Slashdot Mirror
XS4ALL Wins Anti-Spam Suit
johnpc writes: "In a court case started by Dutch ISP XS4ALL, a judge ruled yesterday that spam outfit AbFab is forbidden to send spam to all subscribers of said ISP. The judge writes: 'The essential point is that XS4ALL has no legal conveyance obligation. (...) XS4ALL does not wish to convey messages which its customers have not asked to receive and therefore does not wish these messages to be delivered through its systems, in this case from Abfab. The question of whether the unsolicited sending of large volumes of advertising messages by e-mail should be referred to as 'spam' or 'electronic direct marketing' is not relevant to this dispute.' This is obviously not a solution to the spam problem within the Netherlands, but it is a step in the right direction. You can read an english abstract of the ruling. Unfortunately, most of the actual case documents are in dutch, some of which are still being translated."
The sentence translates to:
The sentencing judge:
everyone who holds an e-mail address ending in a domainname containing the word XS4ALL, explicitely inluding domainnames: XS4ALL.NL, XS4ALL.com, XS4ALL.net, XS4ALL.org, XS4ALL.co.uk, XS4ALL.be, and the domainnname hacktic.nl.
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Unfortunately, most of the actual case documents are in dutch, some of which are still being translated.
Well, I read the 8 page verdict, and there's not a whole lot there that's not in the English abstract. So don't worry, I don't think you're missing a lot.
(Sorry, I'm not going to translate 8 pages of Dutch legalese into English).
MSN 8: Now Microsoft even has bugs in their ad campaigns.
The point is even better than that. The ISP can tell a company not to send email through it's servers. If that company does, then the company can lose up to 2.5 million whatevertheircurrencyis. XS4ALL doesn't have to change or try to block any spam at all from the company. Overall, this brings down XS4ALL's operating cost, plus reduces the spam their customers get. Good news, I hope it goes forward.
I really hate Dan Patrick.
The reason it went to court was that XS4ALL did not wish to censor any of the incoming traffic, as it had committment to deliver everything that was sent to its customers to its customers.
It could have filtered out all their mail, but chose rather to try and get Abfab to stop sending the mail, therefore meaning that it has not had to do any censorship at all.
You obviously don't know XS4ALL. Your statement definitely stands, but only on the premise that XS4ALL would want to screen email. I can assure you that this is not the case.
Because of this verdiect XS4ALL doesn't need to screen email. Whenever a customer receives unsollicited email from ABFAB, they can report this voluntarily and ABFAB has to pay.
XS4ALL is defintely the very best ISP in the Netherlands (and possibly even in a more global sense) in the 'your rights online' category. They were the first ISP in the Netherlands founded by a couple of 'hackers' starting their business in may 1993. From the start they offered services such as mail by UUCP and telnet-access to powerful UNIX-machines. In 1997 they were the only (!) Dutch ISP to refuse to cooperate in a nationwide 'tap', because they didn't think the law being referenced in the tap-order could actually be used to order a tap. A judge proved them right. During the Serbian war they kept B52, the radio station of Belgrado, on-air online. They encourage their customers to use encryption by giving every single one of them a personal copy of PGP. They mirror almost everything cool in the open-source world and have donated the official machine and bandwidth of the munitions international crypto-resource. They are the primary sponsors and organisers of the 'hacking-festivals', HEU (Hacking at the end of the universe), HIP (Hacking in progress) and HAL (Hackers at large). They have never pulled content of their customers, when they received orders to do so, unless the order cam from a judge. They support Linux/BSD by offering documentation, howto's and software on their website. It's even possible to meet most of the sysadmins on irc and talk about how their systems work, ask about the specs and generally talk with them. I could tell you more, but I think the point is made: XS4ALL is no threat to our online privacy and rights. I would almost say that they're the dream-isp of almost any slashdot-fanatic.
first of all a disclaimer, I've been a proud xs4all user for many years now so I'm a little biased ;)
:) ) ISP's I know... trust me on this, applying censorship is the last thing they want to do...
anyway in can understand that some people may see this as an ISP trying getting censorship power this way... but if you now enough about what XS4ALL stands for, you will know that is absolutely NOT their intention... XS4ALL is by far one of the most cyberrights-aware (if that's a word
Ricardo.
These guys have been on the forefront of allmost any ethical debate concerning the Internet and digital freedoms in general. XS4ALL was formed in 1993 by the infamous hackergroup Hacktic(RIP) and was the first dutch ISP to allow access to private persons. Since then they haven't like so many others sold out to profitmaking instincts but kept to their goal of providing high quality, afforable internet access to the masses. Over the years they've suceeded without giving in on netpolitical views like the right to privacy, freedom of speech and freedom of choice.
- On numerous other occasions they've been in court defending the privacy of their costumers and other basic rights.
- Threre's no single ad on any of their pages. They're an internet provider, not a advertising agency! Me and many others will gladly pay some more 's for that.
- They offer analog, isdn(128k), gsm, gprs and adsl access and their service includes free licences for mcafee virusscan and pgp software (all platforms). Do you know any other ISP that does that?
- There's a whole lot of other goodies you don't find at your average ISP: a telnet/ssh shell, static ip with bSMTP (if you want it), adfree secure webmail, and good public irc, gaming and hosting servers.
- Their bussiness services are also quite exelent.
- And they're definitly the only isp in the world that grows marijuana in the workplace!!! (in dutch).
[DISCL: No, I don't own stock or work there, I'm just a ver loyal costumer that has been with them since 1996 both privatly and professionaly.]
SqyD
As a small ISP (just over 10 customers, over 40 domains) I have just printed a letter to Ab.Fab which asks them not to send any mail to my clients.
Given the ruling, I think they will have to comply with that.
I hope that lots of others do the same. Especially if you can legally claim to control more than a couple of domains.
I used the address that I found on their site as "how to find us":
ab.fab Interactive Media Group
Postbus 9088
1180 MB Amstelveen
[the netherlands]
I hope that this will at least stop the "spamfactories".
Roger.