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MailBlocks sues Earthlink over Anti-Spam Tech

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the eggs-bacon-sausage-and dept.

goombah99 writes "Mailblocks is suing Earthlink , claiming patents on Challenge-Response as a means of blocking spam. Slashdot recently discussed Earthlink's plans to implement a challenge-response email system. The next day mailblocks filed suit to defend their turf in the $118 million dollar anti-spam solutions market. MSNBC has a complete discussion."

3 of 336 comments (clear)

  1. $118 Million by cubyrop · · Score: 5, Insightful

    From this number, would I be wrong in assuming that there are many people besides spammers themselves who have no problem at all with spam remaining legislation-free? I had no idea anti-spam was such a lucrative business, and I suspect many others hadn't either.

    --
    If I could make this sig kill you, I would.
  2. Mailblocks been around since 2002? by stanmann · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I know that challenge response has been around longer than thatPRIOR ART.
    And challenging Earthlink is a bit foolish. All Earthlink needs to do is come up with the hundreds of thousands of examples of Challenge-Response systems in use as early as 1995 in order to verify an actual person was on the other side.

    --
    Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
  3. Re:I did that by letxa2000 · · Score: 5, Insightful
    If I were Earthlink, I'd let Mailblocks keep their patent. Challenge-response was probably a reasonable solution half a decade ago. Filters have improved since then and with a well-maintained filter list of domains PLUS a working Bayesian filter there is no reason to make innocent senders go through the hassle of verifying themselves while at the same time doubling spam traffic (one spam received = one challenge response issued, so instead of a billion spams per day we have a billion spams plus a billion challenge/response mails).

    C/R technology is inconvenient and obsolete. I'm not even sure why Earthlink decided to implement such an obsolete approach that has the side effect of doubling the amount of emails related to spam.