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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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 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.
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