Battle Creek, Michigan Settles Dispute with ORBZ

Peter Sachs, Esq. writes: "According to a press release that now appears on its official website, the City of Battle Creek, Michigan has 'settled"' its dispute with ORBZ.ORG. The City concluded that ORBZ.ORG had no criminal intent to cause the City harm by testing the 'open relay' status its server. In fact, the Assistant to the City Manager said, '...we recognize that [ORBZ.ORG] has done us a service. We are going to be taking a close look at our policies regarding Lotus security updates and how we can avoid the issue in general'"

Comments

Good News, Bad News

[Astral Jung]

The good news: For once, a government entity came to communicate with someone who wasn't really doing it harm, but actually good, and managed to realize that.

The bad news: They still haven't quite understood the situation yet, based on the article taken from the City of Battle Creek page:

Spam refers to a computer prank that causes multiple duplicate emails, sometimes several hundred at once, to clog up the recipient's mail server.

They are getting better, though.

Gee, the city manager agrees with me.

[Russ Nelson]

I told Ian, time and time again, that he shouldn't be testing innocent servers. Test servers that have sent spam, yes, by all means. But you can't go around invading innocent servers.
-russ

Re:Better late than never?

[legLess]

Breath into a paper bag for a minute before you hyperventilate. First, this wasn't a SLAPP, it was a court order. It wasn't even a criminal charge yet. More to the point, it was justified. Here's what the press release (which you obviously didn't read) says:

"The purpose of the search warrant was to determine the identity of the person who sent the email that caused our system to fail so we could then determine whether further investigation would be necessary."

Think for a second: you're a government agency, and you notice someone sending bits to your server that make it crash. What's your first response? What's anyone's first response? Find out who did it, and search warrants are very good at that.

Second, this all could have been avoided if Ian Gulliver hadn't freaked when he got the order. If he'd waited a bleeding 24 hours this would have been resolved and ORBZ could have gone on its merry way.

I'm going to resist drawing any parallels between your hysterical and incorrect assessment of the situation and Ian's similar reaction, except to say: pay attention. Life is hard enough without going off half-cocked on incomplete information.

Re:A better analogy...

[Performer Guy]

Ahh, these are both perfect examples of why reasoning by analogy is the exclusive preserve of imbeciles. ORBZ tested mail servers. He did not distribute crack to children and he did not shoot anyone.

I'm not into reasoning by analogy but if you feel the need in future here are some alternatives you might try, at the very least they betray your disgusting attempts to impugn ORBZ:

ORBZ is squeezing the fruit in the supermarket to see if it's ripe.

Another:

ORBZ is playing a tune to see if they approve of the melody.

Now go scurry under your rock and stop implying that what ORBZ did is anything other than a public service, or worse; equating it to selling coke to kids. These things are not morally equivalent you dolt.

Re:Shooting people to tests for vests

[Anonymous Coward]

So why didn't you send this information to the local newspaper? Seems to me the voters would love to see what a foul-mouth guy this "Jeff Darga" allegedly is.