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Proposed Usenet Death Penalty for Australia's Largest ISP

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the cutting-off-hand-to-spite-face dept.

supine writes "David Ritz has issued a request for discussion on applying a Usenet Death Penalty to Australia's largest ISP, Bigpond (and it's parent company Telstra)." This brought back to memory the time when AOL was facing similar charges.

9 of 221 comments (clear)

  1. And they said... by thinmac · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The Geek Union was stupid.

    Why doesn't stuff of this nature happen more often? Why can't this same logic be applied (through different, although possibly similar means) to other Bad Things that happen on the internet? What could stop Adobe suing Russian hackers? What would put an end to bad patents? What could even stop the application of the DMCA? Large scale, cooperative denial of service (in this case denying to serve them, not flooding their lines) of the institutions which do these things.

    As an interesting sidenote, Katz specifically talked about applying this to Australian ISPs in the above linked /. discussion.

    --
    Narrative
    1. Re:And they said... by archeopterix · · Score: 3, Interesting
      Why doesn't stuff of this nature happen more often? Why can't this same logic be applied (through different, although possibly similar means) to other Bad Things that happen on the internet? What could stop Adobe suing Russian hackers? What would put an end to bad patents? What could even stop the application of the DMCA? Large scale, cooperative denial of service (in this case denying to serve them, not flooding their lines) of the institutions which do these things.
      Usenet UDP is specific:

      1. Few parties involved - Usenet is much more hierarchical than the general Internet. Probably if less than 20 (my guess, it might be wrong) important parties agree on a UDP, it gets enforced. How many entities would have to boycott Adobe (or whoever) for them to actually feel it?

      2. Clear and publicly defined "abuse". Spam, rogue cancels & supersedes. You don't get UDP'ed for being nasty to whales or pushing for bad legislation. This makes agreement easier, if not automatic.

      Withouth the 2 above conditions, it ends in a parody: Bob from Smallville doesn't show his homepage to Adobe employees, Alice from Podunk drops all mail from Microsoft and the boycotted companies would laugh at this if they only knew that they are "boycotted".
  2. Punish the innocent to get at the guilty by btempleton · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It amazes me how much emotion spam brings out. I hate it as much as anybody, but that's not enough to violate fundamental principles, including the one that it's not moral to punish the innocent to get at the guilty, particularly when you deliberately punish the innocent because by association, they can be forced to put pressure on the guilty or those who can punish the guilty.

    It's like starving out a country to depose a dictator. Whoops. :-(

    It's just not something you do, and spam, while a royal pain in the ass, doesn't cut it. I wouldn't punish the innocent to get Usama bin Ladin, let alone spammers.

    --
    Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
    1. Re:Punish the innocent to get at the guilty by PigleT · · Score: 4, Interesting

      "to violate fundamental principles, including the one that it's not moral to punish the innocent to get at the guilty,"

      That rather depends on which version of ethics you're using at the time, doesn't it? There are considerably more valid users of usenet *outside* Telestra's borders than there are within, all of whom suffer from Telestra's bad approach to spam. Given that the whole reason for the UDP suggestion is persistent continual large-scale offence from them, it's not as though they've not had the chance to repair their ways. Cutting off a few for the sake of the greater good is very much a valid "moral" choice.

      "I wouldn't punish the innocent to get Usama bin Ladin, let alone spammers."

      OBL's daily activities don't impinge on you in any way, until you get an odd-one-out. Spammers' activities *do* impinge, through ISPs having to pass on bandwidth costs to someone, ie their users.

      --
      ~Tim
      --
      .|` Clouds cross the black moonlight,
      Rushing on down to the circle of the turn
    2. Re:Punish the innocent to get at the guilty by pla · · Score: 3, Interesting

      it's not moral to punish the innocent to get at the guilty
      Historically, a UDP benefits the innocent-at-the-offending-provider (aside from a temporary iconvenience) just as much as it benefits the rest of the net. And, as far as I can recall, no UDP has ever lasted longer than a week, so we don't exactly talk about a long-term problem here.

      Or, to put it in a different (more familiar to the modern, non-usenet-oriented world) light, consider how much legit users in .tw, .kr, .ru, and recently .il suffer as a result of their ISP's sloth... If we had an email equivalent of the UDP (EDP?), perhaps we wouldn't all have to block those addresses by default, no doubt to the great relief of non-spammers in those regions.


      As an aside... DAMN! Someone fix Slashdot! I've typed this same blob in about five times so far, because I keep getting logged out, my messages dumped (blank screen loads), and bizarre error message. Aurgh!

    3. Re:Punish the innocent to get at the guilty by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting
      Look, if you want kids it's your responsibility to care for them. I don't like children, and I don't see any special need to care for children. This whole "won't somebody please help the children" is really beginning to piss me off, and I am someone who used to be very politically correct.

      If you want to help anyone, help the old folk who have been working their asses off to make a more comfortable world for you and me, not the whiny little shits who cry for more and haven't put a dime in. Children are nothing more than immature adults, with all the potential to do very much good or very much harm.

      There are a dozen valid arguments against spam, and, "It will hurt the children," is not one of them. Your argument is about as shit as arguing against child porn "in case other children see it".

      (And before you ask, I'm 22, not 65.)

  3. Good! And keep them banned. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    If only we could also have smtp bans for domains that don't have a valid abuse@ address. This includes many of the larger telcos around the world and annoys me to no end. Spamhouse in a netblock rented to spamhouser by telco. Quite often none of them even have a clear abuse handling system. Clearly the messenger is the problem not the spammer. They know it, they don't care and just try to deter people from complaining.

    Talk about netizenship.

  4. telstra have problems by gumleef · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I doubt that this will be resolved by telstra if threatened with action; action will have to be taken.

    Telstra have been losing money for a while now due to shoddy work in all of their services. Consumers just wont stand for it any longer, and this is strongly reflected by their dropping share price.
    I believe they are losing money at such a rate that they refuse to outlay any on ressurecting this current spam problem - that, or they really are ignorant of the problem (due to incompitance).

  5. Re:Not just annoying by Bastian · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Span isn't just a pain in the ass. It costs shitloads of money.

    I can't remember the amount of bandwidth it takes to keep a news server updated, but it's a pretty big chunk. That makes it expensive to run a Usenet news server in the first place.

    Now consider that an estimated 60% of the crap coming out of Telestra is spam, and the issue doesn't just become one of an annoyance. Telestra is costing lots of people lots of money.

    Under this situation, I think it is perfectly acceptable for admins to stop listening to the noise Telestra is putting out over the pipes. Frankly, the UDP is the only real defense Usenet has against ill-behaved entities, and it is used rarely, and only when all other options have been exhausted and the provider being UDPd is still refusing to cooperate. Yeah, it sucks for Telestra users, but if they want their Usenet service to return to normal, they can vote with their money by going to another ISP, or they can pressure Telestra to start behaving.