MAPS vs. Gordon Feyck: Who Owns the DUL?

etrnl writes "The spam-l mailing list has an interesting post from Nick Nicholas about a recent lawsuit between MAPS, LLC. and Gordon Fecyk, who had arranged with Paul Vixie to host the DUL with MAPS in 1998. Even more interesting is that Nick was the Executive Director of MAPS who hired Gordon at MAPS in 1999. Notable quote from Nick: 'I find it extremely ironic that an organization which is currently soliciting donations to its own legal defense fund would now be using its limited resources to pursue litigation against a former employee.'" MAPS wants a temporary restraining order on two separate copyright claims: first, that Feyck can't use the DUL database, and second, that he can't run a too-similar website (now down). The bone of contention is that Feyck claims he bought back the DUL from MAPS, and MAPS disagrees. Incidentally, the DUL is currently stopping CmdrTaco from directly emailing one of the Slash coders.

Comments

Re:Speaking of antispam..

[Senior Frac]

c) There is no direct way to be removed from SPEWS. You cannot contact them. You cannot explain your situation. (My situation is that we happen to have some IP addresses in this country, and have trouble reaching our customers because of it. We don't spam.)

I'll put it quite bluntly.

The reason there's no avenue to "explain your situation" is because none of the rest of us on the internet give two shits about Costa Rica's connectivity. Straight up.

You could launch Costa Rica to the moon, and it would take me 12 years to notice my World Atlas was a little bit lighter.

The lame argument that "we can't force our [national] ISP to be responsible" is total bunk. Consider all our email blocks to be documentation you can use to explain to RACSA of why reform is needed. Bad political decisions on your part is not going to make me pay for delivery of more spam.

CmdrTaco

[macdaddy]

This isn't in response to the actual article. This is in response to the comments made about the DUL stopping CmdrTaco from mailing one of the slash coders. It really pisses me off when some dumb son of a bitch thinks they have the right to directly send an email from their dialup account. People seem to think that their providers MTA is there for looks. People don't understand that a significant amount of spam can be blocked by only allowing one providers MTA to talk to another. Frankly I think there should be a mandatory MTA registration process like there is for DNS servers. You must register your MTA before you can mail. This would require valid abuse contact information and things of that nature. The 'Net isn't meant to be plug and play. I block 100,000 pieces of spam per week at an ISP I consult with (give or take usually 10k depending on the time of year). I use 6 different DNS blacklists and a lengthy Sendmail access list of spamming domains and netblocks to do this for me. About 2 years ago the DUL was blocking by far the most spam of all the blacklists (for me). Then raping of open relays became really popular and the hits on the RSS rose dramatically. Now the DUL gets on average about 3000 hits per week. Every so often that number will sharply increase because some spammer decided to direct-to-MX spam us. Well we're one of many providers that doesn't take that shit. Hence the DUL. I'm getting sick of ranting here, so I'm done.

Re:Speaking of antispam..

[monkeydo]

Hey Asshole. You just agreed with him. he said "There is no direct way to be removed from SPEWS."

And your quoting from the SPEWS FAQ confirms that to be correct.

Then you said, "So sort your spam problem, then post in nane once its sorted. Until then, don't expect a lot of us to accept your crap." But he already told you he doesn't SPAM. The problem is that SPEWS has blocked his entire country because they operate on the theory of putting a bunch of people in the same boat as the spammers with the (completely misguided) hope that someone else will then take care of the spammers.

This guy works for a company that can't send mail to anyone on an ISP that uses SPEWS, and yet he has no probelm with SPEWS. He just wants them to stop blocking his non-spamming netblock.

You seem to be under the impression that only spam originating netblocks are blocked by SPEWS. Consider your delusion to be corrected.