Pot Calls Kettle Censor

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?

Comments

IP-less virtual hosting victim?

[Fastolfe]

There's not much MAPS could have done to prevent this from happening, assuming an RBL listing was necessary. It looks like their ISP is using IP-less virtual hosting, relying upon the browser-provided Host: header to determine where the user is sent.

$ host www.safesurf.com
www.safesurf.com. is an alias for safesurf.com.
safesurf.com. has address 63.107.146.25

$ host 63.107.146.25
25.146.107.63.in-addr.arpa. domain name pointer ustoyou.com.
25.146.107.63.in-addr.arpa. domain name pointer safesurf.com.
25.146.107.63.in-addr.arpa. domain name pointer us2you.com.

WARNING: Browse the 'us2you.com' sites at your own risk. Porn pop-ups abound.

Their analogy of MAPS blocking an entire telephone prefix isn't very sound. It's more like safesurf.com using a party line, and MAPS blocks access to their very specific phone number. It's not their fault you chose to get your site connectivity with a shared IP address.

*shrug* I personally think this is pretty amusing. I would definitely be asking my provider for a new IP address, though, one that wasn't being used by the types of people the MAPS RBL targets.

Re:What am I missing?

[jamie]

" I thought MAPs was used to block spam via DNS queries to their blacklist. SafeSurf makes it sound like their web site is being blocked? It makes no sense!"

Nope, it doesn't make sense. There are a lot of readers who, like you, are confused about this whenever we post a MAPS story.

MAPS's blacklist is ostensibly a list of IPs from which spam originates. But more and more, it is a list of websites and Class C's from which no spam comes, but which are either considered "spam-friendly" or are owned by companies which are considered "spam-friendly."

These IPs are put on the list because MAPS knows that there are still ISPs like TeleGlobe which will censor whatever MAPS tells them to censor. TeleGlobe uses the RBL to block not just mail being sent on port 25, but all traffic. And TeleGlobe is a backbone so this has a huge effect. Essentially this means MAPS can point at any website they want and wipe it off the internet for millions of people. And the purpose of putting SafeSurf (and other websites) on the RBL was to get them censored so that MAPS could throw its weight around to further its goals.

Sounds like you agree with those goals -- but I'm hoping, like me, you disagree with the means used to achieve them.

"Remember folks - internet service is provided to you by a provider that sets the rules - don't like it? Go elsewhere or if no alternative exists, deal with it."

Millions of people are having their internet access censored, by a backbone provider which promises that it does not censor. Many of them have no options for alternative providers, so their only recourse is, as you say, to "deal with it."

Libertarian Parent

[rossz]

As a libertarian, I believe censorship is wrong. As a parent, I believe censorship is sometimes necessary. I do not, however, advocate government sponsered censurship. I am my daughter's censure. When she surfs the web, I sit with her. When she does a google search, sometimes I will not let her click on one of the resultant links. On several occassions I've had her leave the room so I can check out a site first.

There is one case where I think the government should come down hard, fast, and without mercy. I want to hurt those scumbags who use urls that are common variations of sites kids might go to, but are really porn sites, e.g. whitehouse.com and disny.com.

Finally, I can justify shutting down spammers even though I am a libertarian. I pay for my internet access. The spammers do not. Your freedom stops at my front door. You can go to a park and spout your beliefs all you want. You can not demand entry into my home using the argument of "free speech". If you insist on forcing entry, I'll introduce you to another one of my rights. My right to own a gun.

Re:Am I the only one...

[Todd Knarr]

Naw, you want it passed. When it passes, you immediately sue SafeSurf for publishing information (their blocked-site list) that you feel harmed your child (by preventing them from finding information on various topics that could save their life). Then watch SafeSurf try to worm out of their own legal language.

Important info - spammers in safesurf netblock

[Seth Finkelstein]

Without getting into the whole spam issue, here's some relevant info:

safesurf.com is IP address 63.107.146.25 There were a bunch of spammish sites at OTHER places in the 63.107.146.* netblock. And MAPS will blacklist every single address within a netblock when it "escalates" their dispute.

See this long list of spammish sites once in the 63.107.146.* netblock (June 22 2001)

Note many if not all of these sites have changed address by now.

Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org)

Re:What am I missing?

[crucini]

Your post presents an incomplete picture. The reason why spam-support IP addresses are listed is that spam is frequently sent either from throwaway accounts or via open relays. Thus, there is no originating IP to blacklist. But the spammers frequently depend on driving traffic to a web site. The most effective way to fight these spammers is to block access to their web sites. ISPs who deliberately harbor such web sites are outcasts. They are intentionally choosing to pollute the internet with unwanted garbage, with the consequence that other networks may refuse to carry their traffic. And when a spam ISP evades an IP address listing by moving the offending site to a different address, MAPS natually tends to list the whole block.

I wish that in answering someone's request for factual information you would include the appropriate context. Seen in that context, MAPS's actions appear more reasonable.