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MailBlocks sues Earthlink over Anti-Spam Tech
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."
Years ago... 1997 to be exact.
Mailblocks has no right on that patent.
Because all the "good guys" are stabbing each other in the back trying to be the one that fixes this problem.
I say we need to send the One (a large man with a nail bat) to the Source (the companies that PAY the spammers) and let him Disseminate the Code (splatter their heads against the wall).
Yeah, I saw Reloaded three times since last Wednesday... so sue me. =P
This is my sig. Its pathetic.
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.
Didn't Jeff Bezos {amazon.com} invent that? I'm pretty sure he holds the patent for it...
From the article: "Mailblocks developed and owns patents for Challenge/Response"
They will sue me as soon as they find out that I dial in to my ISP using the CHAP protocol.
RedShirt
Microsft spel chekar vor sail, worgs grate !!!
Wouldn't it be interesting if the "privately-funded" Mailblocks were to win and then refuse to license their patent to anyone? Or maybe offer to license it, but for exorbitant license fees. Then, 20 years from now, we'd find out that their private funding came from companies with an interest in Direct Marketing? Or that Mailblocks itself exists as a marketing tool, to collect email addresses and sell them?
One of the very real uses of patents is to prevent people from using the technology.
So am I paranoid enough yet?
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
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
Majordomo, Mailman, elzlm...almost all mailing list software sends you a confirmation email, requiring your reply(nowadays via a URL with an embedded authentication string, or via email simply by replying.) Kinda seems like prior art, since I'm guessing "Mailblocks" hasn't even been around as long as majordomo, which dates back into the Dark Ages.
However, in all honesty, this is probably one of the few cases where everyone wins- for many of the reasons folks cited in the comments on the last article that mentioned Earthlink's move... challenge-reply is a VERY half-baked idea, and anything that supresses the market for that software(ie, patent) is a darn good thing in my book.
I'm a mailing list manager, and if Earthlink does manage to get out of this one and fire up the challenge-response business, I'm damn tempted to simply block every earthlink user, possibly at the mailer level, because the users simply aren't smart enough to handle whitelisting the mailing list(s). Hell, most of the hotmail/yahoo mail users can't even keep their mailboxes under quota. We're talking rocket science compared to keeping your mail folder clean...
Please help metamoderate.
"hello?"
"Hi is this Joe Smith of 104 spammark rd.?"
"May i ask who is calling?"
"No, you may not, we've patented the process where you ask who your talking to then decide wethere you want to continue communication, we can license that technology to you though for the special low price of $1 per use."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Because I've got prior art.
Ask yo momma if you dont believe me.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Kill spam with tech patents -- patent on sending email in bulk, patent on the "click here to remove me", patent on email header forgery, and of course patent on screwing with the subject field to get by most spam filters. Obviously, you have to actually *find* the spammers to sue them. Oh well.
SPAM solution made easy: 1 spammer, 5 cords of rope, 5 hourses, and fireworks. Be creative.
Just my thought here: Many states, maybe all, have made spam a crime.
But they have not been effective in stopping it.
Now, normally, when I am victimized by a crime, I am justified in defending myself. Mailblocks, however, is saying "You can't defend yourself against this crime, because we own the intellectual property for the methods of defense"?!?!
Okay, so whenever a new technology comes out, the mafia just needs to figure out (1) a way to victimize people (2) the best ways to defend against it. Then patent the defenses, and subsequently hit people from both sides.
Our government is coming to a real decision. Either defend IP at let criminals roam free, victimizing all and destroying the economy, or give up IP, and maintain order.
Meanwhile, Ralsky and his friends are going to be down at the patent office in a flash.
Something is rotten in the state of our legal system.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
Recent articles haven't mentions Digiportal or Mail Frontier, so it is possible that they have come to an agreement with Mailblocks.
Full article (dated 4/05/03) from the San Jose Mercury News.
This looks like it's becoming another "unholy alliance" like the virus / anti-virus market. It's as if the net had no native problems, so people have had to think up some so they could sell solutions for them. I wouldn't care if there wasn't so much collateral damamge to the net's reputation and so much extra effort on my part for "trash removal" in my corner of the net.
I'm a proud capitalist, but this is sickening. It's like embedding nails in the road to increase sales of tires and towing services. Surely if there were ever a "solutions market" that deserved to be trashed by OSS, this is it.
Go SpamAssasin and Mozilla!!
I never finished implementing the system (I wrote my dissertation instead) but still have a midsized collection of emails about it.
Challenge/response has got to be "obvious to one versed in the art" -- I can think of at least three other people at Stanford who had the same idea at about the same time.