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.
StarTrek.org Free Webmail
Similar rulings in the United States would start detailing the landscape of rights of website owners to keep SPAMMERS from scraping.
Fight Spammers!
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.
Now, XS4ALL is not an U.S. based ISP, so certain concepts like that of common carrier status may not apply. But such things used to apply in the U.S., even if they don't apply today.
The reason this isn't a victory is that it essentially declares that the ISP may transport ("convey") whatever data it pleases.
Well, it is a privately owned company, and I can see some merit to the argument that what it does with its resources is its own business.
But now apply the same logic to all ISPs, particularly the large ones, in light of the behavior of the media. That's right, folks: this ruling means that ISPs have the right to refuse to transmit any data they see fit. In short, they have the right to censor. After all, there's nothing that prevents them from selectively filtering.
How would you like it if an ISP decided that it didn't want to bother transiting any Slashdot traffic? Or Kuro5hin? Or any non-mainstream web source? What if they start dropping data based on the content of the data itself? Think it can't happen?
You say you could go to another ISP? Tell us that when the only ISPs left are AOL/TW and AT&T (the former, at least, has a very large interest in being selective about what you, the audience, see).
This may be a "victory" in the fight against spam, but it has ramifications that are so bad that I'll take the spam, thank you.
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
Now we move to the Internet parallel. You have signed up for an Internet Address. The Internet is public. I will repeat this. The Internet is PUBLIC. Therefore people on the Internet can determine your address, just as much as I can browse the white pages looking for Real World home addresses. Depending on how much information you have submitted through various channels to the Internet, people may have put together certain profiles about you. Just as in real life, they will determine which advertisements are best suited to you, and make sure to send them to your PUBLIC address.
.signature, and nobody "targets" that.
Not really.
I receive loads of pr0n spam, and I'm actually one of the guys who are seriously offended by this sort of crap. I also make a point of publishing the fact that I don't want spam in my
And there's another difference you're overlooking. "Real" junk mail doesn't cost the recipient anything (other than the time to throw it away), while many people actually pay for their net connectivity by volume or by duration, both of which causes them to pay for receiving spam.
And, of course, at least some countries have laws allowing for "no junk mail" stickers on mail boxes, and disallowing delivery of junk mail to those. This actually works; I've received only one piece of junk snailmail this year [and its sender won't dare to do that again], in contrast to roughly 400 spam mails per day.
I propose a simple and effective email charge system, where bulk mailers are FORCED to pay an appropriate amount in order to mail to a few thousand, tens of thousand, etc people.
If it's used to compensate the recipients for their loss, it may actually be fair.
Restricting people from advertising their products to PUBLIC networks and PUBLIC addresses on those networks goes against everything our country was founded on.
Not quite. It has never been legal to steal, and spam is stealing bandwidth and connectivity cost.
A rough equivalent to stealing bandwidth by spamming is stealing capacity of a bus or train - so if you think spammers should be protected by the constitution, you're implying that people who ride a train/bus/plane or any other piece of PUBLIC transportation without a ticket should be protected, as well.
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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.
Rather than repeating yourself, it would have been better to clarify which sense of "public" you meant. Open to all the people, like a public meeting? Maintained at the public expense, like a public library? Open to the view or knowledge of all, like when a fact goes public? I have a couple of servers permanently connected to the Internet, and only parts of them can be considered "public" in any of these senses (and not at all in the "funding" sense, alas). Perhaps you simply meant that you can't control what people do with information that you've disclosed (made public). I can agree with that, but I think "the Internet is public" is a poor way of expressing it.
I propose a simple and effective email charge system, where bulk mailers are FORCED to pay an appropriate amount in order to mail to a few thousand, tens of thousand, etc people.
Which bulk mailers will be forced how and by whom to comply with this?
If we can force them to conform to a business model that mimics the Real World and no longer lives in Fantasy Land...
Hate to burst your bubble, but at this moment in time the Internet exists in the real world, and your proposal exists in fantasy land. How were you intending to transpose them?
However, I can't say this enough: Attempting to legislate against this practice is not only ineffective, it is UNCONSTITUTIONAL and completely worthless.
To which constitution were you referring? The Internet does not have a "constitution" of which I'm aware. I take it that you're not proposing to legislate that ISPs should have to charge for bulk mail, then? Or would that be both constitutional and worthwhile? You mentioned forcing people to comply, so I assumed you meant law, but now I'm not so sure.
In short summary, legislating against spam is yet another of the giant wastes of time that government spends its time doing. It needs to be addressed from the economical model (reasonable ISP charges) or from the personal level (maintain public/private email addresses).
Oh, so you are against legislation in this case. You expect every ISP under the sun to spontaneously start charging for bulk mail. Well, if that's our only solution, then my guess is that spam is here to stay.
My bet is that an improved set of mail protocols will be the answer. That's why I'm working on them full time right now. Ask me about them in another four months or so.
proof, n. A demonstration that a conclusion is implied by certain premises and axioms.
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
AbFab had sold their services to a few big names in Holland and this made them get on their knees begging the public for forgiveness about the spam they had send by means of AbFab.
Any legal solution has to include punishment for the companies trying to sell the goods, not just the mail boys.
And they are generaly in your own country!
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."