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China Blocks Spam Servers
clafarge writes "I just read in the AP's LiveWire that, as reported by Xinhua News Agency, China has blocked 127 mail servers which it identifies as major sources of spam. Oh, happy day. They also published a list of 225 spam servers around the world just last month."
Guess they're following through on
this.
So is China evil because they censor the Internet? Or are they good because the block spam?
:)
Hard to see the world in slashdotter green-and-white, is it?
Being in China myself, I can't wait to see if this measure will block the 200+ spam emails I get every day. That would rock, evil-communist-empire-decree or not.
127 mail servers. Bah -- child's play
Come on now. It's a start. If this helps other countries and ISPs to admit that unsolicited commercial email is a real problem, then this is good news. 127 mail servers today, several thousand tomorrow?
And to pre-emptively strike at those who claim that spam is "free speech" and only godless communist countries would block it:
No, unsolicited commercial email (aka "spam") is NOT free speech. The burden of storing received email falls squarely on the recipient, thus sending email is a privilege not a right. In the exact same way you don't have the right to call someone up as many times as you without it being harrassment.
If this is the list of servers they admit to blocking, just imagine what the list they aren't showing the world looks like.
I think that it's sometimes a quite good idea to block spam, but I should leave this to corporate or private spamfilters, for maybe you block a server that acutally also relays "normal" mail traffic. If this spam blocking is done in China, it may very well look like censorship, because who guarantees that - accidentally if course - no mail servers that support civil rights activists are listen on the block list?
Here in Austria most ISP have Spam filters, but it is up to you if you use them or not, and I pesonally have my own customized Spam filtering. I my opinion gouvernment controlled AntiSpam solutions produce too many false positives to be useful, and especially in this case, it looks like censoring mail, all under the cloak of "protecting" the people from unwanted spam
".Sig Stealer" was here
Such a intelligent replay and posted anonymously :(
You are right. Sending me email is a privilege, NOT a right. My bandwidth, heck my mail server, my network, my workstation, my time.
Just as it is not my right to view any web site I wish. Some are paid subscriptions, some require user info, some may just not want me view their info for whatever reason (browser type, thinks I'm an ass, or feels violated because I block their email -- whatever).
Bing - first spam of the day. Nothing there. Oops, bayesian eaten. It _was_ to the HOSTMASTER no less -- those absolute dumb idiots. What, that's not going to piss off the wrong people? rotflmao
Literally. Really. That's my "spam out" programming's name: rotflmao
NOW, recently, spam doesn't really bother or phase me. It's been more fun to watch their methods. Useeless attempts really. Fun to watch none the less. Yet -- I still get/send my email as "freely" as before.
Simple and effective rule: one strike and your OUT
If ever there was a market for penis enlargement...
I think most people have something like "DENY * FROM *.cn" in their firewalling / mail filtering (including probably many people in China)..
Why don't they just make it a crime to run an open mail relay? I mean - you can get locked up in China for reading a web page why not increase the scope to running an unsecured mail relay?
Why are you comparing spamming to white-hat hacking or file-trading?
Spam is theft of service and trespass to chattel. It is a crime where there is a clear victim and clear damages. In file-trading the damage is much less tangible and with white-hat hacking it's nonexistent.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
Hmm, well no I suppose spamming isn't free speech, but who defines what spam is? I'm not sure the government itself should be blocking the ISPs. I mean they can publish as many lists as they want, but if they're actually blocking those ISPs, that could be censorship. It's actually good that they only have blocked 127 ISPs, since that would almost suggest that they have only blocked notorious ISPs, not ISPs who also host useful material. Remember that there are servers that do nothing but provide webpages through email (you email a request for a webpage, it emails the request back) in order to circumvent censorship.
In general, spam is bad and not free speech, but that doesn't mean that any government should have the right to block it. Then again, US citizens who are also terrorists are bad, but that doesn't mean the US government should have the right to detain them indefinitely as non-citizens and try them without a jury of their peers.
So yay for anti-spam, boo for potential censorship.
No, unsolicited commercial email (aka "spam") is NOT free speech.
Be that as it may. OTOH, does anybody honestly believe that this will not be used as yet another excuse for the Chinese authorities to suppress real, non-spam free speech?
Add spammer/open relay to the list containing out-of-the-blue accusations like "counter-revolutionary activity", "banditism" or "drug smuggling" and all those other capital offences.
It won't just be the widows of spammer scumbags that will be picking up the bodies of their loved ones at the police station after having payed for the one used rifle cartridge... I can imagine the name of the offence being the easily and arbitrarily applicable "counter-revolutionary computer banditism" or something along those lines.
Help savingAmigaOS and a free PowerPC market
Why isn't spam free speech? What is free speech, anyway? Check this out:
http://www.spectacle.org/899/free.html
By definition:
Free speech: the right to express one's opinions publicly.
No, I'm not arguing that spam is "free speech". I hate it as much as anybody, and I'd kill for a simple solution to it. But if you believe in free speech, you do not want any kind of central authority controlling who is allowed to send email.
Spam is a problem because individual recipients have no control over who can send them email. The only solution is some kind of digital certificate system, so a spammer can't establish a new identity simply by opening creating -- or forging -- a new email address. Any anti-spam measure that isn't based on recipient control, not server control, is going to be both ineffective and dangerous to civil liberties.
The contents of the spam is speech and protected, and nobody minds if spammers read aloud their messages to inform people that they can enlarge their penis or provide generic Viagra. In fact, I thank them. (I'm up to three rock-hard inches as of last week!) But their message delivery method uses other people's money and resources without permission. That's why it's evil.
Because there is no freedom to not listen to it. Free speech is something you can walk away from. Once the "speaker" follows you it's harassment.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Express publicly all you want, email is private.
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
A couple of the old favorites, money launders and drug dealers, don't get so much press these days.
I don't think you got the memo. Due to the fact that terrorists have been known to launder money and deal drugs, all money launderers and drug dealers have now been reclassified as terrorists.
Ashcroft Logic (tm). It's easy when you know how!
deus does not exist but if he does
Nevermind that ~70%+ of the spam sites I have been reporting are HOSTED in China. I had complained countless times to the Chinese whois contacts without positive result.
Here's maybe something you want to know.
We have been asked recently to help figure out network and server problems by two companies (one travel agencies, one of the fastest growning in China, one textile company), and two government agencies.
All were complaining that their network is slow, even during the evening when nobody's using, and they don't know why. These people are not in the business of managing networks and servers. Their system has been built up by patching here and there as the needs come up. Their email servers are very old software developed american companies (ah well).
They brought us in to do diagnostic. We took a look, and the network usage is at 90% during non-working hours. We took closer look, and found that the email server and a few machines were sending out tons of messages. We traced again, and found that 5 to 6 (in each company and in each agency) machines have been owned, and are sending out spam (!) using the local email server. Well duh....
Then we stayed up about two evenings trying to see if someone will log in. Sure enough, the spammer logged in, and uploading new spam message. We traced their IP, and here's what we found: one from Indianna (US), one from Texas (US again), one from Florida (US again), the last one from Mexico.
So, what do you think?
You can blame the Chinese for relaying spam or for not securing their network/server, but these are the people who are trying to cope with the growth of their business, and have no expertise to handle this security issue. I bet a lot of SMEs in America have the same problem too.
And if you want to fix the spam problem, shouldn't you fix the root problem first?
Free speech: the right to express one's opinions publicly.
Indeed. My mailbox is not a public place. It is my private property. Spamming is like shouting your political opinions through my letterbox.
Free speech on your website - of course. Free speech on my private hard disk - certainly not.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
Of course, just because the bulk of my spam comes from China doesn't mean that the bulk of spam the Chinese get comes from there too. Maybe theirs really does come from Taiwan - any Chinese national care to comment on the demographics of your spammers?
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
Why isn't spam free speech?
Because it costs the recipient money. Why isn't it free speech if I spray-paint the number of my autobody shop on your car while you sleep? Why isn't it free speech if I take your credit card number and use it to pay the postage when I send you an ad in the mail.
Spammers have a right to express themselves -- just not at the expense of others.
Does anyone have a good list of verified open proxies? DSL and Cable connections that should not be running SMTP traffic? This seems to be the main source of Spam.
If somebody stands in the street yelling at my home, I will eventually call the police and have them removed. If somebody keeps calling my telephone and spewing crap, I will take steps against that too. Why shouldn't I expect similar protection on the internet? I don't appreciate the intrusion in to my life. I don't appreciate, no matter how small, subsidising these people through my ISP's service charge (my ISP has to pay for the resource usage, and for the additional costs of their upstream providers). It's not a matter of free speech - it's a matter of my right to privacy, and my right to not have to pay for something I don't want. People who are apologise for spammers using this free speech argument are deluded or just plain stupid.
That brings up an interesting question. What about people who print up flyers, then walk around a parking lot sticking them under windshield wipers? After all, the cars are private property.
Or, for that matter, someone who wants to advertise babysitting, pressure-washing, or other services by putting business cards or flyers on every mailbox in a neighborhood? Heck, I constantly get unsolicited menus from Chinese restaurants on my front door, and I'd consider my front door to be private property. And then there are the occasional empty-bag-left-at-the-door canned food drives.
Is there a fundamental difference between e-mail spam and these "real world" forms of unsolicited advertisment, other than the degree to which we are annoyed by each?
Good judgment comes from experience.
Experience comes from bad judgment.
Why isn't spam free speech? What is free speech, anyway?
Well lets look at it from a much simpler angle here
I have to pay to receive spam there for it cannot be free speech
END OF ARGUMENT
What exactly is so difficult for you people to understand?
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