Slashdot Mirror
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.
Here's a problem... with no easy way to deal with it.
Over the last few years, the Internet provider for Costa Rica has been targetted by anti-spam types as a spam hoster.
Now.. that's all well and good, but the end result is that
a) The entire country's IP range is on SPEWS
b) Internet is a government run monopoly here.
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.)
Now.. I fully support the fact that the Internet is an anarchy, that each individual is free to decide how their network will or will not accept traffic from others, yada yada yada. On that I am firm.
But when it comes to an ISP.. we have a problem. An ISP that subscribes to this, sure, it's their choice, but it's awfully hard to explain to the client that they have to instruct their ISP to stop using this service. And the odds of the ISP stopping? Not likely.
The point is, in theory, it's all fair, in practice, it's a problem.
Sigh. No it's not. (How many times does this need to be said.) The mail server CmdrTaco is trying to email is stopping him. The DUL is just a listing; it does no blocking.
Anyone who has worked with / for / against MAPS knows that they are primarily interested in fighting. Their original purpose was to fight spam, but they're just as into fighting folks they don't like and each other. As far as I can tell, they really don't care *who* they fight, as long as there's lots of name calling and moral outrage involved.
MAPS is a joke. A classic case of the old saying about the pavement on the road to hell, and also a classic case of people thinking there's a technical solution to a social problem.
-b