is that Feyck claims he bought back the DUL from MAPS, and MAPS disagrees. Incidentally, the DUL is currently stopping CmdrTaco from directly emailing one of the Slash coders.

etrnl writes "The spam-l mailing list has an interesting post from Nick Nicholas about a recent lawsuit between MAPS, LLC. and Gordon Fecyk, who had arranged with Paul Vixie to host the DUL with MAPS in 1998. Even more interesting is that Nick was the Executive Director of MAPS who hired Gordon at MAPS in 1999. Notable quote from Nick: 'I find it extremely ironic that an organization which is currently soliciting donations to its own legal defense fund would now be using its limited resources to pursue litigation against a former employee.'" MAPS wants a temporary restraining order on two separate copyright claims: first, that Feyck can't use the DUL database, and second, that he can't run a too-similar website (now down). The bone of contention is that Feyck claims he bought back the DUL from MAPS, and MAPS disagrees. Incidentally, the DUL is currently stopping CmdrTaco from directly emailing one of the Slash coders.

In the red corner, SafeSurf is the original wacky band of labelling nuts. If you've posted anything to the net without labelling it, they think you need to be sued good and hard, and if it was inappropriate for an 8-year-old you need to go to jail. In the blue corner, MAPS continues to unashamedly blacklist websites for just sharing a network with sites that "support" spam. The fun began when MAPS blacklisted SafeSurf, ensuring millions of TeleGlobe customers were silently kept off the SafeSurf site. The victim has posted a beautiful, pained whine about "stealth censorship" which includes some really awesome metaphors. It's an epic battle of ideologies. Who will win? I say... the audience.

Here's an actual quote from SafeSurf's legislative proposal, I just love this:

"Negligence [failure to label] in the absence of damages may be a civil violation of the rights of the receivers of that data, but it shall not be a criminal offense unless the data is deemed to be harmful to minors. ... Publishers may be sued in civil court by any parent who feels their children were harmed by the data negligently published. The parents shall be given presumption in all cases and do not have to prove that the content actually produced harm to their child..."

Note: since SafeSurf's press release, their site has been taken off the RBL. But for some reason TeleGlobe is still blocking them (click "trace", type "safesurf.com", and wait several minutes for the blocked pings to time out inside TeleGlobe's network). I thought this was supposed to be the realtime blackhole list. Anyway, TeleGlobe is the same ISP that promises it will not "review, censor, or edit the material that is accessible through Teleglobe's network," and adds:

Q. Does Teleglobe support blocking access to ISPs and their non-spamming customers as a method of curtailing spam?

A. No. Teleglobe believes that advocates seeking to punish unwitting collateral ISPs and users who may be tenuously linked to a spam source are acting against the best interests of the Internet community as a whole.

TeleGlobe is one of the few backbones or major ISPs that still uses the RBL to censor websites, since I think AboveNet quit doing it. Anyone know of any others?

In the red corner, SafeSurf is the original wacky band of labelling nuts. If you've posted anything to the net without labelling it, they think you need to be sued good and hard, and if it was inappropriate for an 8-year-old you need to go to jail. In the blue corner, MAPS continues to unashamedly blacklist websites for just sharing a network with sites that "support" spam. The fun began when MAPS blacklisted SafeSurf, ensuring millions of TeleGlobe customers were silently kept off the SafeSurf site. The victim has posted a beautiful, pained whine about "stealth censorship" which includes some really awesome metaphors. It's an epic battle of ideologies. Who will win? I say... the audience.

Here's an actual quote from SafeSurf's legislative proposal, I just love this:

"Negligence [failure to label] in the absence of damages may be a civil violation of the rights of the receivers of that data, but it shall not be a criminal offense unless the data is deemed to be harmful to minors. ... Publishers may be sued in civil court by any parent who feels their children were harmed by the data negligently published. The parents shall be given presumption in all cases and do not have to prove that the content actually produced harm to their child..."

Note: since SafeSurf's press release, their site has been taken off the RBL. But for some reason TeleGlobe is still blocking them (click "trace", type "safesurf.com", and wait several minutes for the blocked pings to time out inside TeleGlobe's network). I thought this was supposed to be the realtime blackhole list. Anyway, TeleGlobe is the same ISP that promises it will not "review, censor, or edit the material that is accessible through Teleglobe's network," and adds:

Q. Does Teleglobe support blocking access to ISPs and their non-spamming customers as a method of curtailing spam?

A. No. Teleglobe believes that advocates seeking to punish unwitting collateral ISPs and users who may be tenuously linked to a spam source are acting against the best interests of the Internet community as a whole.

TeleGlobe is one of the few backbones or major ISPs that still uses the RBL to censor websites, since I think AboveNet quit doing it. Anyone know of any others?

In the red corner, SafeSurf is the original wacky band of labelling nuts. If you've posted anything to the net without labelling it, they think you need to be sued good and hard, and if it was inappropriate for an 8-year-old you need to go to jail. In the blue corner, MAPS continues to unashamedly blacklist websites for just sharing a network with sites that "support" spam. The fun began when MAPS blacklisted SafeSurf, ensuring millions of TeleGlobe customers were silently kept off the SafeSurf site. The victim has posted a beautiful, pained whine about "stealth censorship" which includes some really awesome metaphors. It's an epic battle of ideologies. Who will win? I say... the audience.

Here's an actual quote from SafeSurf's legislative proposal, I just love this:

"Negligence [failure to label] in the absence of damages may be a civil violation of the rights of the receivers of that data, but it shall not be a criminal offense unless the data is deemed to be harmful to minors. ... Publishers may be sued in civil court by any parent who feels their children were harmed by the data negligently published. The parents shall be given presumption in all cases and do not have to prove that the content actually produced harm to their child..."

Note: since SafeSurf's press release, their site has been taken off the RBL. But for some reason TeleGlobe is still blocking them (click "trace", type "safesurf.com", and wait several minutes for the blocked pings to time out inside TeleGlobe's network). I thought this was supposed to be the realtime blackhole list. Anyway, TeleGlobe is the same ISP that promises it will not "review, censor, or edit the material that is accessible through Teleglobe's network," and adds:

Q. Does Teleglobe support blocking access to ISPs and their non-spamming customers as a method of curtailing spam?

A. No. Teleglobe believes that advocates seeking to punish unwitting collateral ISPs and users who may be tenuously linked to a spam source are acting against the best interests of the Internet community as a whole.

TeleGlobe is one of the few backbones or major ISPs that still uses the RBL to censor websites, since I think AboveNet quit doing it. Anyone know of any others?

MAPS has posted that it will be requiring a subscription fee starting in August. The note hasn't shown up on its PR page yet, but the readers of news.admin.net-abuse.email and SPAM-L are already finding it very interesting. I've included a copy below, along with selected commentary from those two forums. Anyone know more?

Path: ...!newsfeed.stanford.edu!news.isc.org!not-for-mail
From: Margie <margie@mail-abuse.org>
Newsgroups: news.admin.net-abuse.email
Subject: MAPS Subscription Policy Changes
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 16:45:11 -0700
Organization: Internet Software Consortium
Message-ID: <nidsktsnci3cat0blc31qtanprifmek97v@4ax.com>

Effective Midnight 7/31/2001, all non-subscription access to MAPS services will cease. Anyone wishing to transfer or query MAPS data must have a signed contract with MAPS, and have access enabled in our ACL. There are several reasons for this change:

1) The data in the MAPS files belongs to MAPS and is copyrighted. MAPS, RBL, RBL+, DUL and RSS are all service marks of MAPS. MAPS must have the ability to protect its assets from unauthorized use or disclosure by third parties.

2) As MAPS popularity grew, the demand on our resources grew. We have continually upgraded systems, software, and added servers where necessary. The end result is our systems and connectivity are sufficient enough that providers have no incentive to pay for zone transfer subscriptions. When MAPS began to offer paid subscriptions, we believed that allowing access based on the ability to pay would allow the largest percentage of the net to access the services, while permitting MAPS to sustain itself with subscriptions from the large users of the services. What we have found instead is that we are our own worst "competition".

3) The economic conditions in the industry have hit everyone, including MAPS. MAPS' purpose is to stop spam on the internet. That purpose can only be achieved as long as MAPS can maintain itself as a corporation. Like any corporation, that takes income. There is very little debate about the effectiveness of the MAPS lists. This effectiveness saves its users time, bandwidth and other resources as well as giving them an added value to their customers by reducing the amount of spam the customer sees in their inbox. MAPS can simply no longer afford to foot the bill for the bulk of the internet community.

It is not our intent to put the use of the MAPS lists out of reach of the individual or hobby site. We will still offer some reduced fee or free query contracts under limited circumstances.

As usual, please direct requests for contracts to subscription-request@mail-abuse.org, questions and comments to margie@mail-abuse.org and flames to dev/null. ;)

--
Margie Arbon Mail Abuse Prevention System, LLC
Manager, Market and Business Development
margie@mail-abuse.org http://mail-abuse.org

Here are excerpted reader comments from SPAM-L and nanae which I found interesting:

"...people can no longer pass the buck when it comes to effectively blocking unwanted crap; they will have to now assume the responsibility for handling their own E-mail. I actually think that this is going to be a good thing for the long term." (Sam Varshavchik)

"...and so dies MAPS. You've just cut your own throats. The effectiveness of MAPS always depended on the number of users, which is now going to be a fraction of a percentage of what it was before." (John Oliver)

"I was under the impression that MAPS want a big number of subscribers, in order to have some force behind them when they educate and negotiate with spammers. Isn't that the reason big spamhausen like UUNet were not blacklisted, since many subscribers would stop using MAPS's tools because of too much collateral damage? Now MAPS is reducing its customer base. But perhaps we can now get eBay, UUnet and Qwest blacklisted, since only a small number of administrators will use MAPS tools..." (Karl-Henry Martinsson)

"...if the RBL listees think the RBL is a bitch, let them see what happens when they get dropped into who knows how many individual filters that won't get reviewed for removals until Hell freezes over. I think there is some serious potential for us to ALL gain from this move." (Jim Higgins)

"Anyway, now that the MAPS RBL user base has been reduced by at least a factor of 10, the mainsleaze spambags are not going to even CARE about MAPS. ... So the mainsleaze spambags are going to let loose on the remaining 92-96%. ... The way I look at it, Joe Sixpack is now going to see more spam than he's ever seen before. I think that a lot of Joe Sixpacks are going to get seriously pissed, and a fair amount of them are going to explore ways to effectively spamproof their INBOXes. This is a GOOD thing." ("Sam")

My own prediction: in the long run, this has no big effect on spam either way. Two things will reduce the hassle of spam, more legislation, or supplanting SMTP with a non-broken mail protocol. Costs have to be attached to sending mail to strangers, either micropayments or risk of jail. As long as mail's dirt-cheap to send, spam will be vying for our attention, scurrying-around clean-up crews notwithstanding.

Until SMTP is replaced, the great spam fight is a bunch of Libertarians trying to solve the tragedy of the commons. A pay-per-view clique seems like a suboptimal solution to me.

MAPS has posted that it will be requiring a subscription fee starting in August. The note hasn't shown up on its PR page yet, but the readers of news.admin.net-abuse.email and SPAM-L are already finding it very interesting. I've included a copy below, along with selected commentary from those two forums. Anyone know more?

Path: ...!newsfeed.stanford.edu!news.isc.org!not-for-mail
From: Margie <margie@mail-abuse.org>
Newsgroups: news.admin.net-abuse.email
Subject: MAPS Subscription Policy Changes
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 16:45:11 -0700
Organization: Internet Software Consortium
Message-ID: <nidsktsnci3cat0blc31qtanprifmek97v@4ax.com>

Effective Midnight 7/31/2001, all non-subscription access to MAPS services will cease. Anyone wishing to transfer or query MAPS data must have a signed contract with MAPS, and have access enabled in our ACL. There are several reasons for this change:

1) The data in the MAPS files belongs to MAPS and is copyrighted. MAPS, RBL, RBL+, DUL and RSS are all service marks of MAPS. MAPS must have the ability to protect its assets from unauthorized use or disclosure by third parties.

2) As MAPS popularity grew, the demand on our resources grew. We have continually upgraded systems, software, and added servers where necessary. The end result is our systems and connectivity are sufficient enough that providers have no incentive to pay for zone transfer subscriptions. When MAPS began to offer paid subscriptions, we believed that allowing access based on the ability to pay would allow the largest percentage of the net to access the services, while permitting MAPS to sustain itself with subscriptions from the large users of the services. What we have found instead is that we are our own worst "competition".

3) The economic conditions in the industry have hit everyone, including MAPS. MAPS' purpose is to stop spam on the internet. That purpose can only be achieved as long as MAPS can maintain itself as a corporation. Like any corporation, that takes income. There is very little debate about the effectiveness of the MAPS lists. This effectiveness saves its users time, bandwidth and other resources as well as giving them an added value to their customers by reducing the amount of spam the customer sees in their inbox. MAPS can simply no longer afford to foot the bill for the bulk of the internet community.

It is not our intent to put the use of the MAPS lists out of reach of the individual or hobby site. We will still offer some reduced fee or free query contracts under limited circumstances.

As usual, please direct requests for contracts to subscription-request@mail-abuse.org, questions and comments to margie@mail-abuse.org and flames to dev/null. ;)

--
Margie Arbon Mail Abuse Prevention System, LLC
Manager, Market and Business Development
margie@mail-abuse.org http://mail-abuse.org

Here are excerpted reader comments from SPAM-L and nanae which I found interesting:

"...people can no longer pass the buck when it comes to effectively blocking unwanted crap; they will have to now assume the responsibility for handling their own E-mail. I actually think that this is going to be a good thing for the long term." (Sam Varshavchik)

"...and so dies MAPS. You've just cut your own throats. The effectiveness of MAPS always depended on the number of users, which is now going to be a fraction of a percentage of what it was before." (John Oliver)

"I was under the impression that MAPS want a big number of subscribers, in order to have some force behind them when they educate and negotiate with spammers. Isn't that the reason big spamhausen like UUNet were not blacklisted, since many subscribers would stop using MAPS's tools because of too much collateral damage? Now MAPS is reducing its customer base. But perhaps we can now get eBay, UUnet and Qwest blacklisted, since only a small number of administrators will use MAPS tools..." (Karl-Henry Martinsson)

"...if the RBL listees think the RBL is a bitch, let them see what happens when they get dropped into who knows how many individual filters that won't get reviewed for removals until Hell freezes over. I think there is some serious potential for us to ALL gain from this move." (Jim Higgins)

"Anyway, now that the MAPS RBL user base has been reduced by at least a factor of 10, the mainsleaze spambags are not going to even CARE about MAPS. ... So the mainsleaze spambags are going to let loose on the remaining 92-96%. ... The way I look at it, Joe Sixpack is now going to see more spam than he's ever seen before. I think that a lot of Joe Sixpacks are going to get seriously pissed, and a fair amount of them are going to explore ways to effectively spamproof their INBOXes. This is a GOOD thing." ("Sam")

My own prediction: in the long run, this has no big effect on spam either way. Two things will reduce the hassle of spam, more legislation, or supplanting SMTP with a non-broken mail protocol. Costs have to be attached to sending mail to strangers, either micropayments or risk of jail. As long as mail's dirt-cheap to send, spam will be vying for our attention, scurrying-around clean-up crews notwithstanding.

Until SMTP is replaced, the great spam fight is a bunch of Libertarians trying to solve the tragedy of the commons. A pay-per-view clique seems like a suboptimal solution to me.

Last week, neonzebra wrote us: "In addition to peacefire.org, and thousands of other blacklisted sites (some unjustifiably), the SPAM nazis at Above.net have now added internet software giant Macromedia to the list. Anyone trying to access Macromedia's website through Above.net's backbone will get a 'site not responding' error." And around the same time, aangelis wrote: "It seems that for the last 4 days Macromedia's web servers give back to my browser not even a bit! Are they down? Maybe it is a DNS problem, but nearly twenty people located at Greece, EU told me the same thing!" It wasn't a DNS problem. Last week, in a high-profile example of stealth blocking, Macromedia's website vanished from a significant minority of the internet. The site reappeared Friday, but I think it's worth taking notice of what happened last week anyway. Details below...

This is a sequel to last December's article, MAPS RBL is now Censorware. For the (very) long version of how the RBL works, and how it sometimes fills the same role as "filtering" software, go take a peek.

The short version is that a small group of anti-spam crusaders called MAPS publishes the RBL, which many ISPs subscribe to. Those ISPs block mail to and from addresses on the RBL list.

Some subscribers, notably the backbone provider Above.net, whose CTO is a MAPS co-founder, use the RBL to block not only mail but all internet traffic from IPs listed by RBL. Thus, to cleints of these providers, sites deemed to deliver spam -- or merely deemed spam-friendly -- just drop off the net.

That CTO/co-founder is Paul Vixie, author of Vixie cron and BIND and all kinds of good stuff. He makes some interesting observations about censorship in a 1997 SunWorld interview.

I checked the RBL's servers Thursday night and found that two of Macromedia's IPs were actually blocked. postal.macromedia.com was blocked, which makes sense for stopping spam; presumably that's where the spam emenates from.

But the other IP blocked was www.macromedia.com, which is of course their Web address. Blocking this address, I would assume, stops no spam from reaching anyone's inbox.

What it does do is get Macromedia's attention. Because Above.net blocks all traffic and is a major backbone provider, being put on the RBL effectively takes a site off the net for many users. Taking down a big corporation's website is a good way to show you mean business.

(Above.net's abuse department said I would have to talk to public relations, but their PR contact did not return repeated phone calls.)

I spoke with a Macromedia spokesperson both last week and today. She confirmed that "there were two addresses blocked, one of which resulted in users worldwide not being able to access the website." She also repeated several times that they were on the RBL for their email newsletter "the Edge," saying it "does have an opt-in model, that does not spam."

She also pointed out that "worldwide access to macromedia.com has been restored." That access happened sometime Thursday night or Friday morning. Our Slashdot submissions about the downed site came in on Thursday, and I confirmed the IP numbers' presence on the RBL Thursday during the day.

I've contacted several people at MAPS, but they had no comment and (per their policy) refused to tell me how long those IPs had been on the RBL.

The rationale for the RBL is that it tries to "prevent ... our paying, in money and resources and our own time, to receive and process, or relay, traffic which is nonconsensual in nature." (Their emphasis.) What is "nonconsensual" about reading Macromedia's website? Why was www.macromedia.com on the list?

I'm only running this story because it's Macromedia. After all, one it's of the larger sites on the net, home of Flash animation among other things. If it can be quietly removed from a chunk of the net, who can't? (If you noticed Macromedia missing last week, post a comment!)

Take a moment to go read that stealth blocking statement, issued last week. I signed as a member of the Censorware Project; other signatories were the ACLU, CPSR, EFF, and EPIC. We're concerned that, as the statement says:

ISPs that practice "stealth blocking" are violating consumer protection principles and restricting user choice and freedom in cyberspace.

What do you think?

HumpBackB wrote us about the lawsuit that ISP Media3 has filed against MAPS and its Realtime Blackhole List. The RBL, despite blocking only 2% of spam, is widely seen as an effective tool against mail abuse. I'm going to risk life and limb, and say that it has become, instead, just another censorware tool. Here's why.

Media3 has had six of its ClassCs added to the RBL: one in June, and five in November. These 1500 IP numbers are now cut off entirely from the rest of the Internet for any Internet provider who subscribes to the RBL (more on this later).

But making these 1500 IP numbers vanish from the net -- which is exactly what happens for any provider who subscribes to the RBL -- does not stop any spam from getting through. They are not blocked because those servers are sending unsolicited email, or any kind of e-mail for that matter.

Media3's service agreement is more-or-less the same as all responsible, anti-spam providers:

"M3 does not permit the transmission of unsolicited e-mail... Subsequent violations will result in suspension and/or termination of the account without refund of service fees..."

And MAPS does not even allege that a single piece of spam has been sent from any of these 1500 IP numbers. As their press release says:

"Media3 refused to require their Web-hosting customers to stop advertising their Web sites by using unsolicited commercial email..."

Even this fact is in dispute. I spoke with Joe Hayes at Media3, and he told me that the company does not tolerate Web sites which promote themselves through spam.

You can check the RBL evidence file yourself. When a MAPS representative spoke with Joe back in June, he told him that he needed to, not tighten up his sendmail rules, but "terminate the Samco [Web] sites and rewrite his AUP to prohibit the hosting of spamware."

Spamware? Yes. Media3 does host Web sites which sell software that sends bulk e-mail and harvests e-mail addresses. Take a look at MarketingMasters.com. Their IP number is 209.211.253.74, which is in the Media3 ClassC which was blocked in June. You can look them up on the RBL at http://mail-abuse.org/cgi-bin/ lookup?209.211.253.74.

Again, the blocking of that IP number, their Web site, does not stop a single piece of spam from being sent or received. What it does do is punish the folks at MarketingMasters, whose Web site can't be seen by RBL subscribers.

The problem is that MAPS has put every 209.211.253.x IP number on their list. For example, if you look up 209.211.253.169, you'll see exactly the same message and same rationale.

And 209.211.253.169 is not a spam Web site. It's otherwise known as Peacefire.org, a group of young people who are advocates of free speech rights for teenagers, and -- irony alert -- longtime opponents of censorware.

In fact, if you visit their Web site you'll see many reports about how censorware blocks the good as well as the bad. Their latest, "Amnesty Intercepted," shows that sites like Amnesty International Israel and the American Kurdish Information Network are blacklisted as pornographic by overzealous censorware.

Kind of like Peacefire -- and over a thousand other sites -- are blacklisted by MAPS.

Let's be clear about what censorware does. It does not by itself block content. It "only" rates that content as unacceptable for viewing, and it is up to someone -- your parents? your teacher? your ISP? -- to apply its rules to prevent you from seeing that content.

I don't like spam any more than the next person. But I also don't like censorship, and I take a content-neutral view of these things. If someone delivers a product to be used by Alice to block Bob from seeing website because she doesn't like its content, that product is censorware.

And if that product capriciously, unfairly, and deliberately blocks innocent Web sites, then it's not very good censorware.

In this case, the "bad" Web site sells software which could be used to spam. Frankly, compared to Nazi propaganda or bomb-making instructions, it's pretty tame. But that's not important. Standing up for speech I agree with is easy, everybody does it. If you want freedom, you have to stand up for speech you disagree with.

At least with programs like CyberPatrol, SurfWatch, and Net Nanny, when overblocking mistakes are pointed out, they are corrected. But as MAPS admits in its press release and evidence files, the intent here is not to block the actual Web sites (after all, people who want to buy the software will find a way to buy it).

No, the intent is to get the ISP in question to play ball. The fact that a thousand innocent Web sites are censored is, as far as I can tell, irrelevant.

I don't see much difference between this and any other censorware. One difference is that few other censorware packages are actually free. Another is that fewer are so obviously wielding their power as a retaliatory weapon.

And, there's also the fact that the RBL is used by a backbone provider, AboveNet, whose CTO also happens to be a co-founder of MAPS. Peacefire had no idea that it was being censored until it heard from confused would-be readers. At least with traditional censorware, if your connection to a website is blocked, you have some idea of why. Peacefire's readers naturally had no idea whether their packets were traveling over AboveNet's network, and only knew that their connections were being rejected.

(I contacted Paul Vixie to ask about AboveNet and how it uses the RBL, but he refused comment, sending me to AboveNet PR, who didn't get back to me by deadline time.)

Vixie claimed in 1998 that "MAPS volunteers always contact the owner of a site before it's blacklisted." I'm guessing none of the 1,500 blocked Web sites were contacted.

But then, MAPS also advises Web providers:

"If you host Web sites, we suggest that you use one IP per domain so that if spam occurs for one Web site, we don't have to blackhole you or your other customers to block access to the spamming site."

That's exactly what Media3 does -- and exactly what MAPS did.

Oh, and one more difference. The RBL is more successful than any other censorware package. According to Upside, 20,000 companies that control 40% of all e-mail accounts (and, quite possibly, Web sites); that's up from what ZDNet said in 1998, 2000 ISPs that control 30% of Internet destinations.

I can't find much to argue with in Joe Hayes's summary:

"They [MAPS] are blocking very good educational sites, nonprofit organizations, in their attempts to get us to adopt their definitions in their entirety. They've made no bones about hurting people and while Media3 maintains a policy of not allowing unsolicited e-mails, we do not see completely eye-to-eye on MAPS's definitions because they become very encompassing and very broad. While they have a good tool, and I commend them for their efforts to contain e-mail abuse, they're a good thing gone bad and they have basically become the abuser."

And here's a heavily abridged list of the sites that cannot be accessed via AboveNet, or any of the other providers who use the RBL -- just a few of the sites on just one blacklisted ClassC:

• FulfilledLives.com, "the place for women and girls," about spirituality and relationships.
• DesktopHeaven.com, Windows themes, screensavers, wallpaper.
• TownOfCary.org, the official website for the town of Cary, North Carolina.
• StudioZito.com, yet another Web site-designer.
• Crossalizer.de, a music site which points out (in German) that it's a victim of an anti-spam initiative, and thus has moved to Crossalizer.com.
• StrikeMore.com, bowling tips and schedules.
• NewTechWellness.com: "The total balance of wholeness and wellness within the areas of Mind, Body, Family, Society, and Finances in our lives is our goal," OK, whatever.
• ElaineCoffman.com and DianaPalmer.com -- both are authors of romance novels.
  And finally,
• CraftersCommunity.com. "If you are looking for a fun and easy recipe to do with the kids, try these deliciously simple Winter Cookie Pops."

Update, something like an hour later: If you're planning to e-mail me or post a comment saying I don't know what I'm talking about because the RBL only blocks mail traffic, please take a moment to read this 1997 interview. Excerpt:

SunWorld: How do you defend your policy of Blackholing Web services that host spammers' Web sites -- even if the spam itself isn't going through their service?

Vixie: This is the most controversial thing we do because it's censorship of something that isn't spam. It's me saying to some Web provider, because you are renting space to this person [a spammer] who is doing something completely legal, I am going to Blackhole your butt.

For more on the Border Gateway Protocol implementation of the RBL, see this page (thanks to jeffg for the link); for a description of how it drops all packets to blackholed sites, see this message.

Also, Bennett Haselton of Peacefire reports, at 10:58 PM EST:

I just telnetted in to www.peacefire.org and was able to do "ping www.above.net" and "ping home.cnet.com" and "ping www.infoworld.com" despite the fact that that traceroute on all of these sites shows that they are hooked up via above.net.

Peacefire's IP address is still on the RBL, so it looks like AboveNet has, for the time being, temporarily stopped blocking their users from accessing sites on the RBL.

This means that either:
(1) AboveNet has realized the errors of their ways, and is trying to correct them.
(2) AboveNet is trying to cover up the fact that they ever censored their users' Internet access, and they are temporarily opening up the gateway so that people on AboveNet will be able to access Peacefire and will think it is all a hoax.

HumpBackB wrote us about the lawsuit that ISP Media3 has filed against MAPS and its Realtime Blackhole List. The RBL, despite blocking only 2% of spam, is widely seen as an effective tool against mail abuse. I'm going to risk life and limb, and say that it has become, instead, just another censorware tool. Here's why.

Media3 has had six of its ClassCs added to the RBL: one in June, and five in November. These 1500 IP numbers are now cut off entirely from the rest of the Internet for any Internet provider who subscribes to the RBL (more on this later).

But making these 1500 IP numbers vanish from the net -- which is exactly what happens for any provider who subscribes to the RBL -- does not stop any spam from getting through. They are not blocked because those servers are sending unsolicited email, or any kind of e-mail for that matter.

Media3's service agreement is more-or-less the same as all responsible, anti-spam providers:

"M3 does not permit the transmission of unsolicited e-mail... Subsequent violations will result in suspension and/or termination of the account without refund of service fees..."

And MAPS does not even allege that a single piece of spam has been sent from any of these 1500 IP numbers. As their press release says:

"Media3 refused to require their Web-hosting customers to stop advertising their Web sites by using unsolicited commercial email..."

Even this fact is in dispute. I spoke with Joe Hayes at Media3, and he told me that the company does not tolerate Web sites which promote themselves through spam.

You can check the RBL evidence file yourself. When a MAPS representative spoke with Joe back in June, he told him that he needed to, not tighten up his sendmail rules, but "terminate the Samco [Web] sites and rewrite his AUP to prohibit the hosting of spamware."

Spamware? Yes. Media3 does host Web sites which sell software that sends bulk e-mail and harvests e-mail addresses. Take a look at MarketingMasters.com. Their IP number is 209.211.253.74, which is in the Media3 ClassC which was blocked in June. You can look them up on the RBL at http://mail-abuse.org/cgi-bin/ lookup?209.211.253.74.

Again, the blocking of that IP number, their Web site, does not stop a single piece of spam from being sent or received. What it does do is punish the folks at MarketingMasters, whose Web site can't be seen by RBL subscribers.

The problem is that MAPS has put every 209.211.253.x IP number on their list. For example, if you look up 209.211.253.169, you'll see exactly the same message and same rationale.

And 209.211.253.169 is not a spam Web site. It's otherwise known as Peacefire.org, a group of young people who are advocates of free speech rights for teenagers, and -- irony alert -- longtime opponents of censorware.

In fact, if you visit their Web site you'll see many reports about how censorware blocks the good as well as the bad. Their latest, "Amnesty Intercepted," shows that sites like Amnesty International Israel and the American Kurdish Information Network are blacklisted as pornographic by overzealous censorware.

Kind of like Peacefire -- and over a thousand other sites -- are blacklisted by MAPS.

Let's be clear about what censorware does. It does not by itself block content. It "only" rates that content as unacceptable for viewing, and it is up to someone -- your parents? your teacher? your ISP? -- to apply its rules to prevent you from seeing that content.

I don't like spam any more than the next person. But I also don't like censorship, and I take a content-neutral view of these things. If someone delivers a product to be used by Alice to block Bob from seeing website because she doesn't like its content, that product is censorware.

And if that product capriciously, unfairly, and deliberately blocks innocent Web sites, then it's not very good censorware.

In this case, the "bad" Web site sells software which could be used to spam. Frankly, compared to Nazi propaganda or bomb-making instructions, it's pretty tame. But that's not important. Standing up for speech I agree with is easy, everybody does it. If you want freedom, you have to stand up for speech you disagree with.

At least with programs like CyberPatrol, SurfWatch, and Net Nanny, when overblocking mistakes are pointed out, they are corrected. But as MAPS admits in its press release and evidence files, the intent here is not to block the actual Web sites (after all, people who want to buy the software will find a way to buy it).

No, the intent is to get the ISP in question to play ball. The fact that a thousand innocent Web sites are censored is, as far as I can tell, irrelevant.

I don't see much difference between this and any other censorware. One difference is that few other censorware packages are actually free. Another is that fewer are so obviously wielding their power as a retaliatory weapon.

And, there's also the fact that the RBL is used by a backbone provider, AboveNet, whose CTO also happens to be a co-founder of MAPS. Peacefire had no idea that it was being censored until it heard from confused would-be readers. At least with traditional censorware, if your connection to a website is blocked, you have some idea of why. Peacefire's readers naturally had no idea whether their packets were traveling over AboveNet's network, and only knew that their connections were being rejected.

(I contacted Paul Vixie to ask about AboveNet and how it uses the RBL, but he refused comment, sending me to AboveNet PR, who didn't get back to me by deadline time.)

Vixie claimed in 1998 that "MAPS volunteers always contact the owner of a site before it's blacklisted." I'm guessing none of the 1,500 blocked Web sites were contacted.

But then, MAPS also advises Web providers:

"If you host Web sites, we suggest that you use one IP per domain so that if spam occurs for one Web site, we don't have to blackhole you or your other customers to block access to the spamming site."

That's exactly what Media3 does -- and exactly what MAPS did.

Oh, and one more difference. The RBL is more successful than any other censorware package. According to Upside, 20,000 companies that control 40% of all e-mail accounts (and, quite possibly, Web sites); that's up from what ZDNet said in 1998, 2000 ISPs that control 30% of Internet destinations.

I can't find much to argue with in Joe Hayes's summary:

"They [MAPS] are blocking very good educational sites, nonprofit organizations, in their attempts to get us to adopt their definitions in their entirety. They've made no bones about hurting people and while Media3 maintains a policy of not allowing unsolicited e-mails, we do not see completely eye-to-eye on MAPS's definitions because they become very encompassing and very broad. While they have a good tool, and I commend them for their efforts to contain e-mail abuse, they're a good thing gone bad and they have basically become the abuser."

And here's a heavily abridged list of the sites that cannot be accessed via AboveNet, or any of the other providers who use the RBL -- just a few of the sites on just one blacklisted ClassC:

• FulfilledLives.com, "the place for women and girls," about spirituality and relationships.
• DesktopHeaven.com, Windows themes, screensavers, wallpaper.
• TownOfCary.org, the official website for the town of Cary, North Carolina.
• StudioZito.com, yet another Web site-designer.
• Crossalizer.de, a music site which points out (in German) that it's a victim of an anti-spam initiative, and thus has moved to Crossalizer.com.
• StrikeMore.com, bowling tips and schedules.
• NewTechWellness.com: "The total balance of wholeness and wellness within the areas of Mind, Body, Family, Society, and Finances in our lives is our goal," OK, whatever.
• ElaineCoffman.com and DianaPalmer.com -- both are authors of romance novels.
  And finally,
• CraftersCommunity.com. "If you are looking for a fun and easy recipe to do with the kids, try these deliciously simple Winter Cookie Pops."

Update, something like an hour later: If you're planning to e-mail me or post a comment saying I don't know what I'm talking about because the RBL only blocks mail traffic, please take a moment to read this 1997 interview. Excerpt:

SunWorld: How do you defend your policy of Blackholing Web services that host spammers' Web sites -- even if the spam itself isn't going through their service?

Vixie: This is the most controversial thing we do because it's censorship of something that isn't spam. It's me saying to some Web provider, because you are renting space to this person [a spammer] who is doing something completely legal, I am going to Blackhole your butt.

For more on the Border Gateway Protocol implementation of the RBL, see this page (thanks to jeffg for the link); for a description of how it drops all packets to blackholed sites, see this message.

Also, Bennett Haselton of Peacefire reports, at 10:58 PM EST:

I just telnetted in to www.peacefire.org and was able to do "ping www.above.net" and "ping home.cnet.com" and "ping www.infoworld.com" despite the fact that that traceroute on all of these sites shows that they are hooked up via above.net.

Peacefire's IP address is still on the RBL, so it looks like AboveNet has, for the time being, temporarily stopped blocking their users from accessing sites on the RBL.

This means that either:
(1) AboveNet has realized the errors of their ways, and is trying to correct them.
(2) AboveNet is trying to cover up the fact that they ever censored their users' Internet access, and they are temporarily opening up the gateway so that people on AboveNet will be able to access Peacefire and will think it is all a hoax.

HumpBackB wrote us about the lawsuit that ISP Media3 has filed against MAPS and its Realtime Blackhole List. The RBL, despite blocking only 2% of spam, is widely seen as an effective tool against mail abuse. I'm going to risk life and limb, and say that it has become, instead, just another censorware tool. Here's why.

Media3 has had six of its ClassCs added to the RBL: one in June, and five in November. These 1500 IP numbers are now cut off entirely from the rest of the Internet for any Internet provider who subscribes to the RBL (more on this later).

But making these 1500 IP numbers vanish from the net -- which is exactly what happens for any provider who subscribes to the RBL -- does not stop any spam from getting through. They are not blocked because those servers are sending unsolicited email, or any kind of e-mail for that matter.

Media3's service agreement is more-or-less the same as all responsible, anti-spam providers:

"M3 does not permit the transmission of unsolicited e-mail... Subsequent violations will result in suspension and/or termination of the account without refund of service fees..."

And MAPS does not even allege that a single piece of spam has been sent from any of these 1500 IP numbers. As their press release says:

"Media3 refused to require their Web-hosting customers to stop advertising their Web sites by using unsolicited commercial email..."

Even this fact is in dispute. I spoke with Joe Hayes at Media3, and he told me that the company does not tolerate Web sites which promote themselves through spam.

You can check the RBL evidence file yourself. When a MAPS representative spoke with Joe back in June, he told him that he needed to, not tighten up his sendmail rules, but "terminate the Samco [Web] sites and rewrite his AUP to prohibit the hosting of spamware."

Spamware? Yes. Media3 does host Web sites which sell software that sends bulk e-mail and harvests e-mail addresses. Take a look at MarketingMasters.com. Their IP number is 209.211.253.74, which is in the Media3 ClassC which was blocked in June. You can look them up on the RBL at http://mail-abuse.org/cgi-bin/ lookup?209.211.253.74.

Again, the blocking of that IP number, their Web site, does not stop a single piece of spam from being sent or received. What it does do is punish the folks at MarketingMasters, whose Web site can't be seen by RBL subscribers.

The problem is that MAPS has put every 209.211.253.x IP number on their list. For example, if you look up 209.211.253.169, you'll see exactly the same message and same rationale.

And 209.211.253.169 is not a spam Web site. It's otherwise known as Peacefire.org, a group of young people who are advocates of free speech rights for teenagers, and -- irony alert -- longtime opponents of censorware.

In fact, if you visit their Web site you'll see many reports about how censorware blocks the good as well as the bad. Their latest, "Amnesty Intercepted," shows that sites like Amnesty International Israel and the American Kurdish Information Network are blacklisted as pornographic by overzealous censorware.

Kind of like Peacefire -- and over a thousand other sites -- are blacklisted by MAPS.

Let's be clear about what censorware does. It does not by itself block content. It "only" rates that content as unacceptable for viewing, and it is up to someone -- your parents? your teacher? your ISP? -- to apply its rules to prevent you from seeing that content.

I don't like spam any more than the next person. But I also don't like censorship, and I take a content-neutral view of these things. If someone delivers a product to be used by Alice to block Bob from seeing website because she doesn't like its content, that product is censorware.

And if that product capriciously, unfairly, and deliberately blocks innocent Web sites, then it's not very good censorware.

In this case, the "bad" Web site sells software which could be used to spam. Frankly, compared to Nazi propaganda or bomb-making instructions, it's pretty tame. But that's not important. Standing up for speech I agree with is easy, everybody does it. If you want freedom, you have to stand up for speech you disagree with.

At least with programs like CyberPatrol, SurfWatch, and Net Nanny, when overblocking mistakes are pointed out, they are corrected. But as MAPS admits in its press release and evidence files, the intent here is not to block the actual Web sites (after all, people who want to buy the software will find a way to buy it).

No, the intent is to get the ISP in question to play ball. The fact that a thousand innocent Web sites are censored is, as far as I can tell, irrelevant.

I don't see much difference between this and any other censorware. One difference is that few other censorware packages are actually free. Another is that fewer are so obviously wielding their power as a retaliatory weapon.

And, there's also the fact that the RBL is used by a backbone provider, AboveNet, whose CTO also happens to be a co-founder of MAPS. Peacefire had no idea that it was being censored until it heard from confused would-be readers. At least with traditional censorware, if your connection to a website is blocked, you have some idea of why. Peacefire's readers naturally had no idea whether their packets were traveling over AboveNet's network, and only knew that their connections were being rejected.

(I contacted Paul Vixie to ask about AboveNet and how it uses the RBL, but he refused comment, sending me to AboveNet PR, who didn't get back to me by deadline time.)

Vixie claimed in 1998 that "MAPS volunteers always contact the owner of a site before it's blacklisted." I'm guessing none of the 1,500 blocked Web sites were contacted.

But then, MAPS also advises Web providers:

"If you host Web sites, we suggest that you use one IP per domain so that if spam occurs for one Web site, we don't have to blackhole you or your other customers to block access to the spamming site."

That's exactly what Media3 does -- and exactly what MAPS did.

Oh, and one more difference. The RBL is more successful than any other censorware package. According to Upside, 20,000 companies that control 40% of all e-mail accounts (and, quite possibly, Web sites); that's up from what ZDNet said in 1998, 2000 ISPs that control 30% of Internet destinations.

I can't find much to argue with in Joe Hayes's summary:

"They [MAPS] are blocking very good educational sites, nonprofit organizations, in their attempts to get us to adopt their definitions in their entirety. They've made no bones about hurting people and while Media3 maintains a policy of not allowing unsolicited e-mails, we do not see completely eye-to-eye on MAPS's definitions because they become very encompassing and very broad. While they have a good tool, and I commend them for their efforts to contain e-mail abuse, they're a good thing gone bad and they have basically become the abuser."

And here's a heavily abridged list of the sites that cannot be accessed via AboveNet, or any of the other providers who use the RBL -- just a few of the sites on just one blacklisted ClassC:

• FulfilledLives.com, "the place for women and girls," about spirituality and relationships.
• DesktopHeaven.com, Windows themes, screensavers, wallpaper.
• TownOfCary.org, the official website for the town of Cary, North Carolina.
• StudioZito.com, yet another Web site-designer.
• Crossalizer.de, a music site which points out (in German) that it's a victim of an anti-spam initiative, and thus has moved to Crossalizer.com.
• StrikeMore.com, bowling tips and schedules.
• NewTechWellness.com: "The total balance of wholeness and wellness within the areas of Mind, Body, Family, Society, and Finances in our lives is our goal," OK, whatever.
• ElaineCoffman.com and DianaPalmer.com -- both are authors of romance novels.
  And finally,
• CraftersCommunity.com. "If you are looking for a fun and easy recipe to do with the kids, try these deliciously simple Winter Cookie Pops."

Update, something like an hour later: If you're planning to e-mail me or post a comment saying I don't know what I'm talking about because the RBL only blocks mail traffic, please take a moment to read this 1997 interview. Excerpt:

SunWorld: How do you defend your policy of Blackholing Web services that host spammers' Web sites -- even if the spam itself isn't going through their service?

Vixie: This is the most controversial thing we do because it's censorship of something that isn't spam. It's me saying to some Web provider, because you are renting space to this person [a spammer] who is doing something completely legal, I am going to Blackhole your butt.

For more on the Border Gateway Protocol implementation of the RBL, see this page (thanks to jeffg for the link); for a description of how it drops all packets to blackholed sites, see this message.

Also, Bennett Haselton of Peacefire reports, at 10:58 PM EST:

I just telnetted in to www.peacefire.org and was able to do "ping www.above.net" and "ping home.cnet.com" and "ping www.infoworld.com" despite the fact that that traceroute on all of these sites shows that they are hooked up via above.net.

Peacefire's IP address is still on the RBL, so it looks like AboveNet has, for the time being, temporarily stopped blocking their users from accessing sites on the RBL.

This means that either:
(1) AboveNet has realized the errors of their ways, and is trying to correct them.
(2) AboveNet is trying to cover up the fact that they ever censored their users' Internet access, and they are temporarily opening up the gateway so that people on AboveNet will be able to access Peacefire and will think it is all a hoax.

HumpBackB wrote us about the lawsuit that ISP Media3 has filed against MAPS and its Realtime Blackhole List. The RBL, despite blocking only 2% of spam, is widely seen as an effective tool against mail abuse. I'm going to risk life and limb, and say that it has become, instead, just another censorware tool. Here's why.

Media3 has had six of its ClassCs added to the RBL: one in June, and five in November. These 1500 IP numbers are now cut off entirely from the rest of the Internet for any Internet provider who subscribes to the RBL (more on this later).

But making these 1500 IP numbers vanish from the net -- which is exactly what happens for any provider who subscribes to the RBL -- does not stop any spam from getting through. They are not blocked because those servers are sending unsolicited email, or any kind of e-mail for that matter.

Media3's service agreement is more-or-less the same as all responsible, anti-spam providers:

"M3 does not permit the transmission of unsolicited e-mail... Subsequent violations will result in suspension and/or termination of the account without refund of service fees..."

And MAPS does not even allege that a single piece of spam has been sent from any of these 1500 IP numbers. As their press release says:

"Media3 refused to require their Web-hosting customers to stop advertising their Web sites by using unsolicited commercial email..."

Even this fact is in dispute. I spoke with Joe Hayes at Media3, and he told me that the company does not tolerate Web sites which promote themselves through spam.

You can check the RBL evidence file yourself. When a MAPS representative spoke with Joe back in June, he told him that he needed to, not tighten up his sendmail rules, but "terminate the Samco [Web] sites and rewrite his AUP to prohibit the hosting of spamware."

Spamware? Yes. Media3 does host Web sites which sell software that sends bulk e-mail and harvests e-mail addresses. Take a look at MarketingMasters.com. Their IP number is 209.211.253.74, which is in the Media3 ClassC which was blocked in June. You can look them up on the RBL at http://mail-abuse.org/cgi-bin/ lookup?209.211.253.74.

Again, the blocking of that IP number, their Web site, does not stop a single piece of spam from being sent or received. What it does do is punish the folks at MarketingMasters, whose Web site can't be seen by RBL subscribers.

The problem is that MAPS has put every 209.211.253.x IP number on their list. For example, if you look up 209.211.253.169, you'll see exactly the same message and same rationale.

And 209.211.253.169 is not a spam Web site. It's otherwise known as Peacefire.org, a group of young people who are advocates of free speech rights for teenagers, and -- irony alert -- longtime opponents of censorware.

In fact, if you visit their Web site you'll see many reports about how censorware blocks the good as well as the bad. Their latest, "Amnesty Intercepted," shows that sites like Amnesty International Israel and the American Kurdish Information Network are blacklisted as pornographic by overzealous censorware.

Kind of like Peacefire -- and over a thousand other sites -- are blacklisted by MAPS.

Let's be clear about what censorware does. It does not by itself block content. It "only" rates that content as unacceptable for viewing, and it is up to someone -- your parents? your teacher? your ISP? -- to apply its rules to prevent you from seeing that content.

I don't like spam any more than the next person. But I also don't like censorship, and I take a content-neutral view of these things. If someone delivers a product to be used by Alice to block Bob from seeing website because she doesn't like its content, that product is censorware.

And if that product capriciously, unfairly, and deliberately blocks innocent Web sites, then it's not very good censorware.

In this case, the "bad" Web site sells software which could be used to spam. Frankly, compared to Nazi propaganda or bomb-making instructions, it's pretty tame. But that's not important. Standing up for speech I agree with is easy, everybody does it. If you want freedom, you have to stand up for speech you disagree with.

At least with programs like CyberPatrol, SurfWatch, and Net Nanny, when overblocking mistakes are pointed out, they are corrected. But as MAPS admits in its press release and evidence files, the intent here is not to block the actual Web sites (after all, people who want to buy the software will find a way to buy it).

No, the intent is to get the ISP in question to play ball. The fact that a thousand innocent Web sites are censored is, as far as I can tell, irrelevant.

I don't see much difference between this and any other censorware. One difference is that few other censorware packages are actually free. Another is that fewer are so obviously wielding their power as a retaliatory weapon.

And, there's also the fact that the RBL is used by a backbone provider, AboveNet, whose CTO also happens to be a co-founder of MAPS. Peacefire had no idea that it was being censored until it heard from confused would-be readers. At least with traditional censorware, if your connection to a website is blocked, you have some idea of why. Peacefire's readers naturally had no idea whether their packets were traveling over AboveNet's network, and only knew that their connections were being rejected.

(I contacted Paul Vixie to ask about AboveNet and how it uses the RBL, but he refused comment, sending me to AboveNet PR, who didn't get back to me by deadline time.)

Vixie claimed in 1998 that "MAPS volunteers always contact the owner of a site before it's blacklisted." I'm guessing none of the 1,500 blocked Web sites were contacted.

But then, MAPS also advises Web providers:

"If you host Web sites, we suggest that you use one IP per domain so that if spam occurs for one Web site, we don't have to blackhole you or your other customers to block access to the spamming site."

That's exactly what Media3 does -- and exactly what MAPS did.

Oh, and one more difference. The RBL is more successful than any other censorware package. According to Upside, 20,000 companies that control 40% of all e-mail accounts (and, quite possibly, Web sites); that's up from what ZDNet said in 1998, 2000 ISPs that control 30% of Internet destinations.

I can't find much to argue with in Joe Hayes's summary:

"They [MAPS] are blocking very good educational sites, nonprofit organizations, in their attempts to get us to adopt their definitions in their entirety. They've made no bones about hurting people and while Media3 maintains a policy of not allowing unsolicited e-mails, we do not see completely eye-to-eye on MAPS's definitions because they become very encompassing and very broad. While they have a good tool, and I commend them for their efforts to contain e-mail abuse, they're a good thing gone bad and they have basically become the abuser."

And here's a heavily abridged list of the sites that cannot be accessed via AboveNet, or any of the other providers who use the RBL -- just a few of the sites on just one blacklisted ClassC:

• FulfilledLives.com, "the place for women and girls," about spirituality and relationships.
• DesktopHeaven.com, Windows themes, screensavers, wallpaper.
• TownOfCary.org, the official website for the town of Cary, North Carolina.
• StudioZito.com, yet another Web site-designer.
• Crossalizer.de, a music site which points out (in German) that it's a victim of an anti-spam initiative, and thus has moved to Crossalizer.com.
• StrikeMore.com, bowling tips and schedules.
• NewTechWellness.com: "The total balance of wholeness and wellness within the areas of Mind, Body, Family, Society, and Finances in our lives is our goal," OK, whatever.
• ElaineCoffman.com and DianaPalmer.com -- both are authors of romance novels.
  And finally,
• CraftersCommunity.com. "If you are looking for a fun and easy recipe to do with the kids, try these deliciously simple Winter Cookie Pops."

Update, something like an hour later: If you're planning to e-mail me or post a comment saying I don't know what I'm talking about because the RBL only blocks mail traffic, please take a moment to read this 1997 interview. Excerpt:

SunWorld: How do you defend your policy of Blackholing Web services that host spammers' Web sites -- even if the spam itself isn't going through their service?

Vixie: This is the most controversial thing we do because it's censorship of something that isn't spam. It's me saying to some Web provider, because you are renting space to this person [a spammer] who is doing something completely legal, I am going to Blackhole your butt.

For more on the Border Gateway Protocol implementation of the RBL, see this page (thanks to jeffg for the link); for a description of how it drops all packets to blackholed sites, see this message.

Also, Bennett Haselton of Peacefire reports, at 10:58 PM EST:

I just telnetted in to www.peacefire.org and was able to do "ping www.above.net" and "ping home.cnet.com" and "ping www.infoworld.com" despite the fact that that traceroute on all of these sites shows that they are hooked up via above.net.

Peacefire's IP address is still on the RBL, so it looks like AboveNet has, for the time being, temporarily stopped blocking their users from accessing sites on the RBL.

This means that either:
(1) AboveNet has realized the errors of their ways, and is trying to correct them.
(2) AboveNet is trying to cover up the fact that they ever censored their users' Internet access, and they are temporarily opening up the gateway so that people on AboveNet will be able to access Peacefire and will think it is all a hoax.

HumpBackB wrote us about the lawsuit that ISP Media3 has filed against MAPS and its Realtime Blackhole List. The RBL, despite blocking only 2% of spam, is widely seen as an effective tool against mail abuse. I'm going to risk life and limb, and say that it has become, instead, just another censorware tool. Here's why.

Media3 has had six of its ClassCs added to the RBL: one in June, and five in November. These 1500 IP numbers are now cut off entirely from the rest of the Internet for any Internet provider who subscribes to the RBL (more on this later).

But making these 1500 IP numbers vanish from the net -- which is exactly what happens for any provider who subscribes to the RBL -- does not stop any spam from getting through. They are not blocked because those servers are sending unsolicited email, or any kind of e-mail for that matter.

Media3's service agreement is more-or-less the same as all responsible, anti-spam providers:

"M3 does not permit the transmission of unsolicited e-mail... Subsequent violations will result in suspension and/or termination of the account without refund of service fees..."

And MAPS does not even allege that a single piece of spam has been sent from any of these 1500 IP numbers. As their press release says:

"Media3 refused to require their Web-hosting customers to stop advertising their Web sites by using unsolicited commercial email..."

Even this fact is in dispute. I spoke with Joe Hayes at Media3, and he told me that the company does not tolerate Web sites which promote themselves through spam.

You can check the RBL evidence file yourself. When a MAPS representative spoke with Joe back in June, he told him that he needed to, not tighten up his sendmail rules, but "terminate the Samco [Web] sites and rewrite his AUP to prohibit the hosting of spamware."

Spamware? Yes. Media3 does host Web sites which sell software that sends bulk e-mail and harvests e-mail addresses. Take a look at MarketingMasters.com. Their IP number is 209.211.253.74, which is in the Media3 ClassC which was blocked in June. You can look them up on the RBL at http://mail-abuse.org/cgi-bin/ lookup?209.211.253.74.

Again, the blocking of that IP number, their Web site, does not stop a single piece of spam from being sent or received. What it does do is punish the folks at MarketingMasters, whose Web site can't be seen by RBL subscribers.

The problem is that MAPS has put every 209.211.253.x IP number on their list. For example, if you look up 209.211.253.169, you'll see exactly the same message and same rationale.

And 209.211.253.169 is not a spam Web site. It's otherwise known as Peacefire.org, a group of young people who are advocates of free speech rights for teenagers, and -- irony alert -- longtime opponents of censorware.

In fact, if you visit their Web site you'll see many reports about how censorware blocks the good as well as the bad. Their latest, "Amnesty Intercepted," shows that sites like Amnesty International Israel and the American Kurdish Information Network are blacklisted as pornographic by overzealous censorware.

Kind of like Peacefire -- and over a thousand other sites -- are blacklisted by MAPS.

Let's be clear about what censorware does. It does not by itself block content. It "only" rates that content as unacceptable for viewing, and it is up to someone -- your parents? your teacher? your ISP? -- to apply its rules to prevent you from seeing that content.

I don't like spam any more than the next person. But I also don't like censorship, and I take a content-neutral view of these things. If someone delivers a product to be used by Alice to block Bob from seeing website because she doesn't like its content, that product is censorware.

And if that product capriciously, unfairly, and deliberately blocks innocent Web sites, then it's not very good censorware.

In this case, the "bad" Web site sells software which could be used to spam. Frankly, compared to Nazi propaganda or bomb-making instructions, it's pretty tame. But that's not important. Standing up for speech I agree with is easy, everybody does it. If you want freedom, you have to stand up for speech you disagree with.

At least with programs like CyberPatrol, SurfWatch, and Net Nanny, when overblocking mistakes are pointed out, they are corrected. But as MAPS admits in its press release and evidence files, the intent here is not to block the actual Web sites (after all, people who want to buy the software will find a way to buy it).

No, the intent is to get the ISP in question to play ball. The fact that a thousand innocent Web sites are censored is, as far as I can tell, irrelevant.

I don't see much difference between this and any other censorware. One difference is that few other censorware packages are actually free. Another is that fewer are so obviously wielding their power as a retaliatory weapon.

And, there's also the fact that the RBL is used by a backbone provider, AboveNet, whose CTO also happens to be a co-founder of MAPS. Peacefire had no idea that it was being censored until it heard from confused would-be readers. At least with traditional censorware, if your connection to a website is blocked, you have some idea of why. Peacefire's readers naturally had no idea whether their packets were traveling over AboveNet's network, and only knew that their connections were being rejected.

(I contacted Paul Vixie to ask about AboveNet and how it uses the RBL, but he refused comment, sending me to AboveNet PR, who didn't get back to me by deadline time.)

Vixie claimed in 1998 that "MAPS volunteers always contact the owner of a site before it's blacklisted." I'm guessing none of the 1,500 blocked Web sites were contacted.

But then, MAPS also advises Web providers:

"If you host Web sites, we suggest that you use one IP per domain so that if spam occurs for one Web site, we don't have to blackhole you or your other customers to block access to the spamming site."

That's exactly what Media3 does -- and exactly what MAPS did.

Oh, and one more difference. The RBL is more successful than any other censorware package. According to Upside, 20,000 companies that control 40% of all e-mail accounts (and, quite possibly, Web sites); that's up from what ZDNet said in 1998, 2000 ISPs that control 30% of Internet destinations.

I can't find much to argue with in Joe Hayes's summary:

"They [MAPS] are blocking very good educational sites, nonprofit organizations, in their attempts to get us to adopt their definitions in their entirety. They've made no bones about hurting people and while Media3 maintains a policy of not allowing unsolicited e-mails, we do not see completely eye-to-eye on MAPS's definitions because they become very encompassing and very broad. While they have a good tool, and I commend them for their efforts to contain e-mail abuse, they're a good thing gone bad and they have basically become the abuser."

And here's a heavily abridged list of the sites that cannot be accessed via AboveNet, or any of the other providers who use the RBL -- just a few of the sites on just one blacklisted ClassC:

• FulfilledLives.com, "the place for women and girls," about spirituality and relationships.
• DesktopHeaven.com, Windows themes, screensavers, wallpaper.
• TownOfCary.org, the official website for the town of Cary, North Carolina.
• StudioZito.com, yet another Web site-designer.
• Crossalizer.de, a music site which points out (in German) that it's a victim of an anti-spam initiative, and thus has moved to Crossalizer.com.
• StrikeMore.com, bowling tips and schedules.
• NewTechWellness.com: "The total balance of wholeness and wellness within the areas of Mind, Body, Family, Society, and Finances in our lives is our goal," OK, whatever.
• ElaineCoffman.com and DianaPalmer.com -- both are authors of romance novels.
  And finally,
• CraftersCommunity.com. "If you are looking for a fun and easy recipe to do with the kids, try these deliciously simple Winter Cookie Pops."

Update, something like an hour later: If you're planning to e-mail me or post a comment saying I don't know what I'm talking about because the RBL only blocks mail traffic, please take a moment to read this 1997 interview. Excerpt:

SunWorld: How do you defend your policy of Blackholing Web services that host spammers' Web sites -- even if the spam itself isn't going through their service?

Vixie: This is the most controversial thing we do because it's censorship of something that isn't spam. It's me saying to some Web provider, because you are renting space to this person [a spammer] who is doing something completely legal, I am going to Blackhole your butt.

For more on the Border Gateway Protocol implementation of the RBL, see this page (thanks to jeffg for the link); for a description of how it drops all packets to blackholed sites, see this message.

Also, Bennett Haselton of Peacefire reports, at 10:58 PM EST:

I just telnetted in to www.peacefire.org and was able to do "ping www.above.net" and "ping home.cnet.com" and "ping www.infoworld.com" despite the fact that that traceroute on all of these sites shows that they are hooked up via above.net.

Peacefire's IP address is still on the RBL, so it looks like AboveNet has, for the time being, temporarily stopped blocking their users from accessing sites on the RBL.

This means that either:
(1) AboveNet has realized the errors of their ways, and is trying to correct them.
(2) AboveNet is trying to cover up the fact that they ever censored their users' Internet access, and they are temporarily opening up the gateway so that people on AboveNet will be able to access Peacefire and will think it is all a hoax.

HumpBackB wrote us about the lawsuit that ISP Media3 has filed against MAPS and its Realtime Blackhole List. The RBL, despite blocking only 2% of spam, is widely seen as an effective tool against mail abuse. I'm going to risk life and limb, and say that it has become, instead, just another censorware tool. Here's why.

Media3 has had six of its ClassCs added to the RBL: one in June, and five in November. These 1500 IP numbers are now cut off entirely from the rest of the Internet for any Internet provider who subscribes to the RBL (more on this later).

But making these 1500 IP numbers vanish from the net -- which is exactly what happens for any provider who subscribes to the RBL -- does not stop any spam from getting through. They are not blocked because those servers are sending unsolicited email, or any kind of e-mail for that matter.

Media3's service agreement is more-or-less the same as all responsible, anti-spam providers:

"M3 does not permit the transmission of unsolicited e-mail... Subsequent violations will result in suspension and/or termination of the account without refund of service fees..."

And MAPS does not even allege that a single piece of spam has been sent from any of these 1500 IP numbers. As their press release says:

"Media3 refused to require their Web-hosting customers to stop advertising their Web sites by using unsolicited commercial email..."

Even this fact is in dispute. I spoke with Joe Hayes at Media3, and he told me that the company does not tolerate Web sites which promote themselves through spam.

You can check the RBL evidence file yourself. When a MAPS representative spoke with Joe back in June, he told him that he needed to, not tighten up his sendmail rules, but "terminate the Samco [Web] sites and rewrite his AUP to prohibit the hosting of spamware."

Spamware? Yes. Media3 does host Web sites which sell software that sends bulk e-mail and harvests e-mail addresses. Take a look at MarketingMasters.com. Their IP number is 209.211.253.74, which is in the Media3 ClassC which was blocked in June. You can look them up on the RBL at http://mail-abuse.org/cgi-bin/ lookup?209.211.253.74.

Again, the blocking of that IP number, their Web site, does not stop a single piece of spam from being sent or received. What it does do is punish the folks at MarketingMasters, whose Web site can't be seen by RBL subscribers.

The problem is that MAPS has put every 209.211.253.x IP number on their list. For example, if you look up 209.211.253.169, you'll see exactly the same message and same rationale.

And 209.211.253.169 is not a spam Web site. It's otherwise known as Peacefire.org, a group of young people who are advocates of free speech rights for teenagers, and -- irony alert -- longtime opponents of censorware.

In fact, if you visit their Web site you'll see many reports about how censorware blocks the good as well as the bad. Their latest, "Amnesty Intercepted," shows that sites like Amnesty International Israel and the American Kurdish Information Network are blacklisted as pornographic by overzealous censorware.

Kind of like Peacefire -- and over a thousand other sites -- are blacklisted by MAPS.

Let's be clear about what censorware does. It does not by itself block content. It "only" rates that content as unacceptable for viewing, and it is up to someone -- your parents? your teacher? your ISP? -- to apply its rules to prevent you from seeing that content.

I don't like spam any more than the next person. But I also don't like censorship, and I take a content-neutral view of these things. If someone delivers a product to be used by Alice to block Bob from seeing website because she doesn't like its content, that product is censorware.

And if that product capriciously, unfairly, and deliberately blocks innocent Web sites, then it's not very good censorware.

In this case, the "bad" Web site sells software which could be used to spam. Frankly, compared to Nazi propaganda or bomb-making instructions, it's pretty tame. But that's not important. Standing up for speech I agree with is easy, everybody does it. If you want freedom, you have to stand up for speech you disagree with.

At least with programs like CyberPatrol, SurfWatch, and Net Nanny, when overblocking mistakes are pointed out, they are corrected. But as MAPS admits in its press release and evidence files, the intent here is not to block the actual Web sites (after all, people who want to buy the software will find a way to buy it).

No, the intent is to get the ISP in question to play ball. The fact that a thousand innocent Web sites are censored is, as far as I can tell, irrelevant.

I don't see much difference between this and any other censorware. One difference is that few other censorware packages are actually free. Another is that fewer are so obviously wielding their power as a retaliatory weapon.

And, there's also the fact that the RBL is used by a backbone provider, AboveNet, whose CTO also happens to be a co-founder of MAPS. Peacefire had no idea that it was being censored until it heard from confused would-be readers. At least with traditional censorware, if your connection to a website is blocked, you have some idea of why. Peacefire's readers naturally had no idea whether their packets were traveling over AboveNet's network, and only knew that their connections were being rejected.

(I contacted Paul Vixie to ask about AboveNet and how it uses the RBL, but he refused comment, sending me to AboveNet PR, who didn't get back to me by deadline time.)

Vixie claimed in 1998 that "MAPS volunteers always contact the owner of a site before it's blacklisted." I'm guessing none of the 1,500 blocked Web sites were contacted.

But then, MAPS also advises Web providers:

"If you host Web sites, we suggest that you use one IP per domain so that if spam occurs for one Web site, we don't have to blackhole you or your other customers to block access to the spamming site."

That's exactly what Media3 does -- and exactly what MAPS did.

Oh, and one more difference. The RBL is more successful than any other censorware package. According to Upside, 20,000 companies that control 40% of all e-mail accounts (and, quite possibly, Web sites); that's up from what ZDNet said in 1998, 2000 ISPs that control 30% of Internet destinations.

I can't find much to argue with in Joe Hayes's summary:

"They [MAPS] are blocking very good educational sites, nonprofit organizations, in their attempts to get us to adopt their definitions in their entirety. They've made no bones about hurting people and while Media3 maintains a policy of not allowing unsolicited e-mails, we do not see completely eye-to-eye on MAPS's definitions because they become very encompassing and very broad. While they have a good tool, and I commend them for their efforts to contain e-mail abuse, they're a good thing gone bad and they have basically become the abuser."

And here's a heavily abridged list of the sites that cannot be accessed via AboveNet, or any of the other providers who use the RBL -- just a few of the sites on just one blacklisted ClassC:

• FulfilledLives.com, "the place for women and girls," about spirituality and relationships.
• DesktopHeaven.com, Windows themes, screensavers, wallpaper.
• TownOfCary.org, the official website for the town of Cary, North Carolina.
• StudioZito.com, yet another Web site-designer.
• Crossalizer.de, a music site which points out (in German) that it's a victim of an anti-spam initiative, and thus has moved to Crossalizer.com.
• StrikeMore.com, bowling tips and schedules.
• NewTechWellness.com: "The total balance of wholeness and wellness within the areas of Mind, Body, Family, Society, and Finances in our lives is our goal," OK, whatever.
• ElaineCoffman.com and DianaPalmer.com -- both are authors of romance novels.
  And finally,
• CraftersCommunity.com. "If you are looking for a fun and easy recipe to do with the kids, try these deliciously simple Winter Cookie Pops."

Update, something like an hour later: If you're planning to e-mail me or post a comment saying I don't know what I'm talking about because the RBL only blocks mail traffic, please take a moment to read this 1997 interview. Excerpt:

SunWorld: How do you defend your policy of Blackholing Web services that host spammers' Web sites -- even if the spam itself isn't going through their service?

Vixie: This is the most controversial thing we do because it's censorship of something that isn't spam. It's me saying to some Web provider, because you are renting space to this person [a spammer] who is doing something completely legal, I am going to Blackhole your butt.

For more on the Border Gateway Protocol implementation of the RBL, see this page (thanks to jeffg for the link); for a description of how it drops all packets to blackholed sites, see this message.

Also, Bennett Haselton of Peacefire reports, at 10:58 PM EST:

I just telnetted in to www.peacefire.org and was able to do "ping www.above.net" and "ping home.cnet.com" and "ping www.infoworld.com" despite the fact that that traceroute on all of these sites shows that they are hooked up via above.net.

Peacefire's IP address is still on the RBL, so it looks like AboveNet has, for the time being, temporarily stopped blocking their users from accessing sites on the RBL.

This means that either:
(1) AboveNet has realized the errors of their ways, and is trying to correct them.
(2) AboveNet is trying to cover up the fact that they ever censored their users' Internet access, and they are temporarily opening up the gateway so that people on AboveNet will be able to access Peacefire and will think it is all a hoax.

HumpBackB wrote us about the lawsuit that ISP Media3 has filed against MAPS and its Realtime Blackhole List. The RBL, despite blocking only 2% of spam, is widely seen as an effective tool against mail abuse. I'm going to risk life and limb, and say that it has become, instead, just another censorware tool. Here's why.

Media3 has had six of its ClassCs added to the RBL: one in June, and five in November. These 1500 IP numbers are now cut off entirely from the rest of the Internet for any Internet provider who subscribes to the RBL (more on this later).

But making these 1500 IP numbers vanish from the net -- which is exactly what happens for any provider who subscribes to the RBL -- does not stop any spam from getting through. They are not blocked because those servers are sending unsolicited email, or any kind of e-mail for that matter.

Media3's service agreement is more-or-less the same as all responsible, anti-spam providers:

"M3 does not permit the transmission of unsolicited e-mail... Subsequent violations will result in suspension and/or termination of the account without refund of service fees..."

And MAPS does not even allege that a single piece of spam has been sent from any of these 1500 IP numbers. As their press release says:

"Media3 refused to require their Web-hosting customers to stop advertising their Web sites by using unsolicited commercial email..."

Even this fact is in dispute. I spoke with Joe Hayes at Media3, and he told me that the company does not tolerate Web sites which promote themselves through spam.

You can check the RBL evidence file yourself. When a MAPS representative spoke with Joe back in June, he told him that he needed to, not tighten up his sendmail rules, but "terminate the Samco [Web] sites and rewrite his AUP to prohibit the hosting of spamware."

Spamware? Yes. Media3 does host Web sites which sell software that sends bulk e-mail and harvests e-mail addresses. Take a look at MarketingMasters.com. Their IP number is 209.211.253.74, which is in the Media3 ClassC which was blocked in June. You can look them up on the RBL at http://mail-abuse.org/cgi-bin/ lookup?209.211.253.74.

Again, the blocking of that IP number, their Web site, does not stop a single piece of spam from being sent or received. What it does do is punish the folks at MarketingMasters, whose Web site can't be seen by RBL subscribers.

The problem is that MAPS has put every 209.211.253.x IP number on their list. For example, if you look up 209.211.253.169, you'll see exactly the same message and same rationale.

And 209.211.253.169 is not a spam Web site. It's otherwise known as Peacefire.org, a group of young people who are advocates of free speech rights for teenagers, and -- irony alert -- longtime opponents of censorware.

In fact, if you visit their Web site you'll see many reports about how censorware blocks the good as well as the bad. Their latest, "Amnesty Intercepted," shows that sites like Amnesty International Israel and the American Kurdish Information Network are blacklisted as pornographic by overzealous censorware.

Kind of like Peacefire -- and over a thousand other sites -- are blacklisted by MAPS.

Let's be clear about what censorware does. It does not by itself block content. It "only" rates that content as unacceptable for viewing, and it is up to someone -- your parents? your teacher? your ISP? -- to apply its rules to prevent you from seeing that content.

I don't like spam any more than the next person. But I also don't like censorship, and I take a content-neutral view of these things. If someone delivers a product to be used by Alice to block Bob from seeing website because she doesn't like its content, that product is censorware.

And if that product capriciously, unfairly, and deliberately blocks innocent Web sites, then it's not very good censorware.

In this case, the "bad" Web site sells software which could be used to spam. Frankly, compared to Nazi propaganda or bomb-making instructions, it's pretty tame. But that's not important. Standing up for speech I agree with is easy, everybody does it. If you want freedom, you have to stand up for speech you disagree with.

At least with programs like CyberPatrol, SurfWatch, and Net Nanny, when overblocking mistakes are pointed out, they are corrected. But as MAPS admits in its press release and evidence files, the intent here is not to block the actual Web sites (after all, people who want to buy the software will find a way to buy it).

No, the intent is to get the ISP in question to play ball. The fact that a thousand innocent Web sites are censored is, as far as I can tell, irrelevant.

I don't see much difference between this and any other censorware. One difference is that few other censorware packages are actually free. Another is that fewer are so obviously wielding their power as a retaliatory weapon.

And, there's also the fact that the RBL is used by a backbone provider, AboveNet, whose CTO also happens to be a co-founder of MAPS. Peacefire had no idea that it was being censored until it heard from confused would-be readers. At least with traditional censorware, if your connection to a website is blocked, you have some idea of why. Peacefire's readers naturally had no idea whether their packets were traveling over AboveNet's network, and only knew that their connections were being rejected.

(I contacted Paul Vixie to ask about AboveNet and how it uses the RBL, but he refused comment, sending me to AboveNet PR, who didn't get back to me by deadline time.)

Vixie claimed in 1998 that "MAPS volunteers always contact the owner of a site before it's blacklisted." I'm guessing none of the 1,500 blocked Web sites were contacted.

But then, MAPS also advises Web providers:

"If you host Web sites, we suggest that you use one IP per domain so that if spam occurs for one Web site, we don't have to blackhole you or your other customers to block access to the spamming site."

That's exactly what Media3 does -- and exactly what MAPS did.

Oh, and one more difference. The RBL is more successful than any other censorware package. According to Upside, 20,000 companies that control 40% of all e-mail accounts (and, quite possibly, Web sites); that's up from what ZDNet said in 1998, 2000 ISPs that control 30% of Internet destinations.

I can't find much to argue with in Joe Hayes's summary:

"They [MAPS] are blocking very good educational sites, nonprofit organizations, in their attempts to get us to adopt their definitions in their entirety. They've made no bones about hurting people and while Media3 maintains a policy of not allowing unsolicited e-mails, we do not see completely eye-to-eye on MAPS's definitions because they become very encompassing and very broad. While they have a good tool, and I commend them for their efforts to contain e-mail abuse, they're a good thing gone bad and they have basically become the abuser."

And here's a heavily abridged list of the sites that cannot be accessed via AboveNet, or any of the other providers who use the RBL -- just a few of the sites on just one blacklisted ClassC:

• FulfilledLives.com, "the place for women and girls," about spirituality and relationships.
• DesktopHeaven.com, Windows themes, screensavers, wallpaper.
• TownOfCary.org, the official website for the town of Cary, North Carolina.
• StudioZito.com, yet another Web site-designer.
• Crossalizer.de, a music site which points out (in German) that it's a victim of an anti-spam initiative, and thus has moved to Crossalizer.com.
• StrikeMore.com, bowling tips and schedules.
• NewTechWellness.com: "The total balance of wholeness and wellness within the areas of Mind, Body, Family, Society, and Finances in our lives is our goal," OK, whatever.
• ElaineCoffman.com and DianaPalmer.com -- both are authors of romance novels.
  And finally,
• CraftersCommunity.com. "If you are looking for a fun and easy recipe to do with the kids, try these deliciously simple Winter Cookie Pops."

Update, something like an hour later: If you're planning to e-mail me or post a comment saying I don't know what I'm talking about because the RBL only blocks mail traffic, please take a moment to read this 1997 interview. Excerpt:

SunWorld: How do you defend your policy of Blackholing Web services that host spammers' Web sites -- even if the spam itself isn't going through their service?

Vixie: This is the most controversial thing we do because it's censorship of something that isn't spam. It's me saying to some Web provider, because you are renting space to this person [a spammer] who is doing something completely legal, I am going to Blackhole your butt.

For more on the Border Gateway Protocol implementation of the RBL, see this page (thanks to jeffg for the link); for a description of how it drops all packets to blackholed sites, see this message.

Also, Bennett Haselton of Peacefire reports, at 10:58 PM EST:

I just telnetted in to www.peacefire.org and was able to do "ping www.above.net" and "ping home.cnet.com" and "ping www.infoworld.com" despite the fact that that traceroute on all of these sites shows that they are hooked up via above.net.

Peacefire's IP address is still on the RBL, so it looks like AboveNet has, for the time being, temporarily stopped blocking their users from accessing sites on the RBL.

This means that either:
(1) AboveNet has realized the errors of their ways, and is trying to correct them.
(2) AboveNet is trying to cover up the fact that they ever censored their users' Internet access, and they are temporarily opening up the gateway so that people on AboveNet will be able to access Peacefire and will think it is all a hoax.

HumpBackB wrote us about the lawsuit that ISP Media3 has filed against MAPS and its Realtime Blackhole List. The RBL, despite blocking only 2% of spam, is widely seen as an effective tool against mail abuse. I'm going to risk life and limb, and say that it has become, instead, just another censorware tool. Here's why.

Media3 has had six of its ClassCs added to the RBL: one in June, and five in November. These 1500 IP numbers are now cut off entirely from the rest of the Internet for any Internet provider who subscribes to the RBL (more on this later).

But making these 1500 IP numbers vanish from the net -- which is exactly what happens for any provider who subscribes to the RBL -- does not stop any spam from getting through. They are not blocked because those servers are sending unsolicited email, or any kind of e-mail for that matter.

Media3's service agreement is more-or-less the same as all responsible, anti-spam providers:

"M3 does not permit the transmission of unsolicited e-mail... Subsequent violations will result in suspension and/or termination of the account without refund of service fees..."

And MAPS does not even allege that a single piece of spam has been sent from any of these 1500 IP numbers. As their press release says:

"Media3 refused to require their Web-hosting customers to stop advertising their Web sites by using unsolicited commercial email..."

Even this fact is in dispute. I spoke with Joe Hayes at Media3, and he told me that the company does not tolerate Web sites which promote themselves through spam.

You can check the RBL evidence file yourself. When a MAPS representative spoke with Joe back in June, he told him that he needed to, not tighten up his sendmail rules, but "terminate the Samco [Web] sites and rewrite his AUP to prohibit the hosting of spamware."

Spamware? Yes. Media3 does host Web sites which sell software that sends bulk e-mail and harvests e-mail addresses. Take a look at MarketingMasters.com. Their IP number is 209.211.253.74, which is in the Media3 ClassC which was blocked in June. You can look them up on the RBL at http://mail-abuse.org/cgi-bin/ lookup?209.211.253.74.

Again, the blocking of that IP number, their Web site, does not stop a single piece of spam from being sent or received. What it does do is punish the folks at MarketingMasters, whose Web site can't be seen by RBL subscribers.

The problem is that MAPS has put every 209.211.253.x IP number on their list. For example, if you look up 209.211.253.169, you'll see exactly the same message and same rationale.

And 209.211.253.169 is not a spam Web site. It's otherwise known as Peacefire.org, a group of young people who are advocates of free speech rights for teenagers, and -- irony alert -- longtime opponents of censorware.

In fact, if you visit their Web site you'll see many reports about how censorware blocks the good as well as the bad. Their latest, "Amnesty Intercepted," shows that sites like Amnesty International Israel and the American Kurdish Information Network are blacklisted as pornographic by overzealous censorware.

Kind of like Peacefire -- and over a thousand other sites -- are blacklisted by MAPS.

Let's be clear about what censorware does. It does not by itself block content. It "only" rates that content as unacceptable for viewing, and it is up to someone -- your parents? your teacher? your ISP? -- to apply its rules to prevent you from seeing that content.

I don't like spam any more than the next person. But I also don't like censorship, and I take a content-neutral view of these things. If someone delivers a product to be used by Alice to block Bob from seeing website because she doesn't like its content, that product is censorware.

And if that product capriciously, unfairly, and deliberately blocks innocent Web sites, then it's not very good censorware.

In this case, the "bad" Web site sells software which could be used to spam. Frankly, compared to Nazi propaganda or bomb-making instructions, it's pretty tame. But that's not important. Standing up for speech I agree with is easy, everybody does it. If you want freedom, you have to stand up for speech you disagree with.

At least with programs like CyberPatrol, SurfWatch, and Net Nanny, when overblocking mistakes are pointed out, they are corrected. But as MAPS admits in its press release and evidence files, the intent here is not to block the actual Web sites (after all, people who want to buy the software will find a way to buy it).

No, the intent is to get the ISP in question to play ball. The fact that a thousand innocent Web sites are censored is, as far as I can tell, irrelevant.

I don't see much difference between this and any other censorware. One difference is that few other censorware packages are actually free. Another is that fewer are so obviously wielding their power as a retaliatory weapon.

And, there's also the fact that the RBL is used by a backbone provider, AboveNet, whose CTO also happens to be a co-founder of MAPS. Peacefire had no idea that it was being censored until it heard from confused would-be readers. At least with traditional censorware, if your connection to a website is blocked, you have some idea of why. Peacefire's readers naturally had no idea whether their packets were traveling over AboveNet's network, and only knew that their connections were being rejected.

(I contacted Paul Vixie to ask about AboveNet and how it uses the RBL, but he refused comment, sending me to AboveNet PR, who didn't get back to me by deadline time.)

Vixie claimed in 1998 that "MAPS volunteers always contact the owner of a site before it's blacklisted." I'm guessing none of the 1,500 blocked Web sites were contacted.

But then, MAPS also advises Web providers:

"If you host Web sites, we suggest that you use one IP per domain so that if spam occurs for one Web site, we don't have to blackhole you or your other customers to block access to the spamming site."

That's exactly what Media3 does -- and exactly what MAPS did.

Oh, and one more difference. The RBL is more successful than any other censorware package. According to Upside, 20,000 companies that control 40% of all e-mail accounts (and, quite possibly, Web sites); that's up from what ZDNet said in 1998, 2000 ISPs that control 30% of Internet destinations.

I can't find much to argue with in Joe Hayes's summary:

"They [MAPS] are blocking very good educational sites, nonprofit organizations, in their attempts to get us to adopt their definitions in their entirety. They've made no bones about hurting people and while Media3 maintains a policy of not allowing unsolicited e-mails, we do not see completely eye-to-eye on MAPS's definitions because they become very encompassing and very broad. While they have a good tool, and I commend them for their efforts to contain e-mail abuse, they're a good thing gone bad and they have basically become the abuser."

And here's a heavily abridged list of the sites that cannot be accessed via AboveNet, or any of the other providers who use the RBL -- just a few of the sites on just one blacklisted ClassC:

• FulfilledLives.com, "the place for women and girls," about spirituality and relationships.
• DesktopHeaven.com, Windows themes, screensavers, wallpaper.
• TownOfCary.org, the official website for the town of Cary, North Carolina.
• StudioZito.com, yet another Web site-designer.
• Crossalizer.de, a music site which points out (in German) that it's a victim of an anti-spam initiative, and thus has moved to Crossalizer.com.
• StrikeMore.com, bowling tips and schedules.
• NewTechWellness.com: "The total balance of wholeness and wellness within the areas of Mind, Body, Family, Society, and Finances in our lives is our goal," OK, whatever.
• ElaineCoffman.com and DianaPalmer.com -- both are authors of romance novels.
  And finally,
• CraftersCommunity.com. "If you are looking for a fun and easy recipe to do with the kids, try these deliciously simple Winter Cookie Pops."

Update, something like an hour later: If you're planning to e-mail me or post a comment saying I don't know what I'm talking about because the RBL only blocks mail traffic, please take a moment to read this 1997 interview. Excerpt:

SunWorld: How do you defend your policy of Blackholing Web services that host spammers' Web sites -- even if the spam itself isn't going through their service?

Vixie: This is the most controversial thing we do because it's censorship of something that isn't spam. It's me saying to some Web provider, because you are renting space to this person [a spammer] who is doing something completely legal, I am going to Blackhole your butt.

For more on the Border Gateway Protocol implementation of the RBL, see this page (thanks to jeffg for the link); for a description of how it drops all packets to blackholed sites, see this message.

Also, Bennett Haselton of Peacefire reports, at 10:58 PM EST:

I just telnetted in to www.peacefire.org and was able to do "ping www.above.net" and "ping home.cnet.com" and "ping www.infoworld.com" despite the fact that that traceroute on all of these sites shows that they are hooked up via above.net.

Peacefire's IP address is still on the RBL, so it looks like AboveNet has, for the time being, temporarily stopped blocking their users from accessing sites on the RBL.

This means that either:
(1) AboveNet has realized the errors of their ways, and is trying to correct them.
(2) AboveNet is trying to cover up the fact that they ever censored their users' Internet access, and they are temporarily opening up the gateway so that people on AboveNet will be able to access Peacefire and will think it is all a hoax.

HumpBackB wrote us about the lawsuit that ISP Media3 has filed against MAPS and its Realtime Blackhole List. The RBL, despite blocking only 2% of spam, is widely seen as an effective tool against mail abuse. I'm going to risk life and limb, and say that it has become, instead, just another censorware tool. Here's why.

Media3 has had six of its ClassCs added to the RBL: one in June, and five in November. These 1500 IP numbers are now cut off entirely from the rest of the Internet for any Internet provider who subscribes to the RBL (more on this later).

But making these 1500 IP numbers vanish from the net -- which is exactly what happens for any provider who subscribes to the RBL -- does not stop any spam from getting through. They are not blocked because those servers are sending unsolicited email, or any kind of e-mail for that matter.

Media3's service agreement is more-or-less the same as all responsible, anti-spam providers:

"M3 does not permit the transmission of unsolicited e-mail... Subsequent violations will result in suspension and/or termination of the account without refund of service fees..."

And MAPS does not even allege that a single piece of spam has been sent from any of these 1500 IP numbers. As their press release says:

"Media3 refused to require their Web-hosting customers to stop advertising their Web sites by using unsolicited commercial email..."

Even this fact is in dispute. I spoke with Joe Hayes at Media3, and he told me that the company does not tolerate Web sites which promote themselves through spam.

You can check the RBL evidence file yourself. When a MAPS representative spoke with Joe back in June, he told him that he needed to, not tighten up his sendmail rules, but "terminate the Samco [Web] sites and rewrite his AUP to prohibit the hosting of spamware."

Spamware? Yes. Media3 does host Web sites which sell software that sends bulk e-mail and harvests e-mail addresses. Take a look at MarketingMasters.com. Their IP number is 209.211.253.74, which is in the Media3 ClassC which was blocked in June. You can look them up on the RBL at http://mail-abuse.org/cgi-bin/ lookup?209.211.253.74.

Again, the blocking of that IP number, their Web site, does not stop a single piece of spam from being sent or received. What it does do is punish the folks at MarketingMasters, whose Web site can't be seen by RBL subscribers.

The problem is that MAPS has put every 209.211.253.x IP number on their list. For example, if you look up 209.211.253.169, you'll see exactly the same message and same rationale.

And 209.211.253.169 is not a spam Web site. It's otherwise known as Peacefire.org, a group of young people who are advocates of free speech rights for teenagers, and -- irony alert -- longtime opponents of censorware.

In fact, if you visit their Web site you'll see many reports about how censorware blocks the good as well as the bad. Their latest, "Amnesty Intercepted," shows that sites like Amnesty International Israel and the American Kurdish Information Network are blacklisted as pornographic by overzealous censorware.

Kind of like Peacefire -- and over a thousand other sites -- are blacklisted by MAPS.

Let's be clear about what censorware does. It does not by itself block content. It "only" rates that content as unacceptable for viewing, and it is up to someone -- your parents? your teacher? your ISP? -- to apply its rules to prevent you from seeing that content.

I don't like spam any more than the next person. But I also don't like censorship, and I take a content-neutral view of these things. If someone delivers a product to be used by Alice to block Bob from seeing website because she doesn't like its content, that product is censorware.

And if that product capriciously, unfairly, and deliberately blocks innocent Web sites, then it's not very good censorware.

In this case, the "bad" Web site sells software which could be used to spam. Frankly, compared to Nazi propaganda or bomb-making instructions, it's pretty tame. But that's not important. Standing up for speech I agree with is easy, everybody does it. If you want freedom, you have to stand up for speech you disagree with.

At least with programs like CyberPatrol, SurfWatch, and Net Nanny, when overblocking mistakes are pointed out, they are corrected. But as MAPS admits in its press release and evidence files, the intent here is not to block the actual Web sites (after all, people who want to buy the software will find a way to buy it).

No, the intent is to get the ISP in question to play ball. The fact that a thousand innocent Web sites are censored is, as far as I can tell, irrelevant.

I don't see much difference between this and any other censorware. One difference is that few other censorware packages are actually free. Another is that fewer are so obviously wielding their power as a retaliatory weapon.

And, there's also the fact that the RBL is used by a backbone provider, AboveNet, whose CTO also happens to be a co-founder of MAPS. Peacefire had no idea that it was being censored until it heard from confused would-be readers. At least with traditional censorware, if your connection to a website is blocked, you have some idea of why. Peacefire's readers naturally had no idea whether their packets were traveling over AboveNet's network, and only knew that their connections were being rejected.

(I contacted Paul Vixie to ask about AboveNet and how it uses the RBL, but he refused comment, sending me to AboveNet PR, who didn't get back to me by deadline time.)

Vixie claimed in 1998 that "MAPS volunteers always contact the owner of a site before it's blacklisted." I'm guessing none of the 1,500 blocked Web sites were contacted.

But then, MAPS also advises Web providers:

"If you host Web sites, we suggest that you use one IP per domain so that if spam occurs for one Web site, we don't have to blackhole you or your other customers to block access to the spamming site."

That's exactly what Media3 does -- and exactly what MAPS did.

Oh, and one more difference. The RBL is more successful than any other censorware package. According to Upside, 20,000 companies that control 40% of all e-mail accounts (and, quite possibly, Web sites); that's up from what ZDNet said in 1998, 2000 ISPs that control 30% of Internet destinations.

I can't find much to argue with in Joe Hayes's summary:

"They [MAPS] are blocking very good educational sites, nonprofit organizations, in their attempts to get us to adopt their definitions in their entirety. They've made no bones about hurting people and while Media3 maintains a policy of not allowing unsolicited e-mails, we do not see completely eye-to-eye on MAPS's definitions because they become very encompassing and very broad. While they have a good tool, and I commend them for their efforts to contain e-mail abuse, they're a good thing gone bad and they have basically become the abuser."

And here's a heavily abridged list of the sites that cannot be accessed via AboveNet, or any of the other providers who use the RBL -- just a few of the sites on just one blacklisted ClassC:

• FulfilledLives.com, "the place for women and girls," about spirituality and relationships.
• DesktopHeaven.com, Windows themes, screensavers, wallpaper.
• TownOfCary.org, the official website for the town of Cary, North Carolina.
• StudioZito.com, yet another Web site-designer.
• Crossalizer.de, a music site which points out (in German) that it's a victim of an anti-spam initiative, and thus has moved to Crossalizer.com.
• StrikeMore.com, bowling tips and schedules.
• NewTechWellness.com: "The total balance of wholeness and wellness within the areas of Mind, Body, Family, Society, and Finances in our lives is our goal," OK, whatever.
• ElaineCoffman.com and DianaPalmer.com -- both are authors of romance novels.
  And finally,
• CraftersCommunity.com. "If you are looking for a fun and easy recipe to do with the kids, try these deliciously simple Winter Cookie Pops."

Update, something like an hour later: If you're planning to e-mail me or post a comment saying I don't know what I'm talking about because the RBL only blocks mail traffic, please take a moment to read this 1997 interview. Excerpt:

SunWorld: How do you defend your policy of Blackholing Web services that host spammers' Web sites -- even if the spam itself isn't going through their service?

Vixie: This is the most controversial thing we do because it's censorship of something that isn't spam. It's me saying to some Web provider, because you are renting space to this person [a spammer] who is doing something completely legal, I am going to Blackhole your butt.

For more on the Border Gateway Protocol implementation of the RBL, see this page (thanks to jeffg for the link); for a description of how it drops all packets to blackholed sites, see this message.

Also, Bennett Haselton of Peacefire reports, at 10:58 PM EST:

I just telnetted in to www.peacefire.org and was able to do "ping www.above.net" and "ping home.cnet.com" and "ping www.infoworld.com" despite the fact that that traceroute on all of these sites shows that they are hooked up via above.net.

Peacefire's IP address is still on the RBL, so it looks like AboveNet has, for the time being, temporarily stopped blocking their users from accessing sites on the RBL.

This means that either:
(1) AboveNet has realized the errors of their ways, and is trying to correct them.
(2) AboveNet is trying to cover up the fact that they ever censored their users' Internet access, and they are temporarily opening up the gateway so that people on AboveNet will be able to access Peacefire and will think it is all a hoax.

More news from the protecting-the-children front in Indianapolis (and it's good news, even if fleeting); bits on emulation and long-ago video games from a British perspective (and another wacky British story that you can tell your kids as a cautionary tale); and educational news of Cosmic significance, all below. And I promise, apart from this paragraph, there will be no mention of Lieberman, Gore, Cheney or Bush.

Meanwhile, kids, make sure to join the Marines! An unnamed correspondent writes: "An update on a slashdot article from Oct 14: The video game industry has obtained a stay from the 7th US Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago. According to the article, "the city on Wednesday was ordered to hold off enforcement, temporarily at least, of its ordinance against children under 18 using violent or sexually explicit coin-operated video games." The CNN article can be found here."

Those whom the gods would destroy ... Sacrifice writes: "The Times tells the whimsical story of an inventor too overconfident in the difficulty of a puzzle he estimated would take a genius four years of work to complete; three possible solutions are being reviewed after only 16 months, and royalties aren't enough to cover the half million pounds he pledged, so has put his 67 room mansion up for sale to make good on his pledge (Lloyd's will pony up the other half)."

.. then only criminals will play emulated videogames. Ultra-protective reader FortKnox writes: "Although we've all heard about retro-gaming emulators and copyrights, this BBC article mentions a few of the copyright holder's that waived their copyrights to emulators. Its good to finally see some of these copyrights being waived to let us retro-gamers get our fix."

quintillions and jazillions (with inflation) general_re writes: "Carl Sagan's groundbreaking series "Cosmos" is finally available on VHS/DVD after many years. Although it isn't scheduled to ship until sometime next month, there's a reasonable discount for pre-orders. Many of you probably remember how awesome this series was (I first saw it when I was 9, and still remember it), and for those of you who haven't seen it, go see it. One caveat: after hunting around Project Voyager and carlsagan.com, nobody seems to be offering an official Carl Sagan commemorative bong. ;)"

Take that, evil wicked dirty spammer scumbags! And that! And that! rhea writes: "As an update to this article, Harris dropped the lawsuit they brought against MAPS for putting them on the RBL. Read the final word from MAPS. Paul Vixie: 1; Spammers: 0." The close of that "final word" is pretty biting:

In the final analysis, it would seem that the only thing which Harris has accomplished was getting one, possibly two ISPs (depending on AOL) out of more than a dozen ISP defendants to start accepting their email traffic, something which they could quite possibly have done without the expense and complication of filing a lawsuit.

And, oh yes, they helped to prove MAPS' position that it is up to each individual subscriber to the RBL to decide for themselves whose email they will accept, and whose they will reject.

Harris remains on the RBL.

Not that there's any truly good answer to spam, but MAPS represents about the sanest approach I've ever seen -- it's voluntary, it's factual, and it makes no bones about either one of those. Congratulations, Paul. Keep up the good work.

More news from the protecting-the-children front in Indianapolis (and it's good news, even if fleeting); bits on emulation and long-ago video games from a British perspective (and another wacky British story that you can tell your kids as a cautionary tale); and educational news of Cosmic significance, all below. And I promise, apart from this paragraph, there will be no mention of Lieberman, Gore, Cheney or Bush.

Meanwhile, kids, make sure to join the Marines! An unnamed correspondent writes: "An update on a slashdot article from Oct 14: The video game industry has obtained a stay from the 7th US Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago. According to the article, "the city on Wednesday was ordered to hold off enforcement, temporarily at least, of its ordinance against children under 18 using violent or sexually explicit coin-operated video games." The CNN article can be found here."

Those whom the gods would destroy ... Sacrifice writes: "The Times tells the whimsical story of an inventor too overconfident in the difficulty of a puzzle he estimated would take a genius four years of work to complete; three possible solutions are being reviewed after only 16 months, and royalties aren't enough to cover the half million pounds he pledged, so has put his 67 room mansion up for sale to make good on his pledge (Lloyd's will pony up the other half)."

.. then only criminals will play emulated videogames. Ultra-protective reader FortKnox writes: "Although we've all heard about retro-gaming emulators and copyrights, this BBC article mentions a few of the copyright holder's that waived their copyrights to emulators. Its good to finally see some of these copyrights being waived to let us retro-gamers get our fix."

quintillions and jazillions (with inflation) general_re writes: "Carl Sagan's groundbreaking series "Cosmos" is finally available on VHS/DVD after many years. Although it isn't scheduled to ship until sometime next month, there's a reasonable discount for pre-orders. Many of you probably remember how awesome this series was (I first saw it when I was 9, and still remember it), and for those of you who haven't seen it, go see it. One caveat: after hunting around Project Voyager and carlsagan.com, nobody seems to be offering an official Carl Sagan commemorative bong. ;)"

Take that, evil wicked dirty spammer scumbags! And that! And that! rhea writes: "As an update to this article, Harris dropped the lawsuit they brought against MAPS for putting them on the RBL. Read the final word from MAPS. Paul Vixie: 1; Spammers: 0." The close of that "final word" is pretty biting:

In the final analysis, it would seem that the only thing which Harris has accomplished was getting one, possibly two ISPs (depending on AOL) out of more than a dozen ISP defendants to start accepting their email traffic, something which they could quite possibly have done without the expense and complication of filing a lawsuit.

And, oh yes, they helped to prove MAPS' position that it is up to each individual subscriber to the RBL to decide for themselves whose email they will accept, and whose they will reject.

Harris remains on the RBL.

Not that there's any truly good answer to spam, but MAPS represents about the sanest approach I've ever seen -- it's voluntary, it's factual, and it makes no bones about either one of those. Congratulations, Paul. Keep up the good work.

More news from the protecting-the-children front in Indianapolis (and it's good news, even if fleeting); bits on emulation and long-ago video games from a British perspective (and another wacky British story that you can tell your kids as a cautionary tale); and educational news of Cosmic significance, all below. And I promise, apart from this paragraph, there will be no mention of Lieberman, Gore, Cheney or Bush.

Meanwhile, kids, make sure to join the Marines! An unnamed correspondent writes: "An update on a slashdot article from Oct 14: The video game industry has obtained a stay from the 7th US Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago. According to the article, "the city on Wednesday was ordered to hold off enforcement, temporarily at least, of its ordinance against children under 18 using violent or sexually explicit coin-operated video games." The CNN article can be found here."

Those whom the gods would destroy ... Sacrifice writes: "The Times tells the whimsical story of an inventor too overconfident in the difficulty of a puzzle he estimated would take a genius four years of work to complete; three possible solutions are being reviewed after only 16 months, and royalties aren't enough to cover the half million pounds he pledged, so has put his 67 room mansion up for sale to make good on his pledge (Lloyd's will pony up the other half)."

.. then only criminals will play emulated videogames. Ultra-protective reader FortKnox writes: "Although we've all heard about retro-gaming emulators and copyrights, this BBC article mentions a few of the copyright holder's that waived their copyrights to emulators. Its good to finally see some of these copyrights being waived to let us retro-gamers get our fix."

quintillions and jazillions (with inflation) general_re writes: "Carl Sagan's groundbreaking series "Cosmos" is finally available on VHS/DVD after many years. Although it isn't scheduled to ship until sometime next month, there's a reasonable discount for pre-orders. Many of you probably remember how awesome this series was (I first saw it when I was 9, and still remember it), and for those of you who haven't seen it, go see it. One caveat: after hunting around Project Voyager and carlsagan.com, nobody seems to be offering an official Carl Sagan commemorative bong. ;)"

Take that, evil wicked dirty spammer scumbags! And that! And that! rhea writes: "As an update to this article, Harris dropped the lawsuit they brought against MAPS for putting them on the RBL. Read the final word from MAPS. Paul Vixie: 1; Spammers: 0." The close of that "final word" is pretty biting:

In the final analysis, it would seem that the only thing which Harris has accomplished was getting one, possibly two ISPs (depending on AOL) out of more than a dozen ISP defendants to start accepting their email traffic, something which they could quite possibly have done without the expense and complication of filing a lawsuit.

And, oh yes, they helped to prove MAPS' position that it is up to each individual subscriber to the RBL to decide for themselves whose email they will accept, and whose they will reject.

Harris remains on the RBL.

Not that there's any truly good answer to spam, but MAPS represents about the sanest approach I've ever seen -- it's voluntary, it's factual, and it makes no bones about either one of those. Congratulations, Paul. Keep up the good work.

A reader writes: " Following the third lawsuit against it in as many months, and in response to unsolicited donations having been "pouring in" (their words), MAPS yesterday announced that they've set up a MAPS Legal Defense Fund. Being as the prior two parties settled their differences with MAPS before the matters actually got to trial, maybe this will be the one MAPS says they've been waiting for in order to establish the legal righteousness of their position. Or not."

A reader writes: " Following the third lawsuit against it in as many months, and in response to unsolicited donations having been "pouring in" (their words), MAPS yesterday announced that they've set up a MAPS Legal Defense Fund. Being as the prior two parties settled their differences with MAPS before the matters actually got to trial, maybe this will be the one MAPS says they've been waiting for in order to establish the legal righteousness of their position. Or not."

droleary writes: "Something of an update to this Slashdot article, a Yahoo News story reports that a number of large ISPs are caving in to a massive lawsuit brought by Harris Interactive regarding the delivery of their "online polls" (aka, spam, according to MAPS). I find it disturbing that large ISPs are so willing to let external agencies control what runs through their systems."

Interested in a free domain for your open-source project? Huh, are ya? "Too bad, sucker," says the .cx registrar. On the other hand, you can drink beer (or sarsparilla) and talk tech with folks smarter than your average bear, create poetry using such fine poetic-sounding things as "Python" and "Java," and even let other people know the names of those who you would call Spammers. Read on, if the gist is really not enough.

See, what we really meant was ... From the inimitable jamie: In February we reported that the .cx registrar was offering free domains to open-source projects. Now, their Board of Directors claims this is "inconsistent with the basic principals [sic] of fairness...this policy has been cancelled." Their FAQ has been changed from this to this accordingly. The board meeting promises "existing registrants will be 'grandfathered-in' and a new second level registry for the oss community will be established." Presumably that means new applicants will get YourOpenSourceProject.free.cx or something. Props to jmason and TBTF for the above links.

LinuxBierwanderungenrundeninkreisen, oder? One of the cool things about Free software is that there's an attitude of joviality and conviviality among its users and developers -- as evidenced by the recurring Linuxbierwangerungen, as reported in Slashdot last week. Even the WSJ notices, evidently: alanw writes "This article is fairly accurate, although we were mostly drinking real ale, not lager."

The article also mentions the oh-so-intriguing idea of simultaneous, net-linked Bierwanderungen on different continents. I vote for the mountains of Maine, New Hampshire or Tennessee as good trial U.S. locations -- if you know any organizers, make sure they leave comments below about a U.S. Bierwanderung!

Opting in, Sir? Opting out? Headphones, Sir? Red Wine? White wine? discHead writes "The Mail Abuse Prevention System has announced that a temporary restraining order filed to prevent them from listing Harris Interactive in the Realtime Blackhole List has been denied."

So long as no one is required to abide by the list that MAPS creates of mail abusers, would a restraining order preventing them from listing a spammer (by their definition) ever work? I rather hope not.

No, not the envelope with "those" pictures, the envelope with the winners! Tim McNerney writes: "The second round winners in the Software Carpentry competition have been announ ced. Though the test harness category got dropped in the process, the config, build and track categories all have winners along with judge's commentary. Next step is to choosing developers to implement the winners." And speaking of lucky winners (you may not already be a winner, in this case), at0m writes "The Haiku Generator Challenge has been completed, and the results have been posted. For those who are not familiar with the contest, the goal was to create a program that used a user-inputted RDF file and created three lines with 5, 7, and 5 syllables respectively. To see the winning entries, visit the challenge page. dotcomma has also announced a new, less difficult challenge, which can be found here."

Interested in a free domain for your open-source project? Huh, are ya? "Too bad, sucker," says the .cx registrar. On the other hand, you can drink beer (or sarsparilla) and talk tech with folks smarter than your average bear, create poetry using such fine poetic-sounding things as "Python" and "Java," and even let other people know the names of those who you would call Spammers. Read on, if the gist is really not enough.

See, what we really meant was ... From the inimitable jamie: In February we reported that the .cx registrar was offering free domains to open-source projects. Now, their Board of Directors claims this is "inconsistent with the basic principals [sic] of fairness...this policy has been cancelled." Their FAQ has been changed from this to this accordingly. The board meeting promises "existing registrants will be 'grandfathered-in' and a new second level registry for the oss community will be established." Presumably that means new applicants will get YourOpenSourceProject.free.cx or something. Props to jmason and TBTF for the above links.

LinuxBierwanderungenrundeninkreisen, oder? One of the cool things about Free software is that there's an attitude of joviality and conviviality among its users and developers -- as evidenced by the recurring Linuxbierwangerungen, as reported in Slashdot last week. Even the WSJ notices, evidently: alanw writes "This article is fairly accurate, although we were mostly drinking real ale, not lager."

The article also mentions the oh-so-intriguing idea of simultaneous, net-linked Bierwanderungen on different continents. I vote for the mountains of Maine, New Hampshire or Tennessee as good trial U.S. locations -- if you know any organizers, make sure they leave comments below about a U.S. Bierwanderung!

Opting in, Sir? Opting out? Headphones, Sir? Red Wine? White wine? discHead writes "The Mail Abuse Prevention System has announced that a temporary restraining order filed to prevent them from listing Harris Interactive in the Realtime Blackhole List has been denied."

So long as no one is required to abide by the list that MAPS creates of mail abusers, would a restraining order preventing them from listing a spammer (by their definition) ever work? I rather hope not.

No, not the envelope with "those" pictures, the envelope with the winners! Tim McNerney writes: "The second round winners in the Software Carpentry competition have been announ ced. Though the test harness category got dropped in the process, the config, build and track categories all have winners along with judge's commentary. Next step is to choosing developers to implement the winners." And speaking of lucky winners (you may not already be a winner, in this case), at0m writes "The Haiku Generator Challenge has been completed, and the results have been posted. For those who are not familiar with the contest, the goal was to create a program that used a user-inputted RDF file and created three lines with 5, 7, and 5 syllables respectively. To see the winning entries, visit the challenge page. dotcomma has also announced a new, less difficult challenge, which can be found here."

Interested in a free domain for your open-source project? Huh, are ya? "Too bad, sucker," says the .cx registrar. On the other hand, you can drink beer (or sarsparilla) and talk tech with folks smarter than your average bear, create poetry using such fine poetic-sounding things as "Python" and "Java," and even let other people know the names of those who you would call Spammers. Read on, if the gist is really not enough.

See, what we really meant was ... From the inimitable jamie: In February we reported that the .cx registrar was offering free domains to open-source projects. Now, their Board of Directors claims this is "inconsistent with the basic principals [sic] of fairness...this policy has been cancelled." Their FAQ has been changed from this to this accordingly. The board meeting promises "existing registrants will be 'grandfathered-in' and a new second level registry for the oss community will be established." Presumably that means new applicants will get YourOpenSourceProject.free.cx or something. Props to jmason and TBTF for the above links.

LinuxBierwanderungenrundeninkreisen, oder? One of the cool things about Free software is that there's an attitude of joviality and conviviality among its users and developers -- as evidenced by the recurring Linuxbierwangerungen, as reported in Slashdot last week. Even the WSJ notices, evidently: alanw writes "This article is fairly accurate, although we were mostly drinking real ale, not lager."

The article also mentions the oh-so-intriguing idea of simultaneous, net-linked Bierwanderungen on different continents. I vote for the mountains of Maine, New Hampshire or Tennessee as good trial U.S. locations -- if you know any organizers, make sure they leave comments below about a U.S. Bierwanderung!

Opting in, Sir? Opting out? Headphones, Sir? Red Wine? White wine? discHead writes "The Mail Abuse Prevention System has announced that a temporary restraining order filed to prevent them from listing Harris Interactive in the Realtime Blackhole List has been denied."

So long as no one is required to abide by the list that MAPS creates of mail abusers, would a restraining order preventing them from listing a spammer (by their definition) ever work? I rather hope not.

No, not the envelope with "those" pictures, the envelope with the winners! Tim McNerney writes: "The second round winners in the Software Carpentry competition have been announ ced. Though the test harness category got dropped in the process, the config, build and track categories all have winners along with judge's commentary. Next step is to choosing developers to implement the winners." And speaking of lucky winners (you may not already be a winner, in this case), at0m writes "The Haiku Generator Challenge has been completed, and the results have been posted. For those who are not familiar with the contest, the goal was to create a program that used a user-inputted RDF file and created three lines with 5, 7, and 5 syllables respectively. To see the winning entries, visit the challenge page. dotcomma has also announced a new, less difficult challenge, which can be found here."

Well, we held or deleted the first few hundred submissions, because we were hoping the situation would clear up and we could figure out what was going on. But it hasn't cleared up, so we're posting it and hopefully there are some readers out there who know what's going on and can shed some light. It seems that the anti-spammers at MAPS and ORBS have gone from a cold war into a shooting one, with MAPS listing ORBS on their blackhole list. ORBS accuses MAPS of doing it for financial gain, MAPS accuses ORBS of attacking systems, Alan Cox gets peeved about spam, kuro5hin.org has the obligatory "Slashdot is censoring the story!" postings but has at least one seemingly clueful post, and the U.S. House passed an anti-spam bill yesterday - coincidence, or devious conspiracy?

An Anonymous Coward sent in "Direct Magazine is carrying the story Yesmail Gets Restraining Order Against MAPS Blacklist (curiously dated July 17). YesMail has apparently obtained a restraining order preventing MAPS from entering it into its Real-time Black-hole List."

emerson writes "News.com is reporting that Hotmail has finally taken the plunge and decided to implement the MAPS RBL spam "blackhole" list. The article notes that they have seen a marked decrease in spam in just a short time. Read the whole article." More and more ISPs seem to be jumping on the MAPS RBL bandwagon. It's a very good thing IMO, especially for the "free" e-mail services that attract spammers the same way picnics attract ants.