Perspectives on Spamhaus's Dilemma

Ghostbusters by eldavojohn · 2006-10-09 07:00 · Score: 4, Insightful

One spamfighter of my acquaintance says that Spamhaus's SBL and XBL blocklists knock out 75% of the spam at his servers before it hits and requires more CPU-intensive filtering. If ICANN is ordered to unplug Spamhaus from the DNS, and does so, is the Net prepared to deal with a 4-fold increase in spam hitting MTAs overnight?

I'm reminded of the part in the Ghostbusters movie when the man from the EPA shows up and demands that they shut down the containment unit which houses all the ghosts since it's in violation of EPA rules.

Yeah, I know it's just fiction but it seems like this could be the same kind of thing.

Excerpt from the movie:
Dr. Ray Stantz: Everything was fine with our system until the power grid was shut off by dickless here.
Walter Peck: They caused an explosion!
Mayor: Is this true?
Dr. Peter Venkman: Yes it's true.
[pause]
Dr. Peter Venkman: This man has no dick.
Walter Peck: Jeez!
[Charges at Venkman]
Mayor: Break it up! Hey, break this up! Break it up!
Walter Peck: All right, all right, all right!
Dr. Peter Venkman: Well, that's what I heard!

I think the problem that the Ghostbusters faced in the movie was that the guy from the EPA was a prick and didn't bother doing any follow up or open a channel of communication with the Ghostbusters. Now, Spamhaus might be violating rules at the same time they provide the public a valuable service. Has the United State's judicial system attempted any lines of communication with them aside from a cease-and-desist letter threatening them with $11.7 million?

The Illinois court that told Spamhaus to stop blocking the spammer filing suit against them...

Where does it say that e360insight is a spammer? I think that Spamhaus should have to present proof that e360insight is an illegitimate spamming business. I think that's important. If e360insight is a spammer, I'm siding with Spamhaus. Since they have taken the roll of deciding who is spamming and who isn't, I think they could use more accountability than what I find indicated on their website.

--
My work here is dung.

Re:Ghostbusters by n0dna · 2006-10-09 07:06 · Score: 2, Insightful

"Has the United State's judicial system attempted any lines of communication with them aside from a cease-and-desist letter threatening them with $11.7 million?"

Yup, they would have allowed them to defend their actions in court. Spamhaus chose not to appear, and instead have a default judgement rendered aginst them.
Re:Ghostbusters by eldavojohn · 2006-10-09 07:09 · Score: 4, Insightful

Yup, they would have allowed them to defend their actions in court. Spamhaus chose not to appear, and instead have a default judgement rendered aginst them.
What court though? I mean, if some business that I slighted in China brings a lawsuit against me, I'm not going to fly half-way across the world to defend myself. If Spamhaus is offering the maintenance of this list for free, I doubt they make much money. Couple that with the fact that people choose to use the list, I don't blame Spamhaus for farting in their general direction.

--
My work here is dung.
Re:Ghostbusters by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 07:18 · Score: 0

you can't just think in terms of spam..

if spamhaus.org goes down the effects will be seen across the board.. think of all the phish, 419 scams, malware and other fraud that will begin flooding into joeUsr's inbox.. corporate networks will be a mess, more zombie machines... i don't think the judge is aware of the mess he is about make of the internet.

i might as well just break out the typewriter now...

and if this judgement stands it will set a precident that other spammers will pivot off of... e360 is already making available the case files on their site for other spammers to use... anti-spam companies will begin going down b/c of frivolous lawsuits from hard core bad-guy spammers, as well as people like linhardt who structure their business just barely inside of the law...

legal or not we all know CAN-SPAM sucks and so do guys like linhardt and his buddy brian haberstroh (atriks)
Re:Ghostbusters by ArsenneLupin · 2006-10-09 07:19 · Score: 4, Insightful

I don't blame Spamhaus for farting in their general direction.
They just should be careful enough to widely publish their new .co.uk address before the hammer hits, so that we can reconfigure our MTA's in time.
Indeed, a fart is not really a fart if it doesn't smell...
Re:Ghostbusters by n0dna · 2006-10-09 07:33 · Score: 2, Insightful

I don't actually blame them either, but you do have to be prepared to accept the consequences of your actions.

If China had the ability to make your life miserable, you maybe ought to consider hiring a lawyer. You can't run something like Spamhaus without understanding that you are stepping directly on the spammer's bottom line, and you have to expect the need to defend yourself legally. Ignoring legal proceedings is an option, but not a defense. Had they chosen to fight it, they could have made the argument that their RBL is in fact optional. They chose not to. Now they are facing the consequences.

Just because you are not guilty of a crime doesn't mean you don't have to show up if you're indicted.
Re:Ghostbusters by just_another_sean · 2006-10-09 07:46 · Score: 1

In a nutshell: I agree, the Illinois has no dick.

--
Creationist Textbook Stickers Declared Unconstitutional by CowboyNeal
Re:Ghostbusters by harlows_monkeys · 2006-10-09 07:52 · Score: 3, Interesting

What court though? I mean, if some business that I slighted in China brings a lawsuit against me, I'm not going to fly half-way across the world to defend myself

That's a perfectly reasonable attitude, provide you are aware that the chinese business will, therefore, win their lawsuit in a chinese court. If you have no assets anyplace that a chinese court could get to, then you are fine. Just don't miscalculate, ignore them, lose to a default judgement, and then remember that you do have stuff in China!
Also, you have to be careful HOW you ignore them. For example, if you start to defend yourself on the merits, and then say "screw this...you don't have any jurisdiction over me, so bugger off" and THEN start ignoring them, that initial defending on the merits might be seen as conceding jurisdiction to the court. That's bad, because then when the winner comes to your country to collect, there is a decent chance your country's courts will recognize the debt as a valid debt, and then it is a simple matter for that Chinese business to get a judgement in your country to enforce the debt.
The bottom line: ignoring a court anywhere in the world is not something to take lightly. You need to at least get a lawyer with experience in the laws of your country to tell you HOW to ignore the foreign court so that you won't accidently open yourself up to a nasty surprise.
Re:Ghostbusters by GoodNicsTken · 2006-10-09 07:52 · Score: 1

Here's the thing nobody gets. This is not an issue about blocking spam. What's at issue here is the ability of a privately owned business to provide whatever service or feature they want to for it's cutomers.

If people want to get E-mail from 360, they can call the ISP and complain, they can switch providers, or they can use an alternatvie service. None of which require courts threatening people at gunpoint.

Why does the US seem to think it rules the world and can tell everyone what's acceptable behavior?

Governemnt is always the problem, never the solution.
Re:Ghostbusters by mcrbids · 2006-10-09 07:57 · Score: 2, Interesting

Where does it say that e360insight is a spammer? I think that Spamhaus should have to present proof that e360insight is an illegitimate spamming business [spamhaus.org]. I think that's important. If e360insight is a spammer, I'm siding with Spamhaus. Since they have taken the roll of deciding who is spamming and who isn't, I think they could use more accountability [spamhaus.org] than what I find indicated on their website.

Except that Spamhaus is not spam filtering or blocking software. It's merely a DNS database of sources of spam. There are many things you can do with it - you could toggle the use of Spam Assassin or perform extended anti-virus checking against emails from these addresses. You could enable grey-listing only for emails from the spamhaus addresses.

There are lots of things you could do - spamhaus only provides the database.

It's up to the ISP administrator to decide to use spamhaus for blocking email messages.

If I took a list of phone numbers of "bad guys" that I don't like, and published it, is it my fault if somebody uses that with caller ID to make a "phone call blocker"?

Sorry, the judge is simply out in left field, and needs to be beaten about the head and shoulders with a clue stick.

--
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Re:Ghostbusters by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 08:13 · Score: 0

If I took a list of phone numbers of "bad guys" that I don't like, and published it, is it my fault if somebody uses that with caller ID to make a "phone call blocker"?
You could be, absolutely. It depends on how you present that list. Spamhaus isn't saying "this is a list of people we don't like". They're saying, "this is a list of people engaged in sending spam". Spamming is a negative and sometimes criminal behavior. If you're going to publish a list of people and accuse them of something criminal you'd better be prepared to defend that list. if I published a list of people I hated and called it "known pedophiles" without any evidence whatsoever they've been convicted or even accused of some sex-related crime with a minor I've just opened myself up to a whole world of lawsuits.
Conversely, if you publish a block of IPs I own and say "these are spammers" you'd better be prepared to defend that list in court, because I'm not a spammer and that's a defamatory statement.
Re:Ghostbusters by Coldmoon · 2006-10-09 08:14 · Score: 2, Interesting

"Since they have taken the roll of deciding who is spamming and who isn't, I think they could use more accountability than what I find indicated on their website"

Accountability certainly, but transparency would help to resolve these issues. The Antispyware industry tackled this by creating and then supporting systems/procedures that allow targeted application developers to appeal their inclusion in the AS's detection database, detection category (malicious, adware, Trojan, etc...), threat level, etc

More importantly, a similar procedure could open up a line of communication between the "spammer" and the antispam provider that may allow the antispam provider to force positive change in the behavior of the advertiser.

Sample framework for a possible procedure :

1) Suspected/targeted advertiser contacts the Antispam solution provider with an appeal as to the detection and blocking of their commercial messages

2) Antispam provider then does a complete and DETAILED technical analysis and write-up/documentation of why the content is detected/blocked in a specified time period. This report is then supplied to the advertiser.

3) Based on the report generated in #2, the content detection is continued (I.E., there is ample and reproducible evidence that the advertiser is engaged in spam activities and the blocking is valid)or the detection is determined to be a false positive and the blocking is removed...

4) Given that the content is blocked due to valid and reproducible evidence, the Antispam provider will then have all the evidence they need to defend their position in court if need be

If the security industry wants to provide the protection their customers require (hopefully this is the main motivation), then they have to also provide the means for positive change in advertising models.

Escalation without any means of relief/behavior modification is ultimately self-defeating...

--
Coldmoon over Dark water...
Re:Ghostbusters by The+Mgt · 2006-10-09 08:20 · Score: 3, Informative

They just should be careful enough to widely publish their new .co.uk address before the hammer hits
It's spamhaus.org.uk.
spamhaus.co.uk is an unrelated site flogging antivirus software
Re:Ghostbusters by pete6677 · 2006-10-09 08:23 · Score: 1

Most states don't.
Re:Ghostbusters by nine-times · 2006-10-09 08:31 · Score: 1

Where does it say that e360insight is a spammer? I think that Spamhaus should have to present proof that e360insight is an illegitimate spamming business. I think that's important.
It may be an expedient move in this particular case, but as a general rule, it doesn't seem to make sense that another country can prosecute me in court for something that I do in my own country when that action is legal in my own country. I suppose I just mean to point out that there's a larger issue here. In principle, do we want spammers to be able to bring people to court for putting them in a blacklist? Remember, even if you win a court case, it still costs a lot of money.
Re:Ghostbusters by walt-sjc · 2006-10-09 08:32 · Score: 2, Interesting

Here's the deal though.

If it wasn't for spamhaus and other blocklist services, it would be up to individual administrators to create their own blacklists (most savvy admins do anyway BTW...) Now I don't know about other admins, but once you are in MY blacklist, you are there FOREVER. If you are in 4,556,865 blacklists, good f-ing luck getting out. Being on ONE list you have a chance.

The other option is a reputation based system where "trusted" submitters send blacklist updates via usenet (GPG signed.) Since there is no single DNS server (or domain) it can't get shut down. I suppose you could also share the main list via bittorrent, freenet, or other such service.

Anyway, I would expect spamhaus to just get a bunch of alternate names registered all over the place in different countries to get out of a TLD that is under US control.
Re:Ghostbusters by Single+GNU+Theory · 2006-10-09 08:35 · Score: 1

Most states don't.

Please consider a joke about Florida and "peninsular" to have been made in this comment, and we're all the better for leaving this gutter.

Whew! That was close.

--
Little Debian: America's #1 Snack Distro!
Re:Ghostbusters by rhizome · 2006-10-09 08:41 · Score: 1

It depends on how you present that list. Spamhaus isn't saying "this is a list of people we don't like". They're saying, "this is a list of people engaged in sending spam". Spamming is a negative and sometimes criminal behavior. If you're going to publish a list of people and accuse them of something criminal you'd better be prepared to defend that list.

I see, so if they described it differently you'd be okay with that? What if they use spamming in the "negative" and not the "sometimes criminal" way? How do you know the difference?

The answer is that you don't, and it's retarded to suggest that the judgement would not have come down if they merely changed the wording so that the list is of "suspected" spammers.

--
When I was a kid, we only had one Darth.
Re:Ghostbusters by sukotto · 2006-10-09 08:42 · Score: 1

Yeah, but China's courts don't have the power to tell ICANN to wipe you off the net.

--
Come play free flash games on Kongregate!
Re:Ghostbusters by megaditto · 2006-10-09 08:43 · Score: 1

It spamhaus moved to .co.uk, could the Judge order ICANN to 'unplug' the entire .uk TLD?

--
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
Re:Ghostbusters by arivanov · 2006-10-09 08:47 · Score: 1

Exactly.

And this is the exact damn reason why SPAMHAUS should move their database to the country under whose jurisdiction they operate. If they want to run a business in the UK and play it by the UK legal rules (as they so far do) they should close shop under .org and move to spamhaus.org.uk and tell Illionois and 360 solutions to go shag themselves with a chainsaw sideways.

--
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
Re:Ghostbusters by Binestar · 2006-10-09 08:50 · Score: 3, Insightful

However, we, in the US, have this little thing called the first amendment. The right to free speech. What Spamhaus (or rather, the email server admin) does is interfere with end users ability to receive free speech.

This is an opt-in DNSBL. So your little "free speach" defense doesn't work.

Even considering SPAM to be free speach, it doesn't hold up. The people subscribing to the DNSBL are doing do with their own private property. Your right to free speach ends on my property, just as your right to swing your arms wherever you want ends at my nose.

--
Do you Gentoo!?
Re:Ghostbusters by just_another_sean · 2006-10-09 08:54 · Score: 1

Gutter aside, I meant it in the metaphorical sense that the parent was describing in his Ghostbusters analogy. As in Illinois is comparable to the idiot EPA guy in this case.

That and I was going for +1 funny...

--
Creationist Textbook Stickers Declared Unconstitutional by CowboyNeal
Re:Ghostbusters by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 09:02 · Score: 0

Can you point me to where I opted in? If you google around for 'comcast spamhaus', multiple posts show that Comcast is/has implemented Spamhaus for their email filters. I would like to know where I selected to opt-in to utilizing the Spamhaus service. Thanks!
Re:Ghostbusters by petermgreen · 2006-10-09 09:03 · Score: 2, Insightful

unplugging a first world countries tld would probablly result in ICANN very rapidly losing its control over the root of the DNS.

--
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Re:Ghostbusters by budgenator · 2006-10-09 09:05 · Score: 1

First of all it's not the United States, it's the state of Illinios, Secondly I have no Idea how the State of Illinios in their wildest dreams hope to impose their order on ICANN, which I understand to be a function of the United States Dept. of Commerce.

--
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Re:Ghostbusters by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 09:10 · Score: 1, Informative

You signed up for Comcast internet. If you don't like that Comcast uses Spamhaus, call Comcast and complain or put your money where your mouth is and go elsewhere for internet access. There is no right to free speech in a private forum. Spamhaus isn't the government, the first amendment doesn't apply.
Re:Ghostbusters by jacksonj04 · 2006-10-09 09:11 · Score: 1

Nope. THE GOVERNMENT shall not infringe your right to say what you want about them. What you say about someone else is fair game for lawsuits.

--
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
Re:Ghostbusters by ArsenneLupin · 2006-10-09 09:11 · Score: 1

Interesting... My comment was completely tongue-in-cheek, and I was unaware that they already had an UK address.
Well good for them (and us...)! Let the .org.uk address be widely known, and ICANN can yank the .org all they want, and it won't make a difference!
Re:Ghostbusters by ArsenneLupin · 2006-10-09 09:13 · Score: 2, Funny

Not to mention that .uk is member of the "coalition of the willing". Disconnecting it would probably result in the US very rapidly losing its control over Iraq... oh wait!
Re:Ghostbusters by wolrahnaes · 2006-10-09 09:15 · Score: 1

Free speech only means the government can't interfere. Private businesses have the right to restrict your speech as much as they want while you're using their services.

To put it in terms relevant to this case, if the US Government was running Spamhaus-based blockers on an Internet-wide or US-wide basis (ignoring the technical issues involved with such an undertaking), then it could be a free speech issue. Since this is not the case and only private businesses are involved, free speech does not apply.

--
I used to get high on life, but I developed a tolerance. Now I need something stronger.
Re:Ghostbusters by nsayer · 2006-10-09 09:15 · Score: 1

Yeah, but China's courts don't have the power to tell ICANN to wipe you off the net.
And the obvious point of the GP is that Illinois' courts shouldn't have that power either.
Re:Ghostbusters by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 09:18 · Score: 0

This is where you contact Comcast to verify they use Spamhaus and ask them to take it off your account. If they are unwilling or unable to do this, cancel your account and use a different ISP.

How is this in any way Spamhaus' fault?
Re:Ghostbusters by MrScary · 2006-10-09 09:18 · Score: 1

ninetimes said:
It may be an expedient move in this particular case, but as a general rule, it doesn't seem to make sense that another country can prosecute me in court for something that I do in my own country when that action is legal in my own country.

This is a slippery slope. If we follow this logic we could have never try some people for genocide. Think about what is happening in the Darfur region of the Sudan and how the people would never receive justice under this argument.

--
I've been searchin for the chord I can't hear Ive been searchin for years Its somewhere inside But its well disguised
Re:Ghostbusters by zorglubxx · 2006-10-09 09:21 · Score: 1

That's total crap. Spamhaus only provides a reference list, you are free to use it or not. If your ISP uses it then complain loudly to them opr move to one that doesnt use it. As for me, I do use it and I'm very glad it exists. A company selling viagra and other dogy stuff has to the right to market their stuff but I have the right to say that I dont want to get their crap in my inbox. At the moment spammers dont allow me to voice that I dont want to hear about their crappy merchandise and dogy businesses. As far as I can tell, they are the ones violating my rights. Your rights stop where my right starts.
Re:Ghostbusters by Binestar · 2006-10-09 09:24 · Score: 1

Can you point me to where I opted in?

When you ordered comcast's service.

--
Do you Gentoo!?
Re:Ghostbusters by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 09:27 · Score: 0

The answer is that you don't, and it's retarded to suggest that the judgement would not have come down if they merely changed the wording so that the list is of "suspected" spammers.
Great, because I wasn't suggesting that. You seem to have entirely missed the point. Simply by publishing the list and presenting it as list of spammers - "suspected" or otherwise - Spamhaus has opened themselves up for lawsuits. Once you start accusing people of something you're taking that risk. It doesn't matter if the list is "optional" or "opt-in" or whatever you want to call it. Spamhaus is making accusations about others and acting all shocked when someone calls them on it.
Re:Ghostbusters by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 09:30 · Score: 0

Yes, but such warcrimes are often through the use of UN Treaty and other such things. If the Sudan is not a member of that organization, then they should be left alone to cut their heads off as they see fit. It may sound inhuman, but I say let them duke it out till nobody is left standing, the world will be a better place, all these people are crying for help because they are unwilling to standup and help themselves.
Re:Ghostbusters by k12linux · 2006-10-09 09:33 · Score: 1

They look completely prepared to defend themselves despite the fact that the Ill. court has no jourisdiction over another country.
Re:Ghostbusters by Kijori · 2006-10-09 09:33 · Score: 1

Can you cite a source? I can't find anything on Comcast's terms of service, or on Google.
Re:Ghostbusters by Eunuchswear · 2006-10-09 09:35 · Score: 2, Funny

Get real, Tony is George's bitch, if .UK was disconnected Tony would just say "oh, harder, harder my love" - after all, if .UK isn't disconnected then "Terrorists Win!"

--
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Re:Ghostbusters by sqlrob · 2006-10-09 09:37 · Score: 1

Free Speech != Forcing others to listen

Property rights win. Admin's server, admin's rules.
Re:Ghostbusters by weasel5i2 · 2006-10-09 09:40 · Score: 1

No flame here, but I must point out that you're wrong about the "free speech" approach. "end users ability to receive free speech" ?? WTF?!

You're also assuming a utopian situation where "opt-in" violators don't exist. I don't recall "opting in" to the V1AGR4 and "h0rse d1ckky" e-mails! As an "end user", I STRICTLY PROHIBIT these troglodytes from sending me ANY advertising crap!

Bottom line: My right to not be bothered by scumbags supercedes ANYONE ELSE'S RIGHT to bother me, whether the foul stuff pouring from their mind is "free speech" or not! These spammers obviously violate that [very personal] rule, and judging by the mere existence of SpamHaus, I know I'm not the only one who feels this way.

Right in line with the EFF's stance on spam-blocking, end users do have the CHOICE to use SBL or not use SBL. SpamHaus doesn't force anyone to use their SBL, which they provide as a public service! SpamHaus is not infringing on ANYONE'S "first-amendment right" to send unsolicited "free-speech" advertisements (cough, cough) in any way, shape or form.

If I manufacture catapults, and somehow it's not illegal for me to launch large bundles of elephant dung across the city, do I have a right to sue the inevitable company who would market an effective flying-elephant-poo shield? I seriously doubt it..

What, next it'll be illegal for MTA admins to block spammer servers using their own blacklists?

They should implement explosive packet payloads into IPv6. ^_^

--W5i2

--
[BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY]: X5O!P%@AP[4\PZX54(P^)7CC)7}$EICAR-STANDARD-ANTIVIR US-TEST-FILE!$H+H*
Re:Ghostbusters by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 09:47 · Score: 0

I'm not a lawyer, but I think section 8g covers this:
Monitoring of Postings and Transmissions: Comcast shall have no obligation to monitor postings or transmissions made in connection with the Service. However, you acknowledge and agree that Comcast and its agents shall have the right to monitor any such postings and transmissions, including without limitation e-mail, newsgroups, chat, IP audio and video, and web space content, from time to time and to use and disclose them in accordance with Sections 4 and 5 of this Agreement, and as otherwise required by law or government request. We reserve the right to refuse to upload, post, publish, transmit or store any information or materials, in whole or in part, that, in our sole discretion, is unacceptable, undesirable or in violation of this Agreement.

I think they are saying that they don't need to transmit anything that they deem as "undesirable", though it's possible that this section only applies to transmissions originated by you. If that's the case, then I think that section 8a covers them:
... NEITHER COMCAST NOR ITS AFFILIATES, SUPPLIERS, OR AGENTS WARRANT THAT ANY DATA OR FILES SENT BY OR TO YOU WILL BE TRANSMITTED IN UNCORRUPTED FORM OR WITHIN A REASONABLE PERIOD OF TIME. ...
Re:Ghostbusters by nog_lorp · 2006-10-09 09:53 · Score: 1

What alternative did they have? To appear would be confirming that they have 'operatives' in Illinois, which is ridiculous.
Re:Ghostbusters by jonadab · 2006-10-09 09:57 · Score: 2, Informative

> However, we, in the US, have this little thing called the first amendment. The right to
> free speech. What Spamhaus (or rather, the email server admin) does is interfere with
> end users ability to receive free speech.

No. The stuff Spamhaus publishes does happen to be information that users or mail admins can use to decide which "speech" (in the form of email) they wish to listen to, but Spamhaus does not itself prevent anyone from receiving anything.

> This, in theory, should be up to the end user to OK.

No, it's up to the owner or administrator of the receiving mail server. They get to decide what information ("speech") may be published via their server, just as a newspaper publisher gets to decide which letters to the editor they want to publish, and if you write one and send it to them and they file it permanently, or for that matter shred and burn it, you have no valid complaint.

If the reader of the newspaper doesn't like this, he can buy a different paper, or, on the other side of the analogy, get email service from a different provider. (I do think ISPs should be up-front with their users about what services and techniques they use to limit spam, although frankly most end users are not deeply concerned with the technical details.)

If the writer of the letter, or the spammer, is unhappy with this arrangement, he can jolly well start his own newspaper (or mail service) and try to convince people to subscribe to it.

Personally, I'm not a large fan of blacklist-based approaches to limiting spam, but fundamentally it's up to the owner or administrator of the mail server, and Spamhaus is just offering advice.

The real problem in the legal case, according to one of the linked articles, appears to be one of jurisdiction or, more particularly, that Spamhaus apparently agreed to go to trial in the US and then backed out on it later. If that's true, it sounds like a pretty big mistake that will probably cost them.

--
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Re:Ghostbusters by Rix · 2006-10-09 09:59 · Score: 1

Where does it say that e360insight is a spammer? I think that Spamhaus should have to present proof that e360insight is an illegitimate spamming business. I think that's important. If e360insight is a spammer, I'm siding with Spamhaus. Since they have taken the roll of deciding who is spamming and who isn't, I think they could use more accountability than what I find indicated on their website.

Why? If I think you're an asshole, should I have to prove it in a court before I bar you from my home and recommend my friends do the same?
Re:Ghostbusters by smparadox · 2006-10-09 10:13 · Score: 1

"I think the problem that the Ghostbusters faced in the movie was that the guy from the EPA was a prick and didn't bother doing any follow up or open a channel of communication with the Ghostbusters. Now, Spamhaus might be violating rules at the same time they provide the public a valuable service. Has the United State's judicial system attempted any lines of communication with them aside from a cease-and-desist letter threatening them with $11.7 million?"

This is a very interesting analogy, especially since the Ghostbusters created their own problem in the movie by refusing to talk to the guy, and leaving him to draw his own idiotic conclusions. To some extent, they did cause the explosion - by not talking to the prick until it was too late.
IANAL, but perhaps Spamhaus created this problem by not showing up, even if they were in the right? The analogy may hold better than the initial reading suggests.

--
"I am become Gerund, Destroyer of Verbs"
Re:Ghostbusters by element-o.p. · 2006-10-09 10:17 · Score: 2, Insightful

Nuts. I was agreeing with you until you finished quoting Ghostbusters

Now, Spamhaus might be violating rules

Whose rules is Spamhaus violating? The rules set by the State of Illinois? So freaking what? IIRC, spamhaus is based in England. If I were in Saudi Arabia, I could be sentenced to death because of my religious beliefs, but guess what--I'm not in Saudi Arabia, so I couldn't care less! Why is this any different? Spamhaus does not have a physical presence in Illinois, nor, for that matter, anywhere else in the United States, so why should they have to follow some stupid law that a non-technical, idiot politician in another country wrote?

I think that Spamhaus should have to present proof that e360insight is an illegitimate spamming business [spamhaus.org].

Again, I ask "why?"

Spamhaus doesn't block spam--they provide a database of IP addresses that mail server administrators can use at their own discretion to block suspected spam sources. So, if Spamhaus isn't blocking e360insight's mail servers (they aren't), then why should they have to "prove" that e360insight is a spammer? As I understand, Spamhaus essentially has a network of honeypot e-mail addresses. Anything hitting these addresses is, by definition, unsolicited, and therefore spam.

As far as accountability...well, if you are a mail server administrator, you decide to start using Spamhaus' database to make decisions about from whom you will accept e-mails, and you find that the amount of spam hitting your inbox has dropped by a factor of four, how much more accountability do you need? You always have the option of hard-coding an Allow rule into your mail server config files, if you find that you are missing e-mails from what you perceive to be legitimate sources.

The State of Illinois needs a reality check. They wrote a "Super DMCA" law a few years ago that essentially hamstrings IT security professionals (see http://www.hackbusters.net/ for more details), and this is just another example of poor legislation victimizing the innocent.

--
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
Re:Ghostbusters by nine-times · 2006-10-09 10:18 · Score: 1

Well, it's not so slippery if you just stipulate that "crimes against humanity" are a special case, which AFAIK Spamhaus isn't accused of. In fact, it seems to me that it's a slippery slope in the opposite direction. If I can sue someone in the UK for doing something that's legal in the UK (I'm in the US, BTW), then it implies that UK citizens in the UK are subject to US jurisdiction. Follow that slope very far, and you end up with the US ruling the world (or at least trying to).
I mean, I guess some people want that, but if you ask me, it's the surest way to destroy the US.
Re:Ghostbusters by KORfan · 2006-10-09 10:28 · Score: 1

But our governor has plenty of "Testicular virility."
http://cbs2chicago.com/topstories/local_story_1381 31737.html
Re:Ghostbusters by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 10:41 · Score: 2, Insightful

No offense, but you obviously do not understand the Constitution.

First Point:

The First Amendment protects free speech from repression by THE GOVERNMENT, not a from repression by a private entity like Spamhaus.

Second Point:

Now if you were to argue that Spamhaus' rights were being abridged based upon the Judge in Illinois ruling, then you might have a point. From my perspective, this judge appears to be clueless in a number of aspects including the Constitution, his jurisdiction, and his understanding of the service Spamhaus provides.

Sigh.
Re:Ghostbusters by inviolet · 2006-10-09 11:22 · Score: 2, Insightful

Spamhaus doesn't block spam--they provide a database of IP addresses that mail server administrators can use at their own discretion to block suspected spam sources. So, if Spamhaus isn't blocking e360insight's mail servers (they aren't), then why should they have to "prove" that e360insight is a spammer? As I understand, Spamhaus essentially has a network of honeypot e-mail addresses. Anything hitting these addresses is, by definition, unsolicited, and therefore spam.

You are right and I agree. Death to spammers.
However. The fact remains that spamhaus wields quite a bit of power. They have accumulated that power by means of the zillion admins who have opted-in. They are now wielding that power, and in so doing they have invited and legitimized a measure of public skepticism and scrutiny.
Even though everything about spamhaus is optional and consensual, the judge may be looking at the power angle, rather than the consent angle. All concentrations of power are suspect, and many jurists believe that they have an inherent right to intervene in the use of any concentration of power.
Once again, I'm all for spamhaus. I'm a little-L libertarian myself, and spamhaus is an ideal solution in my book. But suppose that 360insight is actually innocent . . .

--
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
Re:Ghostbusters by TekPolitik · 2006-10-09 11:36 · Score: 2, Funny

In a nutshell: I agree, the Illinois has no dick.

Obviously this is wrong - it has a huge dick who wears a black robe.
Re:Ghostbusters by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 11:42 · Score: 0

I believe it will trigger a big side effect if ICANN is forced to complied. There have been ongoing contentions regarding ICANN's control of DNS. We can see now how a local US court can affect issues under international setting. Perhaps this is needed to finally force ICANN to address the issue or prepare to discuss DNS eventual release to International body where such ruling will not disrupt the existing legal framework.
Re:Ghostbusters by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 11:47 · Score: 3, Informative

I'm the head of the email security team on a network with several million mailboxes. I have to set you straight on spam filtering and free speech. I won't talk about free speach, b/c I have no idea what that might be.

The network belongs to the company who built and operates it. No one else has any rights on that network. If you're buying bandwidth/an email address/hosting, etc., your contract with them may give you certain rights, but those rights are arbitrary and may or may not include any amount of freedom of speech, and are certainly not secured by the Constitution. The contract usually also gives them the right to unlitaterally change it, either any time they feel like it, or at least at renewal. If you don't like the levels of rights (actually, privileges) they give you, your sole option is to vote with your feet.

Second, freedom of speech, as detailed in the Constitution, has no relation to private organizations whatsoever. It is only about the government. The First Amendment limits the government's ability to limit speech. My employer, on the other hand, may limit my speech in any way it likes, at least when I'm on company time, and on my own time as well to the extent that I cannot reveal confidential information without facing the consequences if caught, or publicly defame the company (at least if I value my job).

Third, *no one* has a right to send email to anyone else, period. We own our network, and we are the sole authority on what may or may not traverse it. If we choose to trust the opinions of Spamhaus or any other third party to assist us in making that judgment, that is our prerogative. If we choose to ban a netblock, a domain, a sender address, or even a country (I wish I could, in a couple of cases), we are the sole authority on that. If that harms our business, that's our problem, but no one who can't send us mail has, or should have, any recourse. If I don't want to receive email from someone, whether I consider that person to be a spammer, or just someone I don't like, and I bounce, /dev/null, or otherwise prevent that sender from getting to my inbox, that sender has no cause for complaint, damages, or anything else. No right exists to send me email, not in the Constitution, statutory law, common law, or just common sense.

I've been hearing bogus arguments like this for the entire 8 years I've been involved with email security, and it amazes me that even though such arguments always fail and are always thoroughly debunked every time they pop up, they nevertheless continue to appear like mushrooms in my lawn.
Re:Ghostbusters by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 12:04 · Score: 0

Wow, if ever a comment needed to be modded Flamebait or Offtopic, this is it.
Re:Ghostbusters by Achromatic1978 · 2006-10-09 12:11 · Score: 1

If I were in Saudi Arabia, I could be sentenced to death because of my religious beliefs

Completely offtopic, but man have you been brainwashed. I've been to Riyadh twice. I have friends who happen to be practicing Christians who are making a killing working there. Please, do tell us all about why you'd be sentenced to death for your religious beliefs in SA.
Re:Ghostbusters by Binestar · 2006-10-09 12:15 · Score: 1

Not sure why you replied to my message with this, but you're just expanding on exactly the point I was making. Perhaps you meant to reply to the parent?

--
Do you Gentoo!?
Re:Ghostbusters by KwKSilver · 2006-10-09 12:55 · Score: 1

Do you realize you just more-or-less equated spam-blocking with genocide? Darfur is a horrible outrage & everyone who is turning a blind eye to it is contemptible. Spam-blocking is a good thing. If my inbox starts getting flooded again & my ISP can't stop it & spam-assassin, etc. can't stop it I'll just close the accounts, close my g-mail account, advise my ISP to /dev/null any communications, and open a new e-mail address w/ the ISP that has a nonsense address, so they can communicate with me. Period. Actually, I may do that anyway as while e-mail was fun and useful once upon a time, the majority of it is crap now ... filtered or not. A pox on spammers for sure & maybe e-mail, too.

--
If you want your life to be different, live it differently.
Re:Ghostbusters by perlchild · 2006-10-09 14:03 · Score: 1

They wield that power because they garnered the trust of those admins, directly(those who use them knowingly, as I do) or indirectly(those who just know adding the three letters XBL or SBL to their spamassassin config, in the proper line is a good thing). Why are they being punished? Because they make it easy to reduce your spam level. The spammers want to keep this as hard as possible.
Since the spammers are engaged in commercial activity, and spamhaus is not, they get a postive prejudice from courts, as a rule. Since the spammer is apparently US-based, he's also getting a double-positive-prejudice. I think, should this prejudice be proven(I realize this is non-trivial) the judge should recuse himself, retroactively to hearing the case, if not found guilty of the appropriate crime(I am not in the US, so I don't know the peculiarities, but this prejudice, I find particularly objectionable in this case.
Re:Ghostbusters by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 14:54 · Score: 0

it doesn't seem to make sense that another country can prosecute me in court for something that I do in my own country when that action is legal in my own country.

You mean like the USA convicting a Canadian citizen for doing something in Canada while resident in Canada that is not illegal in Canada?
Re:Ghostbusters by NitroWolf · 2006-10-09 14:58 · Score: 0

Can you cite a source? I can't find anything on Comcast's terms of service, or on Google.

What Federal, State or local statute is forcing you to use Comcast again? I can't seem to find it on any .gov site or on Google.
Re:Ghostbusters by mrchaotica · 2006-10-09 15:17 · Score: 1

In that case, take it up with Comcast, not Spamhous!

--
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Re:Ghostbusters by mckyj57 · 2006-10-09 15:39 · Score: 1

More importantly, a similar procedure could open up a line of communication between the "spammer" and the antispam provider that may allow the antispam provider to force positive change in the behavior of the advertiser.

Do you realize that most spammers completely ignore all laws? You are suggesting the equivalent of a homeowner negotiating with a burgler to limit the amount they steal.
Re:Ghostbusters by rmerry72 · 2006-10-09 17:36 · Score: 1

If they want to run a business in the UK and play it by the UK legal rules (as they so far do) they should close shop under .org and move to spamhaus.org.uk
Which domain they operate under does not imply a jurisdication for a court. Spanhoaus is a UK organisation and have no phisical operations in the US let along Illonois. Having their site under .org does not change this, so moving to .org.uk wouldn't change a damn thing either.

--
We do not inherit the Earth from our parents. We borrow it from our children.
Re:Ghostbusters by Coldmoon · 2006-10-09 19:07 · Score: 1

"Do you realize that most spammers completely ignore all laws? You are suggesting the equivalent of a homeowner negotiating with a burglar to limit the amount they steal."

You misunderstand the point I am trying to make. Yes of course I recognize and know very well that spammers are by definition ignoring these laws where they exist.

Where the communication becomes effective is when the industry creates standards of detection/blocking, defend their standards vigorously, and then force the spammers to seek a more acceptable method of doing business. Without some form of good faith debate/discussion between the community, the advertisers, and the antispam industry, what hope is there that these standards will be set, much less agreed upon globally?

All spam is not advertising and all advertising is not spam but almost all of it is... Don't you think the time has come to lay all the cards on the table and end this debate once and for all?

--
Coldmoon over Dark water...
Re:Ghostbusters by 10Ghz · 2006-10-09 19:12 · Score: 1

"However, we, in the US, have this little thing called the first amendment. The right to free speech. What Spamhaus (or rather, the email server admin) does is interfere with end users ability to receive free speech."

Instead of wasting time discussing this moronic comment, why not just flag his post as "retarded" and be done with it? Oh, it's already -1, Flamebait? Nevermind then.

"ability to receive free speech"... Now THAT made my day!

--
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
Re:Ghostbusters by Zontar+The+Mindless · 2006-10-09 20:01 · Score: 1

I wouldn't at all categorise the GP as being "brainwashed", unless
this and lots of similar info (feel free to use the Google) is really quite wrong.

Saudi nationals have indeed been executed for their religious beliefs, and foreigners there are subject to arbitrary and potentially severe penalties for making any public display of theirs.

--
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Re:Ghostbusters by Coldmoon · 2006-10-09 20:26 · Score: 1

"I mean, if some business that I slighted in China brings a lawsuit against me, I'm not going to fly half-way across the world to defend myself."

While I am most certainly not a lawyer I do know of a certain situation where you would not only fly to be in court, you would hire the best legal rep at your destination you can find and do it as fast as possible.

In the US, even if you are a business that is registered and exists solely in a foreign country, you can be subject to a "summary judgment" if you do not show up for court. This may not mean anything to your company if it does not have a market in the US, but if you do, the court could terminate your ability to sell your products and/or services here, impose fines, etc.

If your major market IS in the US, then your company could potentially be litigated into bankruptcy whether you agree with the jurisdictional issue(s) or not...

--
Coldmoon over Dark water...
Re:Ghostbusters by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 20:40 · Score: 0

I think the problem that the Ghostbusters faced in the movie was that the guy from the EPA was a prick and didn't bother doing any follow up or open a channel of communication with the Ghostbusters.

The problem the Ghostbusters faced in the movie was that Peck was an officious asshole the first time he showed up, Venkman responded by playing armchair lawyer and challenged him to get a court order, and Peck complied.

Now, there are some obvious issues as to whether he actually had any evidence to back up his accusations -- which, one might argue, means that either he wouldn't have gotten the order, or else the Ghostbusters were being a lot more careless handling their ghosts than they should have been and the substance of the complaint was correct. Nonetheless, at the same time, his original request was (on the face of it) a reasonable one (albeit poorly framed), and Venkman was stupid to reject it out-of-hand.
Re:Ghostbusters by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 20:55 · Score: 0

http://mindprod.com/politics/bushismsgay.html

Evidence Bush Enjoys Kinky S&M and Gay Sex
Re:Ghostbusters by chickenandporn · 2006-10-09 21:44 · Score: 2, Insightful

Imagine trying to tell the Ghostbusters that you're not a ghost. Now try it while they ignore your ghostly words since they don't talk to ghosts. Next, try it while they ignore your goulish prose since they don't talk to ghosts from which they're saving the world, the world which should give them praise and parades and icecream. Even if your prose is, well, poetic.

As a "spammer" in their eyes, and trying to cause them to reconsider, I was quickly changed from a supporter to someone who recognizes the futility of arguing with a Zealot.

Let me explain it for the Slashdot crowd: until impacted by DRM, DRM is perfectly great to you. Until Windows has a virus, it's a blissful day or so, and everything runs on it. So is the quality service you get from Spamhaus, but you don't understand until you get bitten. ...and I'm still not a Spammer, but don't bother trying to convince Spam-"we'll change our evidence to fit the crime"-haus
Re:Ghostbusters by Kijori · 2006-10-09 22:23 · Score: 1

No one is forcing me to use Comcast. But if Comcast are filtering mail without telling me, that's still not right. You can't argue that companies should be able to do whatever they want because I can always change provider; some things are just wrong.
Re:Ghostbusters by Kijori · 2006-10-09 22:27 · Score: 1

And I think the consumer would be wise to do this. But e360insight isn't being blocked by Comcast, they're being blocked by Comcast using a list made by Spamhaus. It's important to note that they aren't complaining just that their mail didn't get through - that would certainly be a matter to take to Comcast. They're alleging that their inclusion on the Spamhaus blocklist caused damage to their reputation and caused them to lose business, both because of the defamation and because of the actual blocking. It is Spamhaus certainly that caused the defamation.
Re:Ghostbusters by rudeboy1 · 2006-10-09 23:42 · Score: 2, Insightful

I call shenanigans on this. Spamhaus' list is a voluntary addition to an admin's arsenal. It's not like Spamhaus is some sort of government agency that just put their collective foot down and said company x is now considered a spammer. From a neutral footing, I don't see what law they've broken.
Look at it another way. I don't like Circuit City. I think the people that work there are typically morons, and I encourage people to shop elsewhere. If these people take my advice, it is a voluntary decision. Am I legally actionable for expressing my opinion that Circuit City is not worth people's time and money? IANAL, but I certainly hope not. Am I in any way breaking the law if I express my opinion in a large enough forum (notice I said OPINION... in this analogy, were I to do anything else, such as spread rumors, or misinformation, it would be a misleading analogy as Spamhaus has done nothing to libel the company in question) that it affects Circuit City's bottom line? No. That would be a free speech issue. One could argue that Spamhaus' determination that this company is a spammer is nothing more than an exercise in free speech, and simple recommendation toward it's user base.
This is another classic example of a company finding out it's way of doing business is being threatened by the changing winds, and trying to find a litigation solution rather thana new business model. I understand it from their perspective; it is easier to sue somebody than change the way you do business. However, one of two conclusions can be reached: 1)The litigating company is in fact a spammer, and the system works. Their lawsuit/injunction is simply a clever way for an immoral company to win out against those that might hurt their business, and as such should be fought and hopefully won on the grounds of simply exposing them for what they truly are. Or, 2)They are a legitimate company-a dolphin caught in the tuna net. In which case, they simply need to prove their legitimacy in court, Spamhaus takes them off their list, and the problem is solved.
In either case the answer is not blind litigation, but due process. I think the fact that the company mounting the legal battle has tried these tactics suggests that there may be a mar on their legitimacy. That, or since Spamhaus didn't answer their earlier claims, this is a means to make them take notice. Hopefully that is all it is; a threat. Having their ICANN records pulled is a useful scare tactic, but if it actually happens, it sets a bad precedent for these sorts of cases. I can see the same thing happening with antivirus software. If a company whines loud enough (righteous or not) that they are legitimate, will they be able to successfully force a company like Norton to pull them off their list by sheer legal tactics? I hope not.

--
Raging in an online forum won't do anything for the world around you. To see change, you must take action.
Re:Ghostbusters by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-10 00:03 · Score: 0

then it implies that UK citizens in the UK are subject to US jurisdiction. Follow that slope very far, and you end up with the US ruling the world (or at least trying to).

You're not in the UK, then. The news here has been full of this story:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3746082.stm

Note that what they were accused of is a crime here as well as in the US, but British prosecutors didn't consider the evidence as worth the trouble of starting a prosecution. They were extradited to the US without the US having to produce any evidence that would stand up in a UK court.

Note the the US doesn't ship its citizens off to a foreign judiciary without trial or evidence. Unless they're brown
Re:Ghostbusters by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-10 00:03 · Score: 0

This is an opt-in DNSBL. So your little "free speach" defense doesn't work.

Further, the first amendment doesn't guarantee your right to be heard, only your right to speak (in a public place). You have no right to force people to listen to you.
Re:Ghostbusters by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-10 00:22 · Score: 0

Surely that is not what the first amendment states. It does not state "Only the government is prohibited from curtailing free speech'. What is says is 'Congress shall pass no law....'. Therefore if congress passes a law under which private individuals or companies can restrict the free speech of others (using the courts), does that not make that law unconstitutional?
Re:Ghostbusters by Cederic · 2006-10-10 04:06 · Score: 1

Cut off .uk and watch Blair's Government fall faster than an Eastern Bloc dictator stood on top of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Re:Ghostbusters by nine-times · 2006-10-10 04:36 · Score: 1

No, I'm not in the UK. Our news is less.... um, good? Worthwhile? Whatever.
You're correct to note that they were accused of something that was a crime in both places. Extradition is a particular process that's difficult in cases where there is a wide variance in laws concerning the alleged crime. Extradition preserves jurisdiction of each country over its own people, as it's a voluntary turnover of people whom both countries believe to be criminals, to a country in which they've committed crimes. Therefore, it isn't a case of one country imposing its jurisdiction on another country's citizenry.
Re:Ghostbusters by nine-times · 2006-10-10 04:43 · Score: 1

Yes, I mean like that. From that description, it doesn't make any sense.
Re:Ghostbusters by NitroWolf · 2006-10-10 05:44 · Score: 0

[i]No one is forcing me to use Comcast. But if Comcast are filtering mail without telling me, that's still not right. You can't argue that companies should be able to do whatever they want because I can always change provider; some things are just wrong.[/i]

No one said anything about the moral implications. We are speaking of the legal implications of the whole issue... and legally, there is nothing "wrong" with it. However you feel morally and ethically about it is irrelevant to the discussion.
Re:Ghostbusters by budgenator · 2006-10-10 07:01 · Score: 1

I hope you took stupid pills this morning with your breakfast, becuase I would hate you came up with that using your full mental faculties! Putting forth the assertion that alowing network operators to volentarily stop listening to the spam on the internet by using spamhauses services is a limitation of free speach, but the court shutting down spamhaus isn't is mind-boggling! I'm more of the mind to say that limiting my ability to recieve DNS information for spamhaus.org is an attack on my right to assembly on the internet! Having a right to speach isn't the same as having a right to a forum to speak and doesn't affect my right to not listen.

--
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Re:Ghostbusters by Kijori · 2006-10-10 20:03 · Score: 1

There are no legal implications with providing an email service and then silently filtering out mail? Where do you live?!?

Would you like spam with that? by Kelson · 2006-10-09 07:01 · Score: 3, Interesting

If ICANN is ordered to unplug Spamhaus from the DNS, and does so, is the Net prepared to deal with a 4-fold increase in spam hitting MTAs overnight?

On the plus side, that might convince the judge to rethink the order.

Re:Would you like spam with that? by paranode · 2006-10-09 07:04 · Score: 1

Although the judge may not understand the unintended consequences of that ruling, the world shouldn't be held hostage, so to speak, by the threat that they will actually have to do their own spam filtering if this service were to go down.
Re:Would you like spam with that? by cultrhetor · 2006-10-09 07:29 · Score: 1

The most interesting facet of this case is the nature of the commerce involved. If it were traditional, paper & envelope mail, then there would be several long-standing precedents on both sides concerning interstate commerce and the postal system: prevention of fraud on the one hand, and interfering with private postal receipt on the other. In this case, however, independent ISPs, supposedly autonomous, private corporations, are using a service to filter "junk mail." Although an outside entity interfering with postal delivery is verboten, this is more along the lines of a private company locking its filing cabinets to visitors. I would watch this one closely.

--
"Tu fui, ego eris" - Virgil
Re:Would you like spam with that? by LilGuy · 2006-10-09 07:43 · Score: 2, Interesting

Easily said. Not so easily done. There are many businesses out there that can't even figure out how to lock down their MTAs and prevent asynchronous bouncing, let alone deal with an enormous influx of spam, which surely they won't see coming. Hell I worked at an ISP as the sole Abuse department tech, and that was plenty bad enough at the time, but after something like this... makes me glad I quit.

--

You're nothing; like me.
Re:Would you like spam with that? by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 07:48 · Score: 1, Funny

What's the judge's email address? I'm sure spammers wouldn't harvest it from Slashdot...
Re:Would you like spam with that? by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 08:01 · Score: 0

If you are referring to qmail's behavior: Bounces are normal. I get them (by the hundreds each day), you get them, stop getting your panties in a bunch.
Re:Would you like spam with that? by Red+Flayer · 2006-10-09 08:09 · Score: 1

On the plus side, that might convince the judge to rethink the order.
Sometimes we have to live with uncomfortable outcomes. If I get 4x as much spam to filter, and it overwhelms my system, that's my fault for not preparing adequately (and a lesson learned about depending on others, I'd say). One cannot ignore the law just because one thinks the net result of doing so is beneficial to more people -- that is why we have courts, where supposedly, laws and torts can have their day and be judged on merit.

Few people in government are willing to do what is right, rather than what is expedient -- and I hope that the judge in this case sticks to his guns. If Spamhaus failed to meet its obligations, well, we all have to live with the after-effects, and it is not the fault of the judge, but rather the fault of Spamhaus.

I sympathize with the small guy, honestly -- but Spamhaus chose to play games with the court at its own, and our, peril.

Tangentially, I think it's bad form to make a decision like this based upon potential inconvenience to the public -- it smacks too much of nannyism to me. Sometimes the welfare of the individual is more important than the welfare of the public, and until the case is decided, the alleged spammer deserves the benefit of the doubt.

--
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Re:Would you like spam with that? by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 08:15 · Score: 0

and don't forget to forward all the blocked spam to the judge, so no evidence is lost. . .
Re:Would you like spam with that? by couchslug · 2006-10-09 08:24 · Score: 1

Spamhaus can elect to publish an ONTB (Ordered Not To Block) list as well as a block list.
What I as an administrator choose to do with that info is up to me!

--
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Re:Would you like spam with that? by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 08:24 · Score: 0

Your analogy might be relevant were we talking about security. A better analogy would be your mailman refusing to deliver those junkmail bundles to your mailbox. Unfortunately for me the mailman refuses to not deliver them to me, and instead crams them in my mailbox with the mail I want to get, causing the good stuff to be mere paper wads since I only have a small, apartment-standard mailbox. I was informed by the mailman that the USPS gets paid to deliver those damn junkmail bundles. Several complaints to my local post office about the condition of my mail have gone ignored for years.
Re:Would you like spam with that? by k12linux · 2006-10-09 10:02 · Score: 1

They are not under any obligation to pay the money because the judge doesn't have any jurisdiction over a UK company. The one who failed to follow the laws is the spammer who swore in tesimony that SH does business in Illinois when in fact they have no representation in the US at all.

So it's case of the ILL. court trying to punish a foreign company because they did not obey a ruling he had no right to make.
Re:Would you like spam with that? by Anonymous+Cowpat · 2006-10-09 12:02 · Score: 1

since when is refusing to take even a cursory glance at the plantiff's evidence (which would result in it being thrown out), making a default ruling against a party who you don't have juristiction over, ordering big-number-picked-out-of-the-air damages (because it's a default judgement and that's what the plaintiff said would be fair) and then trying to screw up the rest of the world's usage of the internet when said damages aren't paid, "the right thing"?
Following the law is not "the right thing" when the law is clearly not right. (Yeah, that's very subjective and I can't think of a workable implementation of that model, but it's still the ideal way for things to work).

I would agree with you that deciding on what's good for the public is not more important than protecting the individual, but we're not talking about individuals here. This is a spat between two organisations, and as such, ruling in a way which is really a ruling against every internet-using individual in the world for the benefit of one organisation is not good.

--
FGD 135
Re:Would you like spam with that? by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 16:15 · Score: 0

You're assuming the judge has some clue about what his decision means for the rest of us.

Judges in Illinois are a peculiar breed. Corrupt, Stupid, Inept... Pick any 3. Until the Feds stepped in a decade or so ago, even the Federal courts were overwhelmed with corruption.

On the plus side I just realized these e360 retards are about 5 minutes away from me. I've driven through that little business park many times, though not since they took up residence there. It's a pretty lousy, run-down area. The only reason I ever drove through there was to cut through to businesses on the other side.
Re:Would you like spam with that? by grahamm · 2006-10-10 02:25 · Score: 1

As it should be relatively simple to check that SH do not do business in Illinois, could the person who falsely swore that they do not be charged with perjury?
Re:Would you like spam with that? by From+A+Far+Away+Land · 2006-10-10 03:12 · Score: 1

And if a US judge can order the domain removed, can't a UK judge order the domain reinstated? DNS tug of war.

--
Oh You POS

what pisses me off... by cavtroop · 2006-10-09 07:01 · Score: 5, Insightful

what pisses me off about this whole situation is that using the Spamhaus RBL is OPTIONAL, and initiated by the receiving servers. Nobody said you HAVE to use Spamhaus, people CHOOSE to.

Damn, judges really should be expected to have a clue when sitting in on a case...

Re:what pisses me off... by Alchemar · 2006-10-09 07:22 · Score: 1

Usually I would be very, very against this sort of behavior, but I think just this once it would do a lot of good for someone to post this judges email address, both work and home. Preferably on a few high traffic newsgroups, and make sure that his spam filters are unavailable for use. He is a public official, that is trying to decide an issue that affects the whole world, maybe the whole world needs to send him a note.
Re:what pisses me off... by Threni · 2006-10-09 07:36 · Score: 1

> Damn, judges really should be expected to have a clue when sitting in on a case...

Perhaps if they got a little more spam they might change their mind?
Re:what pisses me off... by dchamp · 2006-10-09 07:36 · Score: 1

Exactly. There are a number of other RBL's out there. I choose to use some of them, but not others. For instance, I don't use SORBS because IMHO they're a little too restrictive - but I understand why some people like them, because they block a lot more spam than others.

To lose the ability to use Spamhaus would be a big blow to spam blocking.
Re:what pisses me off... by Billosaur · 2006-10-09 07:46 · Score: 1

Damn, judges really should be expected to have a clue when sitting in on a case...

But can you expect a judge to be as technically savvy as anyone in IT, given the broad range of cases they must try? Look at the trouble court cases with juries have when the case involves technical arguments (not just IT, but science topics as well).

While I agree that the judge should have some reasonable level of knowledge to allow him/her to judge the case, it doesn't surprise me that judges currently have little clue about the ramifications of rulings in technologically oriented cases.

--
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
Re:what pisses me off... by harlows_monkeys · 2006-10-09 07:58 · Score: 1

Damn, judges really should be expected to have a clue when sitting in on a case...

The judge does have a clue. Spamhaus lost. Sure, it was a default judgement because they didn't feel that the court had jurisdiction so didn't defend, but that is irrelevant. The court has to treat it like any other judgement, and attempt to enforce it.
Re:what pisses me off... by jfengel · 2006-10-09 08:19 · Score: 1

Really? IANAL, but generally it's the executive branch, rather than the judicial branch, that has to enforce laws. Judges only make decisions. They impose sentences, but they turn them over to the executive branch to execute them.

Which is why I'm trying to figure out where the judge gets the authority to order ICANN to do anything. ICANN does ultimately report to the US Government, but not to a district court judge.
Re:what pisses me off... by rgriff59 · 2006-10-09 08:23 · Score: 1

But can you expect a judge to be as technically savvy as anyone in IT, given the broad range of cases they must try?
No, I wouldn't expect a judge to be well versed on all of the technical details, however, it is totally reasonable for me to expect a judge to be aware of his own limitations in such matters. The ability to see the picture beyond the details is the very wisdom that a judge is expected to bring to the matter.
Re:what pisses me off... by toleraen · 2006-10-09 08:53 · Score: 1

I don't recall every choosing to use Spamhaus's list, but my service provider uses it anyway. Where is my (the end users) choice in all of this? It doesn't appear optional to me, because I'm not the one who set up my email server. Therefore, it was requirement of my account. What's next, Qwest blocking every known telemarketer's phone numbers without telling me?

/devilsadvocate
Re:what pisses me off... by 91degrees · 2006-10-09 09:11 · Score: 1

would do a lot of good for someone to post this judges email address

Part of the ruling was a 1 inch by 1 inch message on their website! He's clearly not very tech-savvy. I doubt he has a computer.
Re:what pisses me off... by kindbud · 2006-10-09 09:15 · Score: 1

what pisses me off about this whole situation is that using the Spamhaus RBL is OPTIONAL, and initiated by the receiving servers. Nobody said you HAVE to use Spamhaus, people CHOOSE to.

Just because it is optional to buy a newspaper, does not mean that newspaper is immune from libel and slander suits. Spamhaus is publishing a claim about the parties they blacklist, namely that they are involved with spamming. If a court determines the claim was false or misleading, Spamhaus could be liable for libel and/or slander. It is immaterial whether use of the blacklist is optional.

--
Edith Keeler Must Die
Re:what pisses me off... by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 09:22 · Score: 0

judges really should be expected to have a clue when sitting in on a case...

The Judge never had the chance to look at the real issue at all, so you can't actually take his ruling as his not having a clue.

Legally, if I sue you, and you don't show up, the Judge has to rule in my favor. He has to give me a default judgement.

If a hypothetical clued-in judge who knew all about how the blackhole lists worked had been handed this case, that judge would have legally had to give a judgement in favor of the plaintiff, because the defendent did not show up.

It's that simple. Don't blame the Judge.
Re:what pisses me off... by KirkTBrujah · 2006-10-09 09:26 · Score: 1

You agreed to your ISP's Terms of Service when you signed up for the account. Therefore you *did* agree to use their service. If you don't like it; get a new service provider.
Re:what pisses me off... by J053 · 2006-10-09 09:33 · Score: 1

So, don't use your service provider's Email. There are many free and/or pay Email hosting solutions available - you are not forced to use one that uses the Spamhaus RBL.
Re:what pisses me off... by J053 · 2006-10-09 09:48 · Score: 1

So let the (alleged) spammers sue for libel. Hint - they won't, because the truth is an absolute defense against a libel charge.
Re:what pisses me off... by kwark · 2006-10-09 09:52 · Score: 1

Stop whining and move to a decent provider that lets YOU choose what happens to you email.
Re:what pisses me off... by kindbud · 2006-10-09 09:59 · Score: 1

Well then, you have no reason to be pissed off. Mods, can we disappear this thread? It's off-topic.

--
Edith Keeler Must Die
Re:what pisses me off... by Cramer · 2006-10-09 10:30 · Score: 1

But can you expect a judge to be as technically savvy as anyone in IT...
No. Likewise, one cannot assume IT people know as much about the law as a judge (or lawyer.) That's why people are called upon as expert witnesses; they understand subject matter the court does not.

That said, I doubt 99% of slashdot realizes what is actually going on here... Spamhaus (the defendants) didn't appear in court. So, the charges went uncontested. The court automatically rules in favor of the plaintif(s) in such cases, without hearing anything -- no trial, no evidence, no witnesses. It doesn't matter what kind of nonsense charges are being brought; if you don't show up to defend yourself, you're guilty by default.
Re:what pisses me off... by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 10:51 · Score: 0

What's next, Qwest blocking every known telemarketer's phone numbers without telling me?

I would pay for that service!
Re:what pisses me off... by Achromatic1978 · 2006-10-09 12:18 · Score: 1

Interesting. One of Spamhaus's defenses is "it's illegal to spam in the UK in the first place, so we're going to keep listing it". So you actually end up with a list, with no evidence provided (or needed to), of Spamhaus saying "x is engaged in criminal behaviour", "y is a criminal".
When you do that, and without an accurate list (as it's not all the time, though I use it myself) - making concrete statements that someone is engaged in an illegal activity, in public... why shouldn't you be made to defend yourself against someone willing to claim that you are libelling or defaming someone's character?
Re:what pisses me off... by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · 2006-10-09 12:20 · Score: 1

And this is exactly the reason that the major Internet infrastructure should not be, directly or indirectly, under the control of a single national government.

Personally, I would be happy to see Spamhaus burn in hell. I'm quite capable of filtering my own junk mail, and sick and tired of the damaging losses when Spamhaus hit an occasional false positive and some random service provider between someone sending me a message I want and my own ISP happened to sign up. And of course Spamhaus are not above the law. Next time their directors visit the US, go ahead and lock 'em up if your law says you must (though you might want to consider the implications of that kind of legal system more deeply, too).

But on the other hand, you have to recognise that this was an action brought against a relatively small organisation in a foreign jurisdiction. If they choose not to defend themselves in that jurisdiction, then it's a very dangerous precedent to have the judiciary/executive branches there trying to screw the (non-)defendants indirectly because they happen to be able to through other means. The government of the US should not be able to disconnect someone in another country from the Internet, whether on a whim, a court order, or an act of Congress. They have no moral authority to do so. Indeed, if the roles were reversed, you'd probably have GWB on TV announcing that the US was under attack from cyber-terrorists attempting to hold its economy hostage or some such claptrap.

--
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Re:what pisses me off... by DavidTC · 2006-10-09 12:27 · Score: 1

Or just buy a damn email account. They have free ones that you have to do webmail with, and they have pay ones for trivial prices that you do anything with.

--
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Re:what pisses me off... by TekPolitik · 2006-10-09 13:03 · Score: 1

But can you expect a judge to be as technically savvy as anyone in IT, given the broad range of cases they must try?

Many superior courts have discipline-specific lists where the judges hearing cases on the list are those who have greater expertise in the area. In the New South Wales Supreme Court they have discipline specific lists for Criminal Law, Administrative Law, Probate, Commercial Law, Admiralty (matters involving ships) and Protective matters (welfare). Computer law is an area justifying the creation of specialist lists and the appointment of judges with suitable skills to go on such a list. It is not a prerequisite to this for there to be enough matters in the specialty area to keep the judge busy since a judge on the specialty list can still take cases from the general list.
Re:what pisses me off... by Alchemar · 2006-10-09 13:05 · Score: 1

I bet the person in his office that does the actual work has one!
Re:what pisses me off... by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 14:35 · Score: 0

A few comments:

1. Spamhaus (and most RBL's) don't have an objective, effective way of appealing being labled as a spammer. Lets fase it, RBL's have ammassed a great deal of power on the internet. Abuse of that power happens (can you say colatteral dammage?). This is, simply put, wrong, and thats made worse by there being no accontability of any kind in the process. Power corrupts, especially when unchecked.

If an orginization sets itself up to make judgements of others, then it really needs to have a system in place for dealing with the abuses that do occur.

2. The claim that mail admins choose to impliment the SERVICE is true, as is the claim that mail admins are free to impliment it in a number of ways. Claims like yours are made often, in effect trying to takes the RBL off the hook - after all, they don't choose what to block. That would be true, if that was how the RBL's actually work, but the argument doesn't hold water.

For the argument to hold water, the mail admins would have to be involved in accepting or rejecting lists on an ongoing basis, that is they would have to activly be involved in the process, or at least be advised of what is in the lists. As we all know, the majority of those admins using the RBL's don't - they use it as an automated system, and only look at it when a complaint is made or something breaks. Because it is used by so many in this automated way, the claim of RBL's blocking mail is not as out there as you (and many others) claim, and could (in my opinion) be proven in court.

3. Spamhaus does enough buisness in the US that a claim of juristiction could likely be upheld. they have distributers and clients in the US, US based volunteers, etc. In other words, I think there is ample contact to assert juristiction.

4. The court has a lot of options in addition to taking away the domain name. The court could order all US based ISP's to reroute all Spamhaus domains and IP addresses to /dev/null or even to a site controled by 360. Does your traffic to Spamhaus flow through the US or a network controled by a US company?

Hopefully ICANN is rational by realmolo · 2006-10-09 07:01 · Score: 3, Insightful

I imagine that ICANN will say "Uh...no" if they actually do get that court order. I mean, ICANN is kind of evil, but I guarantee they hate spammers AT LEAST as much as everyone else.

Re:Hopefully ICANN is rational by nihaopaul · 2006-10-09 07:10 · Score: 2, Interesting

i for one would pledge to support countersuing the government and the judge for loss of information and damages ranging into the thousands daily from increased spam. money talks bullshit walks, hit them hard and where it hurts
Re:Hopefully ICANN is rational by eneville · 2006-10-09 07:15 · Score: 1

The people who deal with domains day in and day out will know what spam hits the tech/admin contact details. Be sure that ICANN support staff will suffer from this... But doesn't the judge realise that his mail box is partly being protected by RBLs?

--
Why UNIX?
Re:Hopefully ICANN is rational by CyberZen · 2006-10-09 07:29 · Score: 2, Interesting

Sovereign Immunity

Good luck.
Re:Hopefully ICANN is rational by maxwell+demon · 2006-10-09 07:34 · Score: 5, Insightful

Moreover, given that there are ambitions to get control away from ICANN to an internationally controlled entity, for ICANN it would essencially be suicide to follow such an order. Because it would deliver the perfect argument: A real world case causing huge damage to everyone, which would not have been possible if it were under international control.

--
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Re:Hopefully ICANN is rational by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 07:43 · Score: 1, Interesting

you cannot sue a state. The government is not the state.
Re:Hopefully ICANN is rational by cgenman · 2006-10-09 07:44 · Score: 3, Insightful

It's a good thing that the management of ICANN was turned over to an international consortium to tend the domain name system in a broadly fair and equitable... wait, what? Crap. Nevermind.

--
The ______ Agenda
Re:Hopefully ICANN is rational by TheRaven64 · 2006-10-09 07:45 · Score: 1

I don't live in the USA, and this would affect me. I can imagine that the WTO might not look too kindly on this kind of behaviour...

--
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Re:Hopefully ICANN is rational by terrymr · 2006-10-09 07:57 · Score: 1

Federal Tort Claims Act
Re:Hopefully ICANN is rational by Maximilio · 2006-10-09 08:06 · Score: 1

Uh, I think people sue the government all the time. In fact, I'm sure of it. It's called redress of grievances.

--
My book, podcast
Re:Hopefully ICANN is rational by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 08:23 · Score: 0

ICANN, unlike Spamhaus, is located in the USA. That means a US court has the power to compel ICANN to follow its orders.

Of course, wherever ICANN is located, it will be subject to the jurisdiction of some court.
Re:Hopefully ICANN is rational by robertjw · 2006-10-09 08:24 · Score: 2, Interesting

Exactly. A US court ordering ICANN to drop a name could have disasterous results. Not only would it be the end of ICANN, it could cause a MAJOR backlash resulting in a chaos of domain names.

I hate to bring up that whole slippery slope thing, but we can't just have courts ordering names removed from DNS. What's next? Porn sites? Music sharing? Terrorists? Communists? Democrats? Without an independent, (relatively) impartial name registration/IP address management system the whole concept of a global Internet could break down.

--
Find coupons in Greeley
Re:Hopefully ICANN is rational by Tony+Hoyle · 2006-10-09 08:36 · Score: 4, Insightful

The EU is ready to take over ICANN regionally already - they needed to to have a credible threat to get their own way last year, and make no mistake if they were pushed make the switch that will end ICANN (and probably end the idea of a single global entity controlling DNS.. it'll be down to regional ones, because China will want their own, the US will probably keep ICANN, etc..).

If ICANN start ordering UK websites down at the request of random US courts then that'll be a pretty hard push in that direction. Even the americans aren't that bloody stupid.
Re:Hopefully ICANN is rational by Sal+Zeta · 2006-10-09 08:37 · Score: 1

I have no idea how the Domain Servers at ICANN work, But couldn't they block the domain just for the United States, complying with the order? So the rest of the world can keep using Spamhaus services, and at the same time making the judges happy, and "some" system admin very, very, very busy for a week or two.
Re:Hopefully ICANN is rational by robertjw · 2006-10-09 08:51 · Score: 1

Exactly, and as much as I like the idea of regional (or at least decentralized) control over all aspects of the Internet, as owner of a few websites I'm not looking forward to coordinating International naming services.

I you are right and we americans aren't that stupid.

--
Find coupons in Greeley
Re:Hopefully ICANN is rational by Maxo-Texas · 2006-10-09 09:13 · Score: 1

You can usually sue the government if it gives you permission to sue it.
That's the way it works for some of the layers of government above me.

--
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Re:Hopefully ICANN is rational by 91degrees · 2006-10-09 09:15 · Score: 1

If ICANN start ordering UK websites down at the request of random US courts then that'll be a pretty hard push in that direction. Even the americans aren't that bloody stupid.

The federal court system has - quite rightly - no interest whatsoever in the diplomatic squabbles with other nations. It is ideally concerned only with interpretation of the law. Diplomacy is the government's job. Not the court's.
Re:Hopefully ICANN is rational by DavidTC · 2006-10-09 12:42 · Score: 1

Of course, wherever ICANN is located, it will be subject to the jurisdiction of some court.
No it wouldn't. It could be a soveign organization, like the United Nations or the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Just because those are physically located in countries doesn't allow host countries to barge in and make demands. They have treaties with said organizations, and other nations, that say they will not do that.
Of course, ICANN needs internet access, which complicates things a bit. OTOH, they're just actually in charge of the 13 root servers, which require a lot less bandwidth than people think...all DNS servers ask, for example 'Where is .com or .uk located?', get that answer once, and cache it for days.
They actually work on a Red Cross-like idea...the 13 root servers being operated by different national organizations, like the Red Crosses, but if one of them gets meddled with by their government, or goes rogue, they can uncertify it and pick another national organization, probably in a different country.(1)
And, incidentally, means this entire idea of messing with ICANN is silly. The only way ICANN could get rid of the .uk and .org address for spamhous would be is to take all of .uk and .org off the air.
1) I don't recommend this, because ICANN is, right now, CRAP. Seriously, it is completely screwed up, and, right now at least, the US government could fix it.

--
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Re:Hopefully ICANN is rational by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 18:09 · Score: 0

Even the americans aren't that bloody stupid.

Don't count on it :P

As an American, I see no real limits to the level of stupidity those in power are willing to inflict. What's a website compared to 1,000's dead? Whatever you do, don't come over here though. Now they can detain you without trial and torture you, secretly and indefinately.
Re:Hopefully ICANN is rational by Calinous · 2006-10-09 21:23 · Score: 1

All that says is US citizens can not sue US Government, and british citizens cannot sue UK government. A foreign citizen could sue US Government, at least if the act against the citizen happened in a place where US does not have jurisdiction
Re:Hopefully ICANN is rational by CyberZen · 2006-10-10 03:07 · Score: 1

However, no US gov't employee could be said to have been negligent here. Spamhaus neglected to defend themselves in court, so default judgement was entered against them. The Federal Tort Claims act most likely doesn't apply (but, IANAL.)

What'll happen if spamhaus disappears from DNS? by TheRaven64 · 2006-10-09 07:02 · Score: 1

I'll put them in my hosts file. I'm sure the follow-up story on Slashdot will have their IP addresses in it...

--
I am TheRaven on Soylent News

Re:What'll happen if spamhaus disappears from DNS? by Kelson · 2006-10-09 07:09 · Score: 4, Informative

I'll put them in my hosts file.

Um... you are aware of how Spamhaus's list is distributed, right?

You convert the IP address of the server you're trying to check into a host name, such as W.X.Y.Z.sbl.spamhaus.org, then do a DNS lookup on that hostname. The result you get indicates whether the original IP is liste or not.

Trust me, you don't want to put 4 billion records in your hosts file!
Re:What'll happen if spamhaus disappears from DNS? by Mixel · 2006-10-09 07:17 · Score: 2, Insightful

So you can use the spamhaus' DNS server, querying it directly, using its ip.
Re:What'll happen if spamhaus disappears from DNS? by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 07:18 · Score: 1, Interesting

It really won't matter. They'll just move domain name, maybe to a *.co.uk.

Of course, this whole thing is insane. I bet all those people who supported US control of the root DNS servers are feeling pretty stupid right now.
Re:What'll happen if spamhaus disappears from DNS? by sowth · 2006-10-09 07:26 · Score: 1

I think you are confused as to what this guy is saying. The judge ordered ICANN to take Spamhaus' domain off the DNS system. If people put the IP for spamhaus.org in their hosts file, they will still be able to use it.
Re:What'll happen if spamhaus disappears from DNS? by sowth · 2006-10-09 07:29 · Score: 1

Nevermind, I was confused as to what you said. So how to fix it? Put the address in resolv.conf?
Re:What'll happen if spamhaus disappears from DNS? by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 07:31 · Score: 0

If DNS adminstrators hard-coded the "NS" record for spamhaus.org, then nobody would need ICANN's information. How many email administrators using Spamhaus are *also* the DNS administrator? Probably a lot of them.

-AC
Re:What'll happen if spamhaus disappears from DNS? by wfberg · 2006-10-09 07:32 · Score: 1

Um... you are aware of how Spamhaus's list is distributed, right?

People who use spamhaus usually have some inkling how DNS works (being, for example, ISPs).
They can just add spamhaus to their hints file.

--
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
Re:What'll happen if spamhaus disappears from DNS? by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 07:34 · Score: 2, Informative

Um... Are you familiar with how DNS works? He'll put the address of the modified Spamhaus DNS server in his hosts file. That way his MTA can still do the lookups even if their domain no longer resolves.
Re:What'll happen if spamhaus disappears from DNS? by Kelson · 2006-10-09 07:42 · Score: 1
think you are confused as to what this guy is saying. The judge ordered ICANN to take Spamhaus' domain off the DNS system. If people put the IP for spamhaus.org in their hosts file, they will still be able to use it.

Their website, sure. But taking down spamhaus.org will also make the SBL inaccessible. Putting the IP of their web or mail server in your hosts file isn't going to help, because you have to look up a different hostname for each IP you test. Putting it resolv.conf might, but then you have to deal with sending all your DNS queries to spamhaus or waiting for timeouts.

Really, there are three ways to access the SBL if spamhaus.org gets taken out:
- Someone could set up a mirror at another domain.
- If you run a DNS server, you could arrange to retrieve a full copy of the zone (via rsync, for instance) and mirror it locally.
- If you run a DNS server, you can set it up to forward all requests for *.spamhaus.org to their DNS servers.
All of these are more complicated than putting an IP in your hosts file.
Re:What'll happen if spamhaus disappears from DNS? by Maxo-Texas · 2006-10-09 07:46 · Score: 1

And could use one of the openDNS services. They are kinda decentralized and probably hard to sue/shut down.

--
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Re:What'll happen if spamhaus disappears from DNS? by TCM · 2006-10-09 07:57 · Score: 4, Informative

Hell, NO!

You would be trying to use their DNS server as a recursive resolver. DON'T do that! It wouldn't work and you'd be an annoyance to them.

I suggest you read about DNS before doing things of which you don't understand the impact.

What could work is running BIND and doing something along the lines of
zone "spamhaus.org" { type forward; forwarders <their ip address>; };

--
Of course it runs NetBSD. BTC: 1NT7QvbetmANwaMzhpVL6
Re:What'll happen if spamhaus disappears from DNS? by Kelson · 2006-10-09 07:57 · Score: 1

Sorry, didn't see your other reply. Must've been posted while I was typing.
Re:What'll happen if spamhaus disappears from DNS? by maelstrom · 2006-10-09 07:58 · Score: 1

Oh come on, like it would be different in any other country, look at the problems that Yahoo and Ebay have had in France for example.

--
The more you know, the less you understand.
Re:What'll happen if spamhaus disappears from DNS? by TCM · 2006-10-09 08:00 · Score: 1

They can just add spamhaus to their hints file.
No, not that either. Spamhaus doesn't operate root servers.

People, PLEASE, if you don't understand DNS, don't suggest stuff.

See http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=199897&cid =16368821

--
Of course it runs NetBSD. BTC: 1NT7QvbetmANwaMzhpVL6
Re:What'll happen if spamhaus disappears from DNS? by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 08:11 · Score: 0

You _could_ make your own server authoratative for the domain and delegate to the spamhaus servers for the 0..255 subdomains ...

Messy though.
Re:What'll happen if spamhaus disappears from DNS? by TCM · 2006-10-09 08:14 · Score: 1

See my other post. Make your server auth but forward all requests to Spamhaus' servers.

--
Of course it runs NetBSD. BTC: 1NT7QvbetmANwaMzhpVL6
Re:What'll happen if spamhaus disappears from DNS? by afidel · 2006-10-09 08:18 · Score: 1

If you run a DNS server, you can set it up to forward all requests for *.spamhaus.org to their DNS servers.

All of these are more complicated than putting an IP in your hosts file.

Actually if you run MS DNS it really is just as easy to add a Forwarder as it is to add a hosts entry. Simply fire up the DNS admin console, select your DNS server to manage, click on forwarders. Add the domain to forward requests for and add the ip address(es) of the DNS server(s) to answer for that domain.

--
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Re:What'll happen if spamhaus disappears from DNS? by Tony+Hoyle · 2006-10-09 08:29 · Score: 1

spamhaus.org.uk already resolves.. problem solved.

A US court would have trouble trying to get the UK registry to pull websites that have broken no laws.
Re:What'll happen if spamhaus disappears from DNS? by Cramer · 2006-10-09 10:40 · Score: 1

MSDNS 5.0 (2k server) doesn't do per-domain forwarding. (what BIND calls "slave" zones.) I really wish it did, but that's what I've got to work with.
Re:What'll happen if spamhaus disappears from DNS? by Cramer · 2006-10-09 10:44 · Score: 1

Actually, they can. However, that's much more complicated than ever necessary. (I've been forced to do something like this exactly once in 20 years... f'ing Cisco IP phones.)
Re:What'll happen if spamhaus disappears from DNS? by sowth · 2006-10-09 19:58 · Score: 1

Good thing you are here. :-)
For some reason I thought there was an option in resolv.conf where you could specify a server to use for a specific domain name. I tried to look at the man page, but for some reason I was typing 'man /etc/resolv.conf' which doesn't work.

ICANNot do it cap'n! by Volante3192 · 2006-10-09 07:04 · Score: 3, Interesting

Can ICANN even pull a second level domain? .org is managed by Public Interest Registry. One would imagine all ICANN could do would be to put a halt on the org TLD...

Re:ICANNot do it cap'n! by maxwell+demon · 2006-10-09 07:10 · Score: 1

One would imagine all ICANN could do would be to put a halt on the org TLD...

Well, that way all those .org domains at least won't have to deal with SPAM :-)

--
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Re:ICANNot do it cap'n! by eneville · 2006-10-09 07:18 · Score: 1

They can do what they want if the registrar's offices are in USA. The data is stored on a hard disk in the USA then the court can sieze it.

--
Why UNIX?
Re:ICANNot do it cap'n! by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 20:47 · Score: 0

If they do pull .org, that's one thing we won't hear about from slashdot.

ICANN abuse by JonyEpsilon · 2006-10-09 07:07 · Score: 4, Insightful

If I've ever heard a compelling argument for an independent ICANN, this is it!

Re:ICANN abuse by Nicholas+Evans · 2006-10-09 07:17 · Score: 1

I would have to agree with you. That was one of my first thoughs upon reading the summary.

--
The Yasashii Syndicate ||
Re:ICANN abuse by russotto · 2006-10-09 09:49 · Score: 1

An independent replacement for ICANN still has to be located somewhere. Wherever it is located, it is subject to idiotic court orders of that location.

ICANN isn't located in Illinois, is it? They don't list an Illinois office on their web site, anyway. Seems to me that it's almost as far out of the court's jurisdiction as Spamhaus is.
Re:ICANN abuse by Jesus_666 · 2006-10-09 12:33 · Score: 1

ICANN isn't located in Illinois, is it? They don't list an Illinois office on their web site, anyway. Seems to me that it's almost as far out of the court's jurisdiction as Spamhaus is.

The ICANN servers are located around the world, but ICANN itself derives most of its power from a contract with the US Department of Commerce, giving the USA power over it. That's why an independent ICANN was such a good idea - no single country could decide that the (top level) domain XYZ had to be blocked etc.

Currently we have local DNS root organzationss (ICANN, ORSN...) with most people using the US root (which happens to be local only as far as legal responsibility goes). Thus if the USA want to manipulate their root then most people get the manipulated results. That's one of the main reasons why the people behind ORSN decided to establish a local European root - as a trustworthy root network in case the American root can't be trusted anymore for geopolitical or legal reasons.

--
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)

4 fold increase in spam overnight by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 07:10 · Score: 0

Well Spamhaus isn't the only one on the net running a RBL, sounds like they're in a pickle all right.

Stop Using SMTP by ThinkComp · 2006-10-09 07:10 · Score: 0, Offtopic

One option is to use CommonRoom ( http://www.commonroom.com/ ), which offers a non-SMTP e-mail service for authenticated users.

webserver couldnt handle 100-fold increase in hits by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 07:10 · Score: 0

Therefore, here is the blog posting text:

ICANN ordered by Illinois court to suspend spamhaus.org
gadi - October 7, 2006 on 4:12 am | In Web, Commentary, Culture, Networking |

Information about this court ruling can be found on Spamhaus's web site, here:
http://www.spamhaus.org/archive/legal/e360/kocoras _order_6_10.pdf

Apparently, at this stage, it is only a proposed ruling. But I am no lawyer.

This story has been discussed before, when Spamhaus, which is located in the UK, was sued in the US by a spammer.
http://blogs.securiteam.com/index.php/archives/608

They refused to come before the court as "they do no business in Illinois, and are located in the UK.

Legal issues aside, imagine what would happen if Spamhaus was forced to present itself before courts all over the world, where they don't even do business. They are a volunteer organization and spammers will stop at nothing to get at them.

After this court ruling, Spamhaus.org was under a DDoS attack, in my opinion for the purpose of preventing users from reaching the information it provided about the court ruling.
This was done along-side a Joe Job, sending fake email appearing to come from Spamhaus's CEO, Steve Linford. This email provided disinformation about the court ruling, claiming that anyone who uses the Spamhaus service can be facing legal action. This was false.

This court order (potential court order) to ICANN is the one of the most dangerous things that could potentially happen to the Internet, and it needs to be squashed. Next, we would see the court going after Spamhaus mirrors, Registrars or RIRs.

ICANN, while being composed of good people who do try and do good, does very little as an organization where it comes to stopping abuse. A lot of this abuse involves millions on millions of domain names. These are used for spam, phishing, CP, botnets and a lot of other such activities.

IF ICANN can now potentially be used to:

1. Attack an organization that keeps a lot of the Internet sane. Not just spam-free, but rather actively helps the fight against CP, phishing, etc.

2. Circumvent International law, forcing a foreign entity to answer the call of a court around the world, which ruled wrongly on business they don't actually do.

3. Shoot itself in the foot, forcing the formation of a sort of alternate root (we will keep using Spamhaus, folks, no matter what) or a move to a different TLD or a ccTLD. It will no longer be a relevant body. Hey, everybody is talking about how to keep Spamhaus alive. That's an idea that floats around a lot.

It will be a precedent which will open a can of worms, and there will be no end to it. This court ruling needs to be attacked with all possible force, by ICANN, the community, the news and everyone else who cares.

I still have faith in ICANN's good people, and I still have faith in the law enforcement officers who use what Spamhaus freely gives to the world. I also have faith in the judges of the Illinois court, and believe they will make the right call.

This Illinois court will meet with a clue stick and clue up, they don't currently seem to be very tech-savvy to me.
I am not sure at all ICANN can ignore such an order when it comes. ICANN will prevent this legal action, or something else will be done. Otherwise, maybe it IS time for an alternate root, as the alternate evil seems very shiny right now.

This is all yet to be determined, and mostly my opinion beyond the URLs provided. This, however, needs to be addressed. It is serious.

For now, what would be very nice is to see every ccTLD that "cares" provide with a free, courtesy domain name, and point to Spamhaus's IP addresses. Spamhaus.co.il, Spamhaus.jp, etc.

I am rather inflamatory in this post, but to be honest, the world isn't going to end, I will still go to Spmahaus's website even if I have to go to .co.uk instead of .org.

Gadi Evron

The Q-Tip Solution... by patrixmyth · 2006-10-09 07:11 · Score: 4, Insightful

If you use cotton swabs, and I'm hoping that you do, then take a moment to read the package. It clearly states that they are not to be put into your ear, despite the fact that plainly that's the use that 90% of consumers make of them. This is plainly because of liability issues which arise from people who can't seem to figure out how far to stick them in their ear. Perhaps Spamhaus could adopt a similar defense by distributing the list with the explicit instructions that it is not intended to be used to block spam, especially in the U.S. and uber-especially in the region where this judge has authority. Just a thought, seems at least as effective as holding your ears and screaming "LA-LA-LA-LA" everytime the court tries to tell you what to do.

--
"Don't you know you're going to shock the monkey?"- Peter Gabriel

Re:The Q-Tip Solution... by MrSquishy · 2006-10-09 08:28 · Score: 1, Funny

seems at least as effective as holding your ears and screaming "LA-LA-LA-LA" everytime the court tries to tell you what to do
I can't hold my ears and scream "LA-LA-LA-LA" because of a Q-Tip accident you insensitive clod!
Re:The Q-Tip Solution... by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 13:34 · Score: 0

One step better. They should have two lists:

1) IPs/addresses we think spam, i.e., "in our opinion".

2) IPs/addresses we are prevented by law from commenting on, i.e., "simple, indisputable matter of fact"

What people do with the lists is entirely their own business. My guess, lists 1 and 2 would get blocked in practice. Difference is, getting off list 1 is hard but not impossible. Getting off list is going to require lawyers. Simply, what would prevent Spamhaus from simply stating, "these are the addresses on which we cannot common: [list follows]"? This could be a de facto penalty far worse and a perfect example of punishment via 'getting what you asked for'.

Jurisdiction by chiller2 · 2006-10-09 07:11 · Score: 4, Insightful

Is this perhaps why there was pressure to separate the US government from ICANN? Maybe now we can see why.

US court
US spammer
UK RBL

--
--- Commission free trading & free stock up to $500 - use http://share.robinhood.com/kelvinp6 :)

Re:Jurisdiction by eneville · 2006-10-09 07:20 · Score: 1

America is the world police. They want something done elsewhere in the world, they have it done through the UK.

--
Why UNIX?
Re:Jurisdiction by Maxo-Texas · 2006-10-09 07:31 · Score: 1

Actually, I see this as direct corrolation to:

EU courts...
EU Companies complaining...
A certain giant convicted US monopolist selling to customers in the EU market cutting out those EU companies.

I'm sure the US courts can take any dollars from US customers to satisfy fines even if they can't enforce their ruling in the rest of the world. The RBL can withhold service from american customers-- but doesn't want to because of the profits involved.

--
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Re:Jurisdiction by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 07:55 · Score: 0

The RBL can withhold service from american customers-- but doesn't want to because of the profits involved.

I didn't even know Spamhaus made profits or had "customers" as such. How does that work?
Re:Jurisdiction by chiller2 · 2006-10-09 08:02 · Score: 1

Spamhaus is based solely in the UK whereas said monopolist has a physical presence in numerous EU countries.

Microsoft
Microsoft Campus
Thames Valley Park
Reading Berkshire
RG6 1WG

Service Clients Microsoft France
18 avenue du Québec
91957 Courtaboeuf Cedex
France

Microsoft Deutschland GmbH
Privatkundenbetreuung
Konrad-Zuse-Straße 1
85716 Unterschleißheim

I would say that puts them in the jurisdiction of the EU courts. This is not the case with Spamhaus and the USA.

--
--- Commission free trading & free stock up to $500 - use http://share.robinhood.com/kelvinp6 :)
Re:Jurisdiction by WhoBeDaPlaya · 2006-10-09 08:30 · Score: 1

There's that special relationship again. Sucking on the American hind t*t.
Re:Jurisdiction by Maxo-Texas · 2006-10-09 09:00 · Score: 1

My mistake- wasn't aware they were a non-profit organization.

My point only would apply to a for profit organization.

This is totally goofy then. How can a judge restrict someone in *another* country from publishing a list that foreigners choose to look at?

I see no legal standing for this at all.

--
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Re:Jurisdiction by Maxo-Texas · 2006-10-09 09:03 · Score: 1

Hmm..
On the other hand...

From here: (and elsewhere with a trivial search).
http://news.com.com/5208-7350-0.html?forumID=1&thr eadID=21191&messageID=184631&start=-91

And yes, Spamhaus is a a non-profit corporation, yes, but it pulls in millions and millions of dollars a year from internet providers in PROFIT which is paid out to the executives every year.

It sounds like united states ISP's may pay them money- which could be confiscated to cover fines.

--
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Re:Jurisdiction by Maxo-Texas · 2006-10-09 09:05 · Score: 1

Well... as long as no one from the US sends them money, they are probably home free.

OTH, if US ISP's send them millions of dollars (as reported on some news sites), then I'm betting those fees can be confiscated before leaving the country in the future to cover fines.

Of course the ISP's would stop sending the money at that point most likely but also probably won't be allowed to use Spamhaus unless they do send that money.

--
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Re:Jurisdiction by Maxo-Texas · 2006-10-09 09:09 · Score: 1

Interesting anti-spamhaus rant here....
Apparently, even if you *want* certain emails, you can have a hard time receiving them.
Perhaps spamhaus has transformed from something nice (when it was small) to something not so nice (now that it has a large staff).

http://thundercloud.net/infoave/spamhaus-rant.htm

--
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Re:Jurisdiction by McDutchie · 2006-10-09 09:25 · Score: 4, Informative

From here: (and elsewhere with a trivial search). http://news.com.com/5208-7350-0.html?forumID=1&thr eadID=21191&messageID=184631&start=-91

And yes, Spamhaus is a a non-profit corporation, yes, but it pulls in millions and millions of dollars a year from internet providers in PROFIT which is paid out to the executives every year.

That is libelous nonsense. The post, which sounds like it was written by a spammer, probably refers to Spamhaus' Data Feed service for ISP's and large organizations. You can easily see with the price check on that page that the costs per year, even for large sites, are nowhere near such amounts and are simply designed to cover the costs of the operation (including their free public DNS query servers). Don't believe something just because some kook posted it in a discussion forum.
Re:Jurisdiction by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 09:29 · Score: 0

I'll be sure to post defamatory messages about British people, safe and sound knowing that UK courts have no jurisdiction over me.
Re:Jurisdiction by kwark · 2006-10-09 10:23 · Score: 1

"Apparently, even if you *want* certain emails, you can have a hard time receiving them."

Then one would simply stop using Spamhaus to block mail and use it to insert warning headers instead (or completely stop querying it).

All this whining about providers using block lists simply shows that email is to important to leave full controls to others.
Re:Jurisdiction by Matts · 2006-10-09 11:42 · Score: 1

No, it's just a stupid rant. SpamHaus are very contactable if you have an issue, and the block they were ranting about is clearly not there any more. Problem solved.

SpamHaus are good people, and used by pretty much everyone because they are good and they are trustworthy. If they weren't they wouldn't be used.

FWIW they don't have any "staff" - people donate their free time to them because what they do is valuable.

--

Matt. Want XML + Apache + Stylesheets? Get AxKit.
Re:Jurisdiction by MonkeyBoy · 2006-10-09 16:21 · Score: 1

If not for kooks posting misinformation in forums, where can other kooks turn to for information?

--
Moof!

Not just DNS. by SanityInAnarchy · 2006-10-09 07:12 · Score: 1

The NN in ICANN stands for "Names and Numbers". ICANN could not only revoke their DNS, they could also revoke their IP addresses.

--
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!

Re:Not just DNS. by Tony+Hoyle · 2006-10-09 07:30 · Score: 2, Informative

No they couldn't. Spamhaus is european and its IP addresses are allocated by RIPE.

I don't think ICANN even give out IP addresses in the US.

Plus if they did everyone would probably ignore them anyway.
Re:Not just DNS. by GigsVT · 2006-10-09 07:36 · Score: 1

IANA is part of ICANN, and no one ignores them.

--
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.

The odour of bullshit by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 07:13 · Score: 2, Funny

This isn't going to happen, neither ICANN or the current DNS would ever recover from a scandal like this. Let's just forward all our spam to Governor Blagojevich.

Re:The odour of bullshit by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 08:52 · Score: 0

Or, as we residents oft his fine state prefer to call him:
The honorable Blago Jag-off

Ted Stevens says by emil10001 · 2006-10-09 07:13 · Score: 0, Flamebait

of course the tubes will get clogged with all the internets being allowed now that weren't before! And it will probably take at least a day to get the new internets that are let through. /sarcasm

Its a stupid arguement. by haplo21112 · 2006-10-09 07:13 · Score: 1

Users have decided to put their faith in what Spamhaus says is or is not spam. If they say these people are spammers then they are, and the users don't want the mail coming from them. End of story. If they are pulled from Spamhaus then the users will just enter them in their blacklists directly either way they will get blocked.

Its a stupid arguement...they are spammers if we the general public or our trusted agent (Spamhaus) say they are...

--
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.

Re:Its a stupid arguement. by DescData · 2006-10-09 07:25 · Score: 1

Does SH have some special gift so that they never make a mistake? It does matter if their list is optional. If enough people use it, it can kill a users ability to use the internet.

An appeal process is needed. This court and this suit may not be the right process. But a process is needed. IMHO.
Re:Its a stupid arguement. by El+Torico · 2006-10-09 07:30 · Score: 3, Funny

Wait, we should see both sides of this argument. All of us can read what e360insight has to say at http://www.e360insight.com/case_history.html, and yes, I mean all of us. Of course, since we are polite, all of us won't do it at the same time, will we?
Also, we can express our concerns directly to them at http://www.e360insight.com/contact.php. They were nice enough to have a comment submission form. I hope they have a lot of disk space for submitted comments.

--
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is usually crucified.
Re:Its a stupid arguement. by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 07:33 · Score: 0

You're not entitled to have access to anyone's servers. If you don't like a filter, then take it up with the users of that filter.
Re:Its a stupid arguement. by haplo21112 · 2006-10-09 07:38 · Score: 1

Na, any corporation sending email that is not directed to a single user with whom they already had a relationship (aka I already bought a product from you, NOT your partners, not some other related company, etc) and that single user willing provided their email address. Thats Spam, if I don't know your email address before you send my mail, if I didn't invite you to communicate with me, you are spamming me. I genernally just work through a white list personally, your not on my list of people whos email address I know, your mail gets silently bounced, I never see it you never know it wasn't delievered. I used to do a real bounce but the traffic was bogging the server down. I'd prefer I didn't have to do this, I'd prefer that only the people I know, and perhaps the people they know who they felt secure in providing my email address to could email me. However with all the spam I have no choice I don't want to see spam in my inbox ever. I don't want to have to deal with the false positives and potential misses of filters so its a whitelist.

It really is that simple, if I don't know you your spamming me, and I don't want your mail.

--
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
Re:Its a stupid arguement. by DescData · 2006-10-10 13:09 · Score: 1

I'm not so sure it is that simple. You see a lot of the same thing. Everyone calls it "spam" and you think that it is all the same and there are no border areas where care needs to be taken.

Consider this: You have a small business that you need to promote. You search for prospective clients that have exposes some contact information, like e-mail address. No prior contact, commercial, but is it what you want to eliminate? I don't think so. It seems to me like a legitimate business contact.

That is why the idea of justice was invented. Maybe you believe that you have been damaged by "spam" and you believe that anyone who has been called a spammer must be a spammer. But there is more then one way of looking at things. SH can make a mistake. In this case, it may be right, but we should be alert to the possibility that they may be wrong and provide a means for detecting the mistake and correcting it. IMHO.

Can we Charge Illinois for filtering? by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 07:20 · Score: 0

If this goes through, how about a Lawsuit against the State of Illinois for increased filtering charges? It was their dumb ass judge that thought it better to take a foreign server off line.

Hopefully, ICANN will have more sense.

Re:Can we Charge Illinois for filtering? by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 08:03 · Score: 0

Had you read either of the articles, you would have seen that it was a federal court, and a federal judge, the case was simply filed through Illinois. So while you can file a lawsuit against some random Illinois judge, it wouldn't be him that looked like a fool.

Go ahead - there's ALWAYS a workaround by The+Blue+Meanie · 2006-10-09 07:20 · Score: 4, Informative

So go ahead and pull their domain from the DNS hierarchy.

# cat >> /etc/named.conf
zone "spamhaus.org" in {
type forward;
forwarders {216.168.28.44; 204.69.234.1; 204.74.101.1; 204.152.184.186; };
};
^D
# pkill -HUP named

All fixed!!

--
"I feel that if a person can't communicate, the very least he can do is to shut up." -- Tom Lehrer

Re:Go ahead - there's ALWAYS a workaround by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 08:18 · Score: 1, Funny

Mind posting instructions for those of us using djbdns? Sorry, I can't afford to get pwned thanks to another BIND bug.
Re:Go ahead - there's ALWAYS a workaround by MikeBabcock · 2006-10-09 08:29 · Score: 1

Add the forwarding patch to dnscache from tinydns.org and forward to the IPs mentionned above.

Otherwise, consider putting one of those IPs in a file named spamhaus.org under /service/dnscache*/root/servers

This may or may not work depending on the configuration of the servers at those IPs.

--
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
Re:Go ahead - there's ALWAYS a workaround by The+Blue+Meanie · 2006-10-09 08:38 · Score: 1

Sorry, I've never used djbdns, so I'll have to defer to someone else that knows how to implement the above change (assuming it's even possible) with it. Anyone?

I just make sure to run the latest BIND 9.x as an unprivileged user in a chroot jail. Hasn't been an issue so far.

--
"I feel that if a person can't communicate, the very least he can do is to shut up." -- Tom Lehrer
Re:Go ahead - there's ALWAYS a workaround by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 10:34 · Score: 0

except when the attacker has BIND serve faulty/poisoned data. think of the consequences of that

Hmm... by MythMoth · 2006-10-09 07:21 · Score: 1

I have no opinion on the legal position, but I would have thought it unlikely that Nominet would pull Spamhaus's record or IP address. So ICANN probably couldn't do much about it even if they wanted to. In the worst case scenario one might have to use the spamhaus.org.uk address instead of the spamhaus.org one.

--
--- These are not words: wierd, genious, rediculous

Um, the problem was that they switched horses... by Mr.+Protocol · 2006-10-09 07:22 · Score: 5, Informative

According to the article by the John Marshall Law School lawyer, the problem is not that Spamhaus ignored the initial TRO. The problem is that they didn't. They appeared in state court and asked that the case be moved to Federal Court, which it was. By doing so, they implicitly agreed that the Federal Court had jurisdiction.

Then they claimed it didn't.

I can't think of anything more likely to P.O. a judge than to ask to get into his courtroom, then call him a buffoon.

In the end, as the article says, ICANN may be forced to pull 'spamhaus.org', but ISPs that use it are savvy enough to move to using 'spamhaus.or.uk' or something similar, outside the court's control. But the individuals affected by the order may be unable to set foot in the U.S. for the rest of their lives, even to change planes.

tor hidden service by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 07:25 · Score: 0

publish the xbl and sbl lists under a tor hidden service. problem solved.

Re:tor hidden service by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 08:59 · Score: 0

> publish the xbl and sbl lists under a tor hidden service. problem solved.

Nah. Too slow, too many extra hops, too much data. The existing system doesn't require the ISPs to possess the entire list. If this ruling actually happens and stops the service, an offshore alternative is the answer.

Perspectives by gmuslera · 2006-10-09 07:25 · Score: 1

Maybe the judge have no clue on what he decided... showing him some examples could be good as in:

Making his small children/grandchildren receive viagra&porn sites spam
Making his mail address public, so he WILL receive spam, probably some from the very company he is defending
Making him understand the optional part of the equation, and that he should do the same with microsoft, yahoo, google, and practically every decent mail provider in internet as they are also probably avoiding their users to read the spam sent by that company

In the other hand, Spamhaus method of fighting spam dont stops 3/4 of the spam of the world. Probably graylists, bayesian analisys, and other methods stops far more. And taking it out of main DNSs only implies at worst a small breach in the service until a better solution is found (put it in another country? under another top domain? if really a lot of people use it there will appear lots of alternate solutions to keep having that kind of resource.

Re:Perspectives by dodobh · 2006-10-09 07:40 · Score: 4, Insightful

Spamhaus method of fighting spam dont stops 3/4 of the spam of the world. Probably graylists, bayesian analisys, and other methods stops far more.

You obviously don't run a mail server with > 1 user. The sbl-xbl list stops ~ 80% of our spam. That's for a small email service provider, defending only about 75 million email addresses.

Bayesian doesn't stop spam. It just flags stuff as possible spam. Humans are worse filters than any software. If you have to look for false positives in a spam folder, don't even bother to filter stuff. That is just a waste of CPU cycles.

On the smaller servers I run, recipient validation handles ~ 50% of the spam, the sbl-xbl stops ~ 80% of the rest, dynamic IP blocks and hostname checks stop the remaining.

--
I can throw myself at the ground, and miss.
Re:Perspectives by Tony+Hoyle · 2006-10-09 09:01 · Score: 1

That's for a small email service provider, defending only about 75 million email addresses.

Well I know you US types thing big, but 75 million email addresses isn't small in my book. Who are you... AOL?
Re:Perspectives by dodobh · 2006-10-09 10:57 · Score: 1

Nah, AOL, Hotmail and Yahoo! are bigger than us. Otherwise, no one else. Like I said, small company.

--
I can throw myself at the ground, and miss.
Re:Perspectives by Achromatic1978 · 2006-10-09 12:39 · Score: 1

Right, so you're either Google, or bigger than Google. Yeah, small company.
Re:Perspectives by dodobh · 2006-10-09 18:25 · Score: 1

Gmail is a pretty small player in the mail field.
*Small company == small in number of employees.

--
I can throw myself at the ground, and miss.
Re:Perspectives by vidarh · 2006-10-09 20:26 · Score: 1

Gmail is TINY in terms of number of users by webmail standards. Last estimate I heard was around 5 million users, though it's probably a bit larger by now. That makes even a lot of regional/national non-English language webmail providers larger than them.
Despite the Slashdot fanboys Gmail just never became a threat to the large players.
Re:Perspectives by Azul · 2006-10-10 02:51 · Score: 1

You say you are a "small email service provider" with 75 million email addresses? A simple google search shows that an email service provider with even 10 million email addresses can't be called "small" by any stretch of the word.

The sbl-xbl list stops ~ 80% of our spam. [...] Bayesian doesn't stop spam. It just flags stuff as possible spam.

Both Bayesian algorithms as well as sbl-xbl checks are just methods to flag a message/SMTP-transaction as possible spam. What you do after those checks is (eg. drop the message altogether, flag it somehow so the MUA shows it differently) could be claimed to be the difference between "stopping" and "flagging" spam. But make no mistake, sbl-xbl and Bayesian methods are the same kind of things: methods to check a message/SMTP-transaction and see if it is likely spam. How would, for example, automatically dropping messages with a 80% probability of being spam not be "stopping spam"?

That said, I think the best approach is the one used by SpamAssassin, of associating different scores to each of the tests that can be used to distinguish spam from ham. The scores are found using neural networks. While this has the minor disadvantage of requiring the message to be transported to your server (instead of being able to reject it as part of the SMTP transaction), it should have the highest reliability as far as picking spam from ham does. Usually I drop messages with a really high score, store messages with a high score in a separate per-user "Spam" folder and store the rest in the users' regular inbox.

Hmm, in case anyone is interested, I'm starting to write down a draft about how I setup my servers to do this using Debian and free software.
Re:Perspectives by dodobh · 2006-10-10 05:02 · Score: 1

That said, I think the best approach is the one used by SpamAssassin, of associating different scores to each of the tests that can be used to distinguish spam from ham. The scores are found using neural networks. While this has the minor disadvantage of requiring the message to be transported to your server (instead of being able to reject it as part of the SMTP transaction), it should have the highest reliability as far as picking spam from ham does. Usually I drop messages with a really high score, store messages with a high score in a separate per-user "Spam" folder and store the rest in the users' regular inbox.

First off, filtering on the content is wrong. Spam is about CONSENT, not CONTENT. The only possible value you can give for CONSENT is a reputation based on the initial components of the SMTP transaction (the envelope). Client IP, HELO, sender domain, sender address, recipient domain, recipient address. Given that the recipient address (and domain) aren't useful in doing anything other than blocking open relay probes, the only trustworthy way to check for consent is to use the reputation of the client IP.

If you think that using SA is right, you haven't understood the spam problem.

Humans actually have more false positives than software. Finding the one false opsitive in a full spam folder is more difficult.

We don't DROP email. We reject inline in the SMTP transaction. There is no data phase for most SMTP tranactions which we reject . We don't lose mail. Filtering can, and does, lose email.

The traditional use of a DNSBL was in BGP, and you were expected to block all traffic from that network. Currently that is restricted to SMTP only. Think of it like this "if your IP is in the sbl-xbl, we don't want your email at all" is a 100% spam scoring reputation check.

--
I can throw myself at the ground, and miss.

whois spamhaus.org.uk by AliasTheRoot · 2006-10-09 07:26 · Score: 0

jurismadiction my ass

So does this need to be renamed? by Maxo-Texas · 2006-10-09 07:26 · Score: 1

Voluntary email blocking service to block emails from addresses selected by Spamhaus?

I mean- it seems to me, if I want to pay someone to filter emails for me, I should be free to do so.

--
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.

There is just one thing that can clear up the mess by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 07:29 · Score: 1, Interesting

Public pressure. Through mainstream media. This is the plan:
1) Bloggers blog about this, show their outrage at this nonsense, get themselves linked on social networking sites
2) YouTube users with too much time on their hands create humorous re-enactments of Spamhous process
3) Topic gets hyped, leaks into mainstream media, leads to public debate
4) Plaintiff in Spamhaus process looses business, money, walks the street, robs gas station, dies in prison of drug abuse
5) Whacky redneck fossil judge is forced to retire and takes up terrorizing his neighborhood
6) Everybody is happy again.

Ok, bloggers everywhere, time you do something useful.

Guns don't kill people. People kill people. by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 07:30 · Score: 1

In the same vein:

RBLs don't block e-mail. Admins who use them for blocking do.

RBLs are just a way to look up the opinion of group that runs it about the status of an IP address. It's up to the admins to block or not block based on that suggestion...

I say leave Spamhaus alone. If a company is angry about being blocked they can contact the admin that is blocking them, not the company that says, "well, if you ask me, I think they are spammers..."

Re:HOW IS THIS IMPORTANT by dex22 · 2006-10-09 07:38 · Score: 0, Offtopic

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Independent ICANN by smooc · 2006-10-09 07:43 · Score: 1

If anything is making the case for an independent ICANN, this is it.

I do not know all the ins and outs and frankly I do not care. This is getting ridiculous. Who is appointing these clueless judges?

--
- In Memoriam: Jeroen de Bruin (1972-2004), bye bro

Judges should go under an exam before taking by unity100 · 2006-10-09 07:44 · Score: 1

cases their IQ/Knowledge might not be able to handle.

this is a case to prove this point.

--
Read radical news here

Re:Judges should go under an exam before taking by Score+Whore · 2006-10-09 09:30 · Score: 1

What the fuck? You are claiming the judge is stupid or unknowledgable and yet here you are clearly showing your own raging ignorance. Here's a little hint for you... Judges do not investigate. They do not collect evidence. It is the job of the parties in the case to show up and present their side. If they do not do so then the rules indicate that they automatically lose. To sit here and claim the judge is dumb because he is following the law just goes to show how little you know about the situation.
Re:Judges should go under an exam before taking by unity100 · 2006-10-09 10:27 · Score: 1

Judges are bound to rule by law.

They cant do that unless they are in sufficient level to understand what is going on.

Apparently, this judge is not.

--
Read radical news here

Re:Um, the problem was that they switched horses.. by demigod · 2006-10-09 07:45 · Score: 0, Troll

I can't think of anything more likely to P.O. a judge than to ask to get into his courtroom, then call him a buffoon.

Are you saying a P.O.'d judge might rule differently?

If that's the case then he would recuse himself.

Oh wait, nevermind, I was just thinking our justice system worked. Don't know what came over me.

--
"The last thing I want to do is deal with a bunch of people who want something."
Major Major

Re:Um, the problem was that they switched horses.. by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 07:46 · Score: 0

But the individuals affected by the order may be unable to set foot in the U.S. for the rest of their lives, even to change planes.

True, But there's already plenty of us who go miles out of our way to avoid the US already; as it's degenerated into a police state under it's current administration...

URL for original Court Order by RedneckJack · 2006-10-09 07:46 · Score: 0, Informative

Link to Court Order

Spamhaus is still on the air !

Get a lawyer by debrain · 2006-10-09 07:50 · Score: 1

If you have an interest in the case, get a lawyer and file arguments as an intervenor or other non-party participant. Public openness and participation is a hallmark of Western legal system.

If you don't have a lawyer in that jurisdiction, consider getting a local one who can find a proxy there.

In any event, protect your interests. If you don't, you may lose them; the law tends not to protect those who sit on their rights.

Re:Get a lawyer by nog_lorp · 2006-10-09 10:19 · Score: 1

Mod up, mod up! Where are my mod points when I need them :(

IANA down the tubes... by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 07:51 · Score: 0

Don't forget that we can tunnel IPv4 over IPv4. In fact, I have some internets downloading right now. WTF do IANA think they're going to do, block the entire fucking intarwebs?

ICANN are powerless and no ruling would ever be allowed to stand by a higher court. ICANN (and IANA) may as well just disolve as comply with such an order. Even the stupid money would be on any ruling being overturned on appeal.

Confusing ICANN with the court by shani · 2006-10-09 07:52 · Score: 2, Informative

They can do what they want if the registrar's offices are in USA. The data is stored on a hard disk in the USA then the court can sieze it.

The original poster was talking about ICANN not being able to do anything, and rightly so. I haven't read the contract between PIR and ICANN, but I doubt it includes the ability for ICANN to remove specific delegations from the .ORG domain.

You are correct that the court could theoretically size the servers that are located in the USA, although I'm not sure what the legal justification would be. PIR is not a party in this legal proceeding, as far as I know.

This could be the end of U.S. DNS control by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 07:54 · Score: 5, Interesting

A reckless decision by this judge to crap on the internet over an uncontested U.S. based trial will be a huge motivation to wrest DNS control from U.S. control/jurisdiction.

If U.S. judges think they have carte blanche to impose their laws on foreign entities using domain listing as a weapon then we absolutely MUST get DNS control the heck out of U.S. control, i don't care what DARPA thinks they invented decades ago. The status quo currently is bad enough as it is, but if one person in a robe is going to single handedly eliminate the backbone of the international anti-spam war when the service is based in a foreign country, run by non-U.S. citizens and it's a voluntary subscription service then something drastic needs to be done.

The notion that the U.S. can 'summon' foreigners to defend themselves in U.S. domestic courts is deeply flawed to begin with. It's just amazing that anyone can mock the Chinese for their 'great firewall' when the U.S. is prepared to yank a site from the ENTIRE WORLD, and think they can just because it's domain name is published on a U.S. machine when that is mandated by an historical quirk.

Is it time we gave the United States their little .us domain to play with and left the rest to people who understand how serious this stuff really is.

Re:This could be the end of U.S. DNS control by Anne+Thwacks · 2006-10-09 08:23 · Score: 1

something drastic needs to be done
Militant Muslims have been telling you that for years :-)

--
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Re:This could be the end of U.S. DNS control by Darkman,+Walkin+Dude · 2006-10-09 10:29 · Score: 1

Militant Muslims have been telling you that for years :-)

Not bad, not bad. I'd be conflicted on this one; it has without a doubt the zing and zest of a good troll, and yet the substance is just... lacking. Fine aroma but the aftertaste is flat. I'd give this a two on the trollometer.

--
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
Re:This could be the end of U.S. DNS control by WolfWithoutAClause · 2006-10-09 11:33 · Score: 1

Thing is, '.org' is an American name server. So spamhaus.org is under the jurisdiction of the federal court; and the federal court can get them kicked off '.org'. That's the problem.

It's not clear even that Spamhaus can hang on to their '.org.uk' since the federal courts can lean on ICANN to lean on '.uk', and probably nobody knows what would happen then; it's never happened before.

--
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"
Re:This could be the end of U.S. DNS control by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 12:25 · Score: 0

Nominet who run .uk will probably tell them where to go. If they are leaned on over a .uk domain.
Re:This could be the end of U.S. DNS control by ScrewMaster · 2006-10-09 13:17 · Score: 2, Informative

Congratulations on posting one of the most arrogant, clueless remarks I've heard in a long time. The rest of you had just as many centuries as we did to come up with something like the Internet and failed. We gave it to you for free, let all of you use it, even our bitterest enemies, and have managed it with a far more even hand than ANY of you "people who understand how serious this stuff really is" would ever have done.

Truthfully, your comment smacks more of blindly uninformed anti-Americanism and unadulterated sour grapes than anything resembling a legitimate complaint. Ask yourself just how useful the Internet would have been to the ENTIRE WORLD had China (Great Firewall aside) been running the show for the past thirty years. Would the fractious European Union have managed it particularly well? Would they have been able to resist the temptation to use the Domain Name System as a political tool? That is, I might add, exactly what the European Union was doing last year with all their posturing and threats to take over the root servers. The EU's governing bodies have already shown their irresponsibility in this regard, and I certainly wouldn't trust them with that much power.

Could it be that you are you one of those misguided individuals that wants DNS placed under United Nations control? Good luck with that, my friend. I figure the ENTIRE WORLD will eventually find a way to balkanize and limit the capability of the Internet to levels that suit your average totalitarian state, and make it much less useful than it is today. When that finally does happen (and it will) you'll be looking back to the glory days of United States control, when you could send data anywhere in the world, anytime, anywhere, for whatever reason you wanted.

As you say, this is serious stuff so you'd best be careful what you wish for. You just might get it.

--
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Re:This could be the end of U.S. DNS control by WolfWithoutAClause · 2006-10-09 14:08 · Score: 1

Doubtless. I can't imagine Nominet doing anything else, but it's what happens after that that tells us whether there's enough separation between ICANN and Nominet or not. If ICANN could actually force it though, that would be a major 'woah'.

--
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"
Re:This could be the end of U.S. DNS control by harlows_monkeys · 2006-10-09 15:51 · Score: 1

That would have been a really nice rant, if it weren't for the fact that it works the same way in most of the rest of the world.
Re:This could be the end of U.S. DNS control by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 22:53 · Score: 0

Congratulations on posting one of the most arrogant, clueless remarks I've heard in a long time.

congrats for responding in the exact same way
The rest of you had just as many centuries as we did to come up with something like the Internet and failed. We gave it to you for free, let all of you use it, even our bitterest enemies, and have managed it with a far more even hand than ANY of you "people who understand how serious this stuff really is" would ever have done.

afaik, the best and most used application for your internet are WWW and HTML ... developed by europeans and freely given to the whole world
Truthfully, your comment smacks more of blindly uninformed anti-Americanism and unadulterated sour grapes than anything resembling a legitimate complaint. Ask yourself just how useful the Internet would have been to the ENTIRE WORLD had China (Great Firewall aside) been running the show for the past thirty years. Would the fractious European Union have managed it particularly well? Would they have been able to resist the temptation to use the Domain Name System as a political tool? That is, I might add, exactly what the European Union was doing last year with all their posturing and threats to take over the root servers. The EU's governing bodies have already shown their irresponsibility in this regard, and I certainly wouldn't trust them with that much power.

isnt just lovely how u assume all things american are better than everything else? agree, ICANN did a preyy good job up to now, but who says someone else would have done worst?
and before enumerating the faults of others, better look in your own court .. and btw, since u r so convinced about "american superiority" maybe u can name some of your "superior products" ... cause lately i cant see anything else other than microprocessors and a bunch of web-bussineses
Could it be that you are you one of those misguided individuals that wants DNS placed under United Nations control? Good luck with that, my friend. I figure the ENTIRE WORLD will eventually find a way to balkanize and limit the capability of the Internet to levels that suit your average totalitarian state, and make it much less useful than it is today. When that finally does happen (and it will) you'll be looking back to the glory days of United States control, when you could send data anywhere in the world, anytime, anywhere, for whatever reason you wanted.

oh, u r also very good at predicting the future .. and please stop that UN bashing sometime, it's already old and ridiculous
As you say, this is serious stuff so you'd best be careful what you wish for. You just might get it.

i think the best in the cateogory "be careful what u wish for" is to let all of u american isolationists have it your way .. just close all the ties with the rest of the world and leave us alone.
please .. and thx.
Re:This could be the end of U.S. DNS control by russotto · 2006-10-10 03:01 · Score: 2, Insightful

Quite a rant, but that's all it is.

1) The U.S. hasn't summoned Spamhaus to appear in court. According to the court documents posted so far, Spamhaus was never served with this lawsuit.

2) The U.S. so far hasn't shown any willingness to yank the site. Rather, there's a _proposed_ order from a Federal judge in the Northern District of Illinois which would yank the site. IANAL, but I know a court's powers to compel third parties are limited, and there might be an issue of that district's jurisdiction over ICAAN. Nothing has happened yet.

3) Taking ICAAN out of US hands solves nothing. Wherever the new independent organization is located, it will be subject to the court orders of that jurisdiction. Do you think Europe has no judges willing to write such orders?
Re:This could be the end of U.S. DNS control by Cederic · 2006-10-10 04:49 · Score: 1

Nominet email servers melt under the load from .uk domain owners - me included.

Re:Um, the problem was that they switched horses.. by partenon · 2006-10-09 07:54 · Score: 2, Insightful

"But the individuals affected by the order may be unable to set foot in the U.S. for the rest of their lives, even to change planes."

Is it supposed to be bad?

--
ilex paraguariensis for all

Re:webserver couldnt handle 100-fold increase in h by AndroidCat · 2006-10-09 07:55 · Score: 1

I'm sure that the Cthurch of Scientology is watching the case with interest. "Hello ICANN, about that xenu.net domain..."

--
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.

Expect to do a lot of this by sjwest · 2006-10-09 07:55 · Score: 1

Postfix syntax for cidr's (adaptable for mta's) and includes all e360insights arin ip space Includes some spammers whom used the the case use whois command, and perl:cidr modules. So pass it on to your postman.

63.78.194.0/24 REJECT uu.net/e360insight 66.98.128.0/17 REJECT Wallace/e360insight. 63.78.194.0/24 REJECT Wallace/e360insight. 209.101.225.0/27 REJECT Wallace/e360insight. 63.85.160.0/24 REJECT Wallace/e360insight. 63.85.219.0/24 REJECT Wallace/e360insight. 66.54.187.0/24 REJECT Wallace/e360insight. 64.46.36.0/23 REJECT Wallace spam range.

credit to somebody in nanae newsgroup. Americans sure know how to piss the rest of the world off.

I propose a solution by kimvette · 2006-10-09 08:01 · Score: 1, Insightful

Publicly post the judge's and the plaintiff's email addresses publicly on every messageboard and blog known to man, sign them up for every known advertising list, freebie offer, etc. and extend this to their families as well.

You'll see the order rescinded and the spammer's case thrown out of court with prejudice.

--
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50

Wouldn't it need a federal court ? by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 08:07 · Score: 1, Interesting

The case was at a state court in Illinois and ICANN is located in California...
Could someone pls. send this over to GrokLaw...

Re:Wouldn't it need a federal court ? by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 09:23 · Score: 0

The case is in federal court, which happens to be located in IL.

Gadi Evron, eh? by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 08:08 · Score: 1, Informative

Wow. I never once thought that I'd see Gadi's name on /. -- he can be very k00ky at times.

Gadi's tactics in a nutshell:

1) develop a long-term habit of posting off-topic stuff to nanog
2) get called on it repeatedly
3) challenge what's supposed to be "on-topic" for the mailing list anyway
4) start a new mailing list in an attempt to take real content away from nanog
5) ???
6) profit!

Don't fall for it, people.

Re:Gadi Evron, eh? by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 21:28 · Score: 0

You already posted this amazing contradiction to the nanog list, as anyone who reads it will know.

> 1) develop a long-term habit of posting off-topic stuff to nanog
> 2) get called on it repeatedly

So he posts off-topic stuff and you bitch about it...

> 4) start a new mailing list in an attempt to take real content away from nanog

Then when he makes his own list for his content, you bitch that he's taking it away.

I think we can see who the real kook is here, and it ain't Gadi...

Spamhaus can change their domain name by billstewart · 2006-10-09 08:15 · Score: 1

C'mon Joe, you can always change your name.

Sure, it'd be annoying if Spamhaus.org had to change their name to some country-code domain that's not under ICANN's thumb, becoming Spamhaus.aq or whatever, or even get a new .org, becoming SpicedHamHous.org or whatever. But they could do it.

And they could always become 71.30.168.216.in-addr.arpa instead of spamhaus.org.

The basic problem here is that the court probably shouldn't have jurisdiction, and Spamhaus asserts that it doesn't, and therefore didn't defend themselves, but they didn't manage that correctly. The plaintiff's suit looks very much like the standard spammer complaint against spam-blocking lists, with lots of the usual bogus junk piled in, not clearly identifying who's doing what to whom.

--

Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks

I'm amazed by belmolis · 2006-10-09 08:16 · Score: 4, Insightful

I'm amazed at the knee-jerk reaction of so many people here. I hate spam as much as the next person, but claiming that the judge is ignorant, stupid, or malicious is ridiculous. The fact is, Spamhaus responded to the suit in the most inappropriate way imaginable, by acknowledging the federal court's jurisdiction and thereafter ignoring it. If you get a traffic ticket, even if it is unwarranted, what would you expect to happen if you turn up in court, then walk out and refuse to communicate any further with the court? What Spamhaus has done is the equivalent, only federal judges have a LOT more power. Spamhaus should either have challenged the court's jurisdiction from the outset or, having accepted it, complied with its orders and defended the suit.

Other than Spamhaus trying to correct the situation, I wonder if third parties might be able to submit an amicus brief to the court along the lines of: "Yes, Spamhaus behaved liked idiots, but cutting them off is not in the public interest.":

Re:I'm amazed by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 08:23 · Score: 0

What Spamhaus has done is the equivalent, only federal judges have a LOT more power.

Read the article. The oh-so-scary powers of the judge turn out to involve POSSIBLY forcing them to use a .uk address instead of .org (oh no!) or preventing them from being able to visit the US (horror of horrors!). This stuff doesn't even warrant a yawn.
Re:I'm amazed by Cosmos_7 · 2006-10-09 08:28 · Score: 0, Informative

Unless I've misread, I don't believe Spamhaus has ever acknowledged jurisdiction. The reason they never responded in court was that they believed the action had no bearing on a UK company.
Re:I'm amazed by cheshire_cqx · 2006-10-09 08:29 · Score: 2, Interesting

This was a default judgment. They might have a decent chance to set aside the judgment and defend on the merits. I wonder where the EFF comes down on this?
Re:I'm amazed by ezeri · 2006-10-09 09:36 · Score: 1

You misread apperantly, it looks like they first asked a state court for a change of jurisdiction, and then after it was changed decided to start ignoring the court.

--
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now. - Ed Howd
Re:I'm amazed by zzatz · 2006-10-09 09:41 · Score: 2, Informative

You have misread it.

Spamhaus asked that the case be transferred from state to federal court. In other words, *Spahaus* claimed that the federal court had jusrisdiction, the court agreed, and the case was transferred.

That's what people are missing. Spamhaus *asked* the federal court to take jurisdiction, and then decided to ignore the court.
Re:I'm amazed by 91degrees · 2006-10-09 09:46 · Score: 1

I agree.

Except, I don't see how the summary of the legal expert tallies with the evidence (e360's website has all the court docs, as well as a slightly biased summary of events. quite a good resource all considered). I don't see any indication of them filing to move this case to a district court.

But this is the problem. I lurked on news.admin.net-abuse.email a bit, where they talk about this sort of thing. The naivety about the law is quite remarkable, even by my standards. They're still playing the "yah-boo can't touch me" game.
Re:I'm amazed by belmolis · 2006-10-09 09:59 · Score: 1

The title may be obscure. Spamhaus' motion to remove the case to federal court is listed on e360's website under the heading Notice of Removal.
Re:I'm amazed by 91degrees · 2006-10-09 10:21 · Score: 1

Ah yes. Thanks. I should have read the annotations more carefully.
Re:I'm amazed by stuartrobinson · 2006-10-09 11:56 · Score: 2, Interesting

Yeah, the knee-jerk reaction meter is off the scales on this one. I'm surprised at how little interest there is in the process of getting yourself removed from the spamhaus blacklist. Surely there have been cases of false positives on the blacklist. How often does that happen? And how is it corrected? Is there a well-documented process? Can anyone point to some informative URLs?
Re:I'm amazed by deepestblue · 2006-10-09 13:32 · Score: 1

Hmm? If spamhaus is based in the UK, they can do whatever the hell they want to a US court - ignore them, show them the finger, feed them bullshit. Nothing is ever inappropriate, or atleast in theory.
Re:I'm amazed by theLOUDroom · 2006-10-09 18:17 · Score: 1

I'm amazed at the knee-jerk reaction of so many people here. I hate spam as much as the next person, but claiming that the judge is ignorant, stupid, or malicious is ridiculous.

Why?
Even the most trivial investigation would have shown that the court had no jurisdiction of a UK entity.

Perhaps you were not aware that this court is listed among the top judicial hellholes in the country?

Spamhaus should either have challenged the court's jurisdiction from the outset or, having accepted it, complied with its orders and defended the suit.

Why should a UK organization bear the costs of the broken US legal system? They made the right choice by leaving us to wallow in our own feces. Let the court pull a UK TLD over a frivilous lawsuit. It will make us look terrible and maybe we'll finally loose control over ICANN. Maybe if enough bad things happen, we'll even decide to fix our court system.

--
Life is too short to proofread.
Re:I'm amazed by 91degrees · 2006-10-09 20:11 · Score: 1

Even the most trivial investigation would have shown that the court had no jurisdiction of a UK entity.

So, why didn't spamhaus simply ignore it. Or just file a short motion to dismiss stating "Spamhaus is a UK company that does no significant business outside the UK, hence the court has no jurisdiction", instead of moving it to a district court?

Why should a UK organization bear the costs of the broken US legal system?

Because they started to.

They made the right choice by leaving us to wallow in our own feces. They made the wrong choice by not doing so from the start.
Re:I'm amazed by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 22:45 · Score: 0

"In other words, *Spahaus* claimed that the federal court had jusrisdiction"

Really ? All it says to me that at that moment Spamhaus assumed it had to defend itself on US soil, and thought that it would be better to escalate it to a place where the result would actually mean something (one lawsuit for the whole of America, instead of one valid for only a tiny fraction of it).

After that they got more information, and realized that an US court has got nothing to say about UK people on UK soil. So they acted on that new information, and ignored the US court (something they should, as far as I can see, have done from the start).

And now the US court is not getting its way is trying to demand that some other company (which should be regarded as internationaly gouverned, but physically residing on US soil) to do something that has dear consequences to the whole world (instead of to America only).

My suggestion to Spamhous ? Do a "pre-emptive strike" (god, I just love it to be able use those words against the US), and deny all RBIL etc. requests coming from America for a week or so, and see how fast the ISP's there demand the judge to reverse its decision.
Re:I'm amazed by theLOUDroom · 2006-10-10 00:42 · Score: 1

So, why didn't spamhaus simply ignore it.

They did, aren't you paying attention?
Perhaps they didn't COMPLETELY ignore it, but if you compare that simple mistake with the scope of the misconduct going on across the ocean they look great in comparison.

Because they started to.

Why? They have the freedom to ignore it at any time, since the court simply has no authority over them. They could go all the way through the appeals process, loose and still ignore the ruling.

--
Life is too short to proofread.
Re:I'm amazed by lachlan76 · 2006-10-10 02:32 · Score: 1

Here it is.

Spamhaus is the good one, it's SPEWS that has those problems IIRC.

Down with Illinois by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 08:22 · Score: 1, Funny

Maybe they should just sever all internet connectivity to Illinois.

Re:Down with Illinois by Jesus_666 · 2006-10-09 12:41 · Score: 1

Great. Then the contents of all those pipes spill all over the state and we get a second New Orleans. Really well thought out that little plan of yours.

--
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)

x4.. by Fuzzums · 2006-10-09 08:23 · Score: 1

This means you need 4x the CPU power, so it's time to upgrade all your servers or buy more of them.
Nice one, uncle Sam.

--
Privacy is terrorism.

OK, a correction by krell · 2006-10-09 08:23 · Score: 1

"but claiming that the judge is ignorant, stupid, or malicious is ridiculous"

OK, maybe the judge himself is not ignorant, stupid, and malicious. However, his decisions are. Is that better?

--
Where were you when the voynix came?

Re:OK, a correction by belmolis · 2006-10-09 08:37 · Score: 2, Insightful

No, sorry. You've ignored my argument. This is Spamhaus's fault, not the judge's. The judge was correct in ruling against Spamhaus since Spamhaus failed to defend the suit, and as a non-techie cannot be expected to realize what the consequences of taking down Spamhaus would be. Had Spamhaus behaved responsibly, they might well not have lost the suit, but if they had, they would have had the chance to explain to the judge the consequences of different remedies.

Not just the location by www.sorehands.com · 2006-10-09 08:24 · Score: 1

A court can't order a unrelated party in a lawsuit to do anything. Unless they have property that belongs to the party in the lawsuit.

You are right. IANAL, but if I understand correctly, they will have to enter a action where ICANN is located for ICANN to be required to obey.

--
Fight Spammers!

Wrong by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 08:24 · Score: 0

Um... Are you familiar with how DNS works? He'll put the address of the modified Spamhaus DNS server in his hosts file. That way his MTA can still do the lookups even if their domain no longer resolves.

The hosts file does not allow wildcards. As was pointed out, you'd need an address for every single entry in the blocklist thus: xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx.sbl-xbl.spamhaus.org

Others in the thread who are "familiar with how DNS works" have posted workarounds for BIND.

A question for a courthouse email admin? by tarlek · 2006-10-09 08:25 · Score: 2, Interesting

What are the chances that the local court system happens to use a Spamhaus list or two?

Juristiction my ass by digitalgimpus · 2006-10-09 08:26 · Score: 4, Interesting

Lets look at the facts:
1. Spamhaus isn't in Illinois
2. Spamhaus isn't even in the US, no business presence on US territory at all.
3. Spamhaus only connection to the US is US companies utilize the service.

Based on that Illinois can only go after companies that use the database, not the provider overseas. They don't market or have any presence in the US. The court likely could go after these companies. Will they?

Now what I'd love to see is Illinois try and go after everyone in the US using the database... go ahead and try. I'll keep using it because it's a good effective database.

I've got a feeling there's money behind this ruling. It just sounds to fishy to be legitimate.

Re:Juristiction my ass by Big_Al_B · 2006-10-09 09:05 · Score: 1

Your list is incomplete:

3. Spamhaus only connection to the US is US companies utilize the service. And ICANN/IANA, the US-based corporation(s) that control the roots of the legitimate Internet domain name services and all IP address allocations/assignments.

But I suppose the missing connection isn't relavent to the topic at hand here, eh?
Re:Juristiction my ass by Tony+Hoyle · 2006-10-09 09:08 · Score: 1

$ host www.spamhaus.org
www.spamhaus.org has address 216.168.30.71
$ whois 216.168.30.71
~$ whois 216.168.30.71

OrgName: Supernews, Inc
OrgID: SUPERN-4
Address: 350 The Embarcadero, 6th Floor
City: San Francisco
StateProv: CA
PostalCode: 94105
Country: US

The definately have a US presence.
Re:Juristiction my ass by McDutchie · 2006-10-09 09:33 · Score: 1

$ host www.spamhaus.org www.spamhaus.org has address 216.168.30.71 $ whois 216.168.30.71 ~$ whois 216.168.30.71 OrgName: Supernews, Inc OrgID: SUPERN-4 Address: 350 The Embarcadero, 6th Floor City: San Francisco StateProv: CA PostalCode: 94105 Country: US The definately have a US presence.

Errr, just that they buy hosting in the US doesn't mean they have a US presence.
Re:Juristiction my ass by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 09:34 · Score: 0

You missed a very importiant fact here: They asked to have the case moved to federal court (and thus accepted federal juristiction in this case).

Oh, that right, its never there fault. Spamhaus isn't responcable for anything they do, even accepting US Federal court oversite of this case. They can just point the finger at someone else (you know, like they point to the mail admins that use the list, who point the finger back, as they don't maintain the list, who, well, you get the point).

On second thought, I think that forcing them to take responcibility for there actions is a good thing. Perhaps it will lead them to clean up there own house.
Re:Juristiction my ass by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 10:40 · Score: 0

Canadian much?
Re:Juristiction my ass by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 10:53 · Score: 0

the reason spamhaus is even responding to the judgement is that lindhart and e360sight have said that they will go after all of spamhaus' US volunteers w/ lawsuits..

in order to protect their volunteers they have to address this... otherwise i'm sure that they'd just ignore the judgement..

as many other have said, spamhaus will not be taken down.
Re:Juristiction my ass by Matts · 2006-10-09 11:49 · Score: 1

Spamhaus uses asynchronous DNS to give you a local mirror to fend off DDoS attacks from spammers. Their web server is in the UK, you're just getting a mirror via DNS.

--

Matt. Want XML + Apache + Stylesheets? Get AxKit.
Re:Juristiction my ass by harlows_monkeys · 2006-10-09 16:07 · Score: 1

Lets look at the facts:
1. Spamhaus isn't in Illinois
2. Spamhaus isn't even in the US, no business presence on US territory at all.
3. Spamhaus only connection to the US is US companies utilize the service.

You missed one:
4. Spamhaus may have consented to jurisdiction, by specifically asking for the case to be moved to that court, from the court in which it was originally filed.

That's much less clear by billstewart · 2006-10-09 08:29 · Score: 1

It's not clear whether the judge can order ICANN to do anything or not, and it's more sketchy for IP addresses than it is for DNS names in the ICANN-controlled parts of the infrastructure. Furthermore, Spamhaus could get address space that's not from US-based ARIN, such as the RIPE address space in Europe, which is harder to argue that it's really under ICANN control, and it's not a US organization.

If the judge does the things the plaintiff's asking for, and if the organizations being ordered to do things do them, it's appallingly bad precedent - in theory, any court in the world could order them to censor people, Saudi courts ordering them to censor pictures of women with their ankles showing, Chinese courts ordering them to censor the Falun Gong, Kazakhstani courts ordering them to censor Borat, etc. In less everybody-panic theory, US courts could still at least order them to censor anybody, and spammers could harass any anti-spammer list that doesn't want to defend itself, limiting block-lists to well-funded commercial organizations.

--

Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks

Re:Um, the problem was that they switched horses.. by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 08:30 · Score: 0

"But the individuals affected by the order may be unable to set foot in the U.S. for the rest of their lives, even to change planes."

You also have to hope that you can't be extradited. Unlikely in this case, but you never know how the law may be changed. The NatWest Three (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NatWest_Three) weren't planning on an involuntary holiday to the USA.

Combine that with the European Arrest Warrant (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Arrest_Warr ant), and any administration anywhere in Europe will be able to extradite you. So you are not even safe in your home country. Suddenly a large number of places have extra-territorial jurisdiction over little ol' you. Sure, currently it's only for a limited set of crimes. Mr Wedge, meet Mr. Thin End.

Welcome to the modern world. Please leave it in a state you would wish your children to find it.

Mod Off-topic. This is about SMTP spamblocking by billstewart · 2006-10-09 08:36 · Score: 1

Commonroom appears to be some silly walled-garden portal site that might not be big enough to have attracted spammers, and insists on playing some Flash audio/video demos instead of actually providing a list of its features. If I wanted that sort of thing, I could get AOL, and even AOL finally realized a decade or so ago that its users really wanted the real internet.

Spamhaus is providing blocklists for the real internet email system, which is what most of us use. And spammers are trying to fight them. When Spamhaus bothers to defend themselves, the spammers tend to get stomped on badly once the judge realizes what the case is about.

--

Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks

Steve Linford speaks out by Tyler+Too · 2006-10-09 08:36 · Score: 1

Spamhaus founder Steve Linford is pretty confident that ICANN won't do anything.

Re:Steve Linford speaks out by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-10 04:04 · Score: 0

They were also pretty confident that ignoring a judge and court would have no ill effects either.
His record on judicial predictions does not inspire confidence.

Kevin

traceroute www.spamhaus.org by billstewart · 2006-10-09 08:41 · Score: 1

When I ran a traceroute to www.spamhaus.org I got to a server in San Jose or San Francisco, a bit hard to tell which. Don't know if that's a mirror site or what, but service would be slower for US email servers if all of it had to head to Europe to verify the spamicity of the sender's address.

--

Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks

Re:traceroute www.spamhaus.org by AliasTheRoot · 2006-10-11 07:58 · Score: 1

contrary to popular belief, you can actually set up a DNS record in a UK domain that points at a server in the US. Spamhaus is a UK organisation, all it needs to do is migrate it's users from spamhaus.org to spamhaus.org.uk and setup global load balancing on that domain instead.

hell they could even get IP addresses from RIPE and ask the upstream ISP to route to that block and then ICANN cannot touch them.

Re:Um, the problem was that they switched horses.. by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 08:44 · Score: 0

Moderators: Mark the parent post as troll.

Re:webserver couldnt handle 100-fold increase in h by Red+Flayer · 2006-10-09 08:48 · Score: 1

I'm sure that the Cthurch of Scientology is watching the case...

The Cthurch of Scientology? Now we know the truth!

Body thetans are actually the advance guard of He Who Lies Dead but Dreaming... something told me that John Travolta and Tom Cruise serve Cthulhu.

--
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai

Question by Nom+du+Keyboard · 2006-10-09 08:49 · Score: 1

Hey, even if their DNS record was pulled, can't you still get to them by their xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx IP address?

--
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."

IF... by SmoothTom · 2006-10-09 08:49 · Score: 2, Informative

...the judge orders ICANN to pull their DNS, and IF they actually do it, the estimate is that SPAM could incease 4X.

If so, I sincerely hope that somehow the increase in SPAM to the judge's court is even higher - at least double that.

The only way that folks who purposely damage the system for the majority of users will learn, no matter that it may be just not understanding what they are doing, is if they see a direct effect - a strong direct effect - on their own personal use of the system.

--
Tomas

BIND sucks. by Inoshiro · 2006-10-09 08:58 · Score: 1

Well, mostly.

Here's the dnscache (part of the djbdns family) solution: /service/dnscache/root/servers# cat spamhaus.org
216.168.28.44
204.69.234.1
204.74.101.1
204.152.184.186
#

No need to HUP -- once the file is created and filled with those IPs, it'll pick them up automatically. You can easily install dnscache with the other tools on your mail servers and have them continue to talk to spamhaus w/o using "ICANN't resolve SPAMHAUS!".

Cheers.

--
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.

The problem with anti-spammers... by 91degrees · 2006-10-09 09:04 · Score: 1, Flamebait

Is they keep thinking they're legally untouchable.

Any time they feel the need to defend their service, they use pedantic arguments based on redefining what they're doing, and actually tend tyo get away with it because most of the people they're blocking are clearly spammers and acting in a borderline legal way.

Then they get surprised when the court doesn't go exactly the way they expect.

This is what brought down MAPS. Spamhaus may fare a little better, but it looks like they were caught with their trousers down.

Re:The problem with anti-spammers... by nuzak · 2006-10-09 11:07 · Score: 1

> Is they keep thinking they're legally untouchable.

Name one that went to jail. Oh hey, they're not the ones breaking the law now, are they?

> This is what brought down MAPS.

MAPS was still in business all the way up to being bought.

> Spamhaus may fare a little better, but it looks like they were caught with their trousers down.

A default judgement that will never be collected, and an overreaching expansion of an injunction that will never be enforced. Quite a crippling defeat, sure.

--
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
Re:The problem with anti-spammers... by 91degrees · 2006-10-09 11:22 · Score: 1

Name one that went to jail. Oh hey, they're not the ones breaking the law now, are they?

There is more to law than criminal law. The main reason that no blocking list has been sued is that no spammer was willing to invest the money in sueing them.

Many spammers are operating within the law.

MAPS was still in business all the way up to being bought.

But they lost all remaining credibility after settling with Experian.

A default judgement that will never be collected, and an overreaching expansion of an injunction that will never be enforced. Quite a crippling defeat, sure.

Yes... but this isn't likely to be e360's entire strategy, is it? Or do you think that they didn't consider this possibility? Do tyhe geeks and mail admins know more about e360's legal team? And the generals who say "never underestimate your enemy"?
Re:The problem with anti-spammers... by shutdown+-p+now · 2006-10-09 18:20 · Score: 1

... most of the people they're blocking are clearly spammers and acting in a borderline legal way.
Except they aren't blocking anyone, you know? They just publish the lists that other people voluntarily use to configure blocking on their own servers.
Re:The problem with anti-spammers... by 91degrees · 2006-10-09 19:32 · Score: 1

Yes, but so what? I mean except for technical accuracy, I don't see that there's a huge difference between spamhaus listing a site in order for it to be blocked, and an admin adding a site to a blocklist in order for it to be blocked.

Spammer. by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 09:14 · Score: 0

http://web.archive.org/web/20041023050345/http://w ww.e360insight.com/

Definitive proof that e360insight is a source of advertizing email (spam.)

The claims made by spamhaus are not false, therefore are not libel or slander, and are protected under free speech. GG s/e no re k thx bai.

Incorrect by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 09:18 · Score: 0

You will not be able to use the hosts file, but All ICANN can do is remove the main referral for the spamhaus domain. As long as you have a referral in your own DNS server you will be set.

Reconfigure your MTAs NOW.. by Ungrounded+Lightning · 2006-10-09 09:29 · Score: 3, Interesting

Reconfigure your MTAs NOW.

- Use IP numbers or
- host a domain resolution for spamhaus in a local name server and configure your MTA to hit that first. (Have your nameserver serve as an unofficial secondary pointing to their primaries, and squirrel a dump of their name service just in case the court gets their primaries shut down.)

Then ICANN can pull the record and it won't do squat.

For your convenience (from nslookup):

> server 204.74.101.1
Default Server: udns2.ultradns.net
Address: 204.74.101.1

> set type=soa
> spamhaus.org
Server: udns2.ultradns.net
Address: 204.74.101.1

spamhaus.org
origin = need.to.know.only
mail addr = hostmaster.spamhaus.org
serial = 2006100802
refresh = 3600 (1H)
retry = 600 (10M)
expire = 2419200 (4W)
minimum ttl = 3600 (1H)
spamhaus.org nameserver = udns2.ultradns.net
spamhaus.org nameserver = udns1.ultradns.net
spamhaus.org nameserver = ns8.spamhaus.org
spamhaus.org nameserver = hq-ns.oarc.isc.org
ns8.spamhaus.org internet address = 216.168.28.44

(I'm presuming that the spamhaus.org domain contains the
servers in question. But if not, perhaps someone who
actually administers an MTA using their services can
follow up with the necessary info.)

--
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way

Re:Reconfigure your MTAs NOW.. by Ungrounded+Lightning · 2006-10-09 09:40 · Score: 1

... perhaps someone who actually administers an MTA using their services can follow up with the necessary info.

Indeed, TCM already posted a quick, detailed, recipe on how to add a forward to spamhaus' servers to your own name server.

--
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Re:Reconfigure your MTAs NOW.. by Ungrounded+Lightning · 2006-10-09 09:43 · Score: 2, Informative

Oops. Meant to link to The Blue Meanie's instructions WITH the server addresses filled in.

--
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Re:Reconfigure your MTAs NOW.. by kill-1 · 2006-10-15 10:00 · Score: 1

Sorry, but using IP "numbers" instead of DNS names is a very stupid idea.

Re:Guns don't kill people. People kill people. by 91degrees · 2006-10-09 09:36 · Score: 1

That's just weasel words.

I mean, what is the point of this? Is this a legal defence? I'm sure any half competent lawyer would demolish this argument. Ultimately, by listing the IP address, they're performing an essential functional apart of the blocking process, and if they can use this argument, then you misght as well argue that the admin doesn't block it either. He just types the numbers into a list and the software does it for him.

Those who publish blocking lists should have the decency to take responsibility for their actions.

Chicken Little FTL by kindbud · 2006-10-09 09:37 · Score: 2, Interesting

is the Net prepared to deal with a 4-fold increase in spam hitting MTAs overnight?

Not gonna happen.

Total number of recipients logged in one maillog file: 92033

Total number of messages in this logfile that got a SpamAssassin score increase thanks to XBL or SBL listing: 47818

Total number of scores that may have potentially been pushed over our threshhold (9.0) by the SBL/XBL score: 985

Big effing deal. All the RBLs could go offline this afternoon, and it would have minimal impact on our spam scoring system. It isn't necessary for any RBLs to exist to control spam. It just isn't.

--
Edith Keeler Must Die

Re:Chicken Little FTL by dodobh · 2006-10-09 11:12 · Score: 3, Insightful

92K messages in a maillog file? Over what time period? Is that a toy server?

My current estimates say that $ORK is blocking ~ 400 to 500 million messages a day using DNSBLs, about 80% of which is the sbl-xbl.

--
I can throw myself at the ground, and miss.
Re:Chicken Little FTL by kindbud · 2006-10-09 12:42 · Score: 1

92K messages in a maillog file? Over what time period? Is that a toy server?

One of 8 in a cluster, from just this morning. But this is not an e-peen comparision. Stuff it.

My current estimates say that $ORK is blocking ~ 400 to 500 million messages a day using DNSBLs, about 80% of which is the sbl-xbl.

We send that many in a month (different mail clusters, the big ones e-peen boy), and very few percentage-wise are blocked by RBLs. Anti-spammers hate us and think we're spammers. Yeah, we're listed on Spamhaus too. Couldn't bother us less. MSN/Hotmail performance problems are a much bigger problem for us, as far as impacting our financial goals with the mass mailings. We opt you in at purchase time (its in the click-to-agree you clicked but didn't read), and you can only opt-out later, just the opposite of what antis recommend. The antis hate us, but our management won't change the policy on opt-in because nothing the antis do affects our results in any meaningful way. We still meet our numbers, we still hit the revenue goals. I use the RBLs to help keep spam away from our employees, but as I have shown, if they all went offline it would not allow 4 times as much spam to enter our network. RBLs are just not that effective. They block about 1% of mails, not 25% as claimed. Yeah, yeah, I know at your site they block much more. I am talking about the internet as a whole. Only a small percentage of sites use RBLs exclusively to make spam decisions, and only a few percent more factor RBL listings into spam decisions (like my SA cluster for inbound mails). RBLs are a blip, a non-starter. They make their operators and users feel good, and that's about all the impact it has. If anything RBLs make antis who use them complacent, thinking the RBL is all that anyone ever needs. LOL.

That's how I know this estimate is shit. RBLs do not stop much spam. I know because according to them, I work for a spammer, and it hasn't stopped us.

--
Edith Keeler Must Die
Re:Chicken Little FTL by dodobh · 2006-10-09 18:32 · Score: 1

That's how I know this estimate is shit. RBLs do not stop much spam. I know because according to them, I work for a spammer, and it hasn't stopped us.

Which particular spammer?

--
I can throw myself at the ground, and miss.
Re:Chicken Little FTL by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 21:31 · Score: 0

What a load of crap.

You presume that everyone just uses the SBL+XBL in SpamAssassin just because you do.

Hit yourself over the head with a clue stick, then add the SBL+XBL into your MTA for rejecting connections of blacklisted hosts and save all the unnecessary bandwidth and CPU usage of running SpamAssassin across all of these messages as most other people do.

The SBL+XBL is one of the most trusted RBLs there is -- hence the claim of why 65% of ISPs use it at the SMTP level...

At least I know I won't ever be hearing from your company via SMTP now.

ICANN - is this what ITU have been waiting for? by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 09:40 · Score: 1, Interesting

ICANN needs to think very carefully before following such a stupid order, as it plays directly into the hands of the ITU who want control taken away from the U.S. body. If this can happen to Spamhaus.org, it can happen to anyone like this:

Big Lasagna Illinois vs. Nice Lasagnas Italy :

A small Italian company 'Nice Lasagnas Ltd' gives away recipes for lasagnas on their website, www.italian-best-lasagnas.com.

John "Big Lasagna" Smith sues the small Italian company, in Illinois, USA, claiming its website makes fun of him. John "Big Lasagna" Smith states the Illinois court has jurisdiction, because his friend John Doe, who lives in Illinois, used to download lasagna recipes from www.italian-best-lasagnas.com.

Best Lasagnas Ltd has never visited the USA and has no US office, agents or business outlets, and it's lasagnas recipes surely don't make it rich enough to afford the cost of a 3 month trial at the other end of the world.

So, Best Lasagnas Ltd is not present for the judgement, and John "Big Lasagna" Smith obtains a default court order saying ICANN has to remove italian-best-lasagnas.com from the internet.

This means that any US citizen or firm, having enough money to spend and targeting people small enough, has the ability to disrupt the entire internet-based commerce of other counties, just because ICANN is subject to U.S. laws.

Re:ICANN - is this what ITU have been waiting for? by harlows_monkeys · 2006-10-09 16:17 · Score: 1

John "Big Lasagna" Smith sues the small Italian company, in Illinois, USA, claiming its website makes fun of him. John "Big Lasagna" Smith states the Illinois court has jurisdiction, because his friend John Doe, who lives in Illinois, used to download lasagna recipes from www.italian-best-lasagnas.com.
Best Lasagnas Ltd has never visited the USA and has no US office, agents or business outlets, and it's lasagnas recipes surely don't make it rich enough to afford the cost of a 3 month trial at the other end of the world.
So, Best Lasagnas Ltd is not present for the judgement, and John "Big Lasagna" Smith obtains a default court order saying ICANN has to remove italian-best-lasagnas.com from the internet.

This example isn't relevant, because as stated above, there's nothing that gives the court jurisdiction, and ICANN will ignore the order.
To make your example fit with the Spamhaus facts, you need to adjust it as follows: Best Lasagnas, instead of making a special appearance to tell the court that it lacks jurisdiction, appears and files a motion to have the case moved to a different court. This quite possibly gives the second court jurisdiction. It is in the second court that the default judgement occurs.
The "the court lacks jurisdiction" argument loses a lot of force when the party making the argument is the one that asked for the case to be in that court.

MOD PARENT UP by jhylkema · 2006-10-09 09:44 · Score: 1

That's a very good point. Further, under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, if you get defaulted, you are deemed to have admitted the truth of all of the allegations of the complaint.

Personally, I suspect they just ran out of money to pay their lawyers. And the parent is correct, they could end up with a very nasty surprise when they find out that domesticating a judgment could be a lot easier than they think it is. Of course, they could always go bankrupt and resurrect themselves under a different name.

The biggest bad argument in favor of Spamhaus by kindbud · 2006-10-09 09:55 · Score: 1

The biggest bad argument (there are many, but this is the biggest one) is that use of the RBL is optional. But that doesn't matter at all. Buying a newspaper is optional, but that doesn't mean the newspaper is immune from being found guilty of libel or slander because no one is forced to read it. Nor does it matter that Spamhaus is publishing their claim that certain parties are spammers in DNS, rather than something with more notoriety, like the New York Times. A court can find that a libel against, say, Dr. Stephen Hawkings is more damaging when published in Nature than if it were published in Harper's because the former publication reaches more of Dr. Hawkings colleagues than the latter one, so the damage done to Dr. Hawkings reputation is greater. A plaintiff could argue with the same reasoning that Spamhaus publishing libelous claims in DNS is more damaging to the plaintiff than if the same claim were published in The Sun.

RBL operators take notice: you better document all your listings copiously, with the same rigor as newspapers publishing stories about alleged scandalous activities by our politicians and business people document their sources. You may have to defend those listings against a libel suit. Those who accept anonymous submissions are treading on the thin ice of a libel suit.

--
Edith Keeler Must Die

Re:The biggest bad argument in favor of Spamhaus by Jesus_666 · 2006-10-09 12:47 · Score: 1

with the same rigor as newspapers publishing stories about alleged scandalous activities by our politicians and business people document their sources

Important: newspapers, not tabloids. If you follow the latter ones' practices you probably won't be able to explain to the court why you blocked microsoft.com for sending out hidden satanic messages.

--
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
Re:The biggest bad argument in favor of Spamhaus by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 18:46 · Score: 0

Say that I write that Person A is a prolific graffiti artist/defacer of buildings. Property manager B has read the blog before they notice A approaching B's north wall. (Postulate that A can't tag the building without stepping onto private property.) Perhaps B has read what I wrote and tells A to beat it. Who banned A, me or B? Is B within their rights to refuse A admittance to private property? Is A being a jerk for not asking B's permission? Is A trespassing? Can A sue me for B's actions? Didn't B have the option of ignoring my opinion?

EPP Status of e360 by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 10:19 · Score: 0

I must admit that the EPP status of e360insight is pretty funny: clientDeleteProhibited, clientTransferProhibited, clientUpdateProhibited.

A better question would be by JumperCable · 2006-10-09 10:19 · Score: 1

What e-mail do we have from 360insight & their users that violate the CANSPAM act &/or fraud laws? I say two can play at this game.

Big PDFs by JumperCable · 2006-10-09 10:28 · Score: 2, Informative

Wow. For being such big a-holes they sure do put up a lot of big PDF files on their website: http://www.e360insight.com/case_history.html

Ignore the assinine US judge by amavida · 2006-10-09 10:57 · Score: 1

If all the ISP's in the world ignored thi Judge from this brocken legal system, then what is this idiot judge do about it.

Nothing.

The USA is not the center of the world.
The Internet is not the USA, it's a world wide collection of people/computers.

Re:Ignore the assinine US judge by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 11:59 · Score: 0

Dude,
don't you now
Internet is not the USA and it's not world wide collection of people/computers, it's a series of tubes!!
Re:Ignore the assinine US judge by amavida · 2006-10-09 15:31 · Score: 1

hehe ;)

toobs! toobs!

of course!!

why did'nt _I_ think of that!

omg...OMG!... OMG!!!...

Ponies?! where are the ponies?!

Re:webserver couldnt handle 100-fold increase in h by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 11:43 · Score: 0

Disrespect to the court will not be tolerated ! Now, shut the fuck up asshole !

You will support the court's decision and like it ! Contempt will not be tolerated. I am a marketing executive and I will find out who you are and get you fired ! We have a right to send you exclusive offers in your e-mail. Tolerance is required. The court is enforcing our wishes !

Perspective from a damaged party by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · 2006-10-09 12:02 · Score: 4, Insightful

Let me put an alternative perspective to the AC e-mail security guy who wrote the parent post.

I am the IT officer for a local non-profit organisation, with a few thousand members. We run a mailing list, to provide announcements to those members. The list is opt-in (double opt-in to verify all addresses, in fact) and moderated, and everyone on it has explicitly asked to be there.

Our service provider has recently sent a notice to their announcements list (to which I subscribe) indicating that certain major names, including Hotmail and AOL, are no longer accepting mail from our provider. They don't even bounce it properly; they silently drop it. This is all done in the name of fighting spam, so they claim, because our service provider forwards a lot of spam onto them. (Our service provider forwards any mail received at a paying customer's address to any forwarding address requested by that customer, in fact.) The content of any given mail, and the specific people it's going from and to, are irrelevant to this blanket ban.

As a consequence of this, we now find that some of our members who use e-mail accounts at those hosts are not receiving mails they have explicitly asked for. Neither we, nor our members, nor our service provider is doing anything unreasonable. The only reason this system is broken is because of an arbitrary decision by a big name provider to throw their weight around, by blocking all incoming mail from a small provider (who are not the only ones being hit by this problem -- far from it, by the sounds of things), even if this goes against the explicit wishes of one of their own paying customers.

Now, you can rationalise that decision all you like as a big IT honcho, but the simple fact is that these organisations are screwing their own customers, and ultimately undermining the entire working of the Internet e-mail system, by being incompetent and not playing nice with others. Sooner or later, people are going to start missing really important messages as opposed to just convenient or entertaining ones, and those providers are going to learn a harsh lesson. I imagine a few small providers will start bringing anti-competition lawsuits if the big names carry on down their current road as well. But in the meantime, your approach sucks for your customers, it sucks for people working with your customers, and it sucks for other service providers working with you. It is an indefensible attack on the openness of the Internet, and you deserve to be shot down for it.

--
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.

Re:Perspective from a damaged party by grouchyDude · 2006-10-09 13:59 · Score: 1

No, I respectfully think you have it wrong. You are using a "service provider" who allows his server to
be used as a source of outgoing spam. When you said:
"Our service provider forwards any mail received at a paying customer's address to any forwarding address ..."
that means your provider is not filtering outgoing spam. They need to be doing so.
The fact that Hotmail, AOL etc are
blocking this provider means they have identified them as a source of spam. They are doing the
right thing.
You should change to a responsible non-corrupt service provider and I hope your
current service provider goes out of business as **they** are the ones contributing to the
demise of email as a useful medium.
Re:Perspective from a damaged party by theLOUDroom · 2006-10-09 18:02 · Score: 1

The only reason this system is broken is because of an arbitrary decision by a big name provider to throw their weight around, by blocking all incoming mail from a small provider

Get frickin real, any sane person would admit that your ISP bears at least SOME responsibility for the traffic that is coming out of their network.

If you choose to get in bed with these people, expect there to be consquences. If you want your mail to be treated as if it is important, THEN SEND IT FROM A REPUTABLE NETWORK!

the simple fact is that these organisations are screwing their own customers

Actually, they are probably helping their customers. Missing your newletter pales in comparision to getting their bank account hijacked.

What it comes down to is that you're lazy and shortsighted. You want to be able to do business with disreputable groups and somehow have that not reflect on you. Sorry man, but it does, and that's the way it is in general, not just on tha intarweb. Who you assosciate with affects your reputation.

--
Life is too short to proofread.
Re:Perspective from a damaged party by Antique+Geekmeister · 2006-10-09 19:55 · Score: 1

I do sympathize with your plight. Because your upstream provider is incompetent, you cannot fully use the service they are selling you, and changing will be burdensome. But because they are incompetent and allow so much spam to be sent from their network, they are doubtless placing an unreasonable burden on the rest of us.

But be very clear. Because your service provider is forwarding so much spam, it's simply not worth the burden for services like AOL and Hotmail to carry your few messages of legitimate email along with the volume of spam doubtless being forwarded. Your service provider is, in fact, doing something very wrong. Your service provider is allowing such abuses, which are very expensive and painful for everyne else who receives such spam. Get over it, and go find a competent service provider.
Re:Perspective from a damaged party by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · 2006-10-09 20:03 · Score: 1

I think you misunderstand. The spam is not originating with my service provider. It isn't coming from other customers on the same provider, nor does the provider have open relays.

The spam is already being sent to an address hosted by my service provider, and the service provider is merely forwarding all mail sent to that address onto the alternative address requested by their customer, without bias or judgement. That is exactly what they are paid to do, and failing to forward any mail because (in their opinion) it is spam would not just be risking false positives, it would be breach of contract.

If they were allowing spam to originate from their own customers, that would be an entirely different thing, but they're not. In fact, these guys are by far the most responsible and technically knowledgeable people I have worked with in IT. If they did get wind of one of their own customers trying to send spam, I imagine that customer would be kicked faster than players like AOL would even respond to an abuse@ mail. I also use this service provider as a personal customer, independent of my role with the other group I mentioned, precisely because they do what they say they will and don't employ arbitrary, non-optional filtering of my mail using Spamhaus or similar.

--
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Re:Perspective from a damaged party by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · 2006-10-09 20:07 · Score: 1

Putting your comments in bold or capitals doesn't make them any more true, you know. Do you really not appreciate the difference between a service that originates spam, and a service that is a mere conduit acting on the explicit request of its legitimate customers?

By your argument, we should either shut down the entire Internet, or require every mid-stream service provider who carries e-mail to filter it (using their own arbitrary rules, completely outside the control of the people sending and receiving the mail) to be "reputable". I don't think that would be an improvement on today, when at least you can have some control over your own e-mail if you want it.

--
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Re:Perspective from a damaged party by lpq · 2006-10-09 20:52 · Score: 1

Our service provider[1] has recently sent a notice to their announcements list (to which I subscribe) indicating that certain major names[2], including Hotmail and AOL, are no longer accepting mail from our provider. They[2] don't even bounce it properly; they silently drop it. This is all done in the name of fighting spam, so they claim, because our service provider forwards a lot of spam onto them. (Our service provider[1] forwards any mail received at a paying customer's address to any forwarding address requested by that customer, in fact.) The content of any given mail, and the specific people it's going from and to, are irrelevant to this blanket ban.

Two comments about your "I'm a victim" stance:
[1] You are choosing to stay with a provider who provides insufficient anti-email harrassment oversite for the [#2] ISP's comfort level. You could talk to your ISP about the problem or choose an ISP who prevents unwanted harrassment of other ISP's users.

[2] The users of these companies choose to have their email automatically filtered by whatever rules their ISP imposes on them. They are free to relocate their email accounts to an ISP that doesn't impose such restrictions. However (if you could contact your customers via a temporary 3rd party address) you can also inform your customers of the problem and tell them to either find another ISP who won't filter unwanted spam out of their email, or to put pressure on their ISP to let all of the unwanted email generated by customers of your ISP [#1] through to their[#2] users.

See how far #2 gets you -- I'm just guessing, but most users would likely prefer to have unwanted spam filtered out and are not so threatened by the possibility of losing an email to risk switching to a non-filtering ISP.

If you wish to be proactive and not have your users bothered with switching, then maybe you need to move to a non-spam supporting ISP? Or, have your own domain and outgoing email server that isn't shared with possible spammers.

Personally, I find the option of a 3rd party filtering my mail less than exciting, so I go with a non-filtering ISP. While my ISP is responsible (AFAIK) in stopping outgoing spam and they do have rules in place against such [mis]use, I still go with the option of using a permanent email domain on a static IP for my outgoing email.

Unless my systems get "hax0r3d & 0wn3d", I believe it unlikely I would find myself in the victimized position you have found yourself in. You still have a choice to remove yourself from such a position.

All said -- in regards to the original story -- it would be very bad precedent for the US to attempt to enforce US laws and court judgements through an international organization like ICANN. If there is anything that is likely to cause fragmentation and internet disruption, it would attempts to by the US to control the internet through the happenstance of ICANN's location in the US. It would be just plain, short-sighted, adminstrative suicide. Unfortunately, this isn't too different from our normal capitalist, survive-through-next-election, future-be-damned, short-sighted government that is currently in power, so it may not seem so unreasonable or short-sighted to the current fools-in-power.

I'd like to think saner heads reigned, but I realize that, realistically, it is unlikely.
Re:Perspective from a damaged party by DrHyde · 2006-10-09 22:40 · Score: 1

Sooner or later, people are going to start missing really important messages

If it was important, you wouldn't have used a method of transmission which provides no guarantees about timeliness or even whether the message would be transmitted. You would have couriered a letter to me, or phoned me. Funnily enough, that's exactly what my *ISP* does when they have something important to say. They don't trust "Oi, you forgot to pay your bill last month" to email.
Re:Perspective from a damaged party by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · 2006-10-09 23:10 · Score: 1

What I don't understand is why so many people here are describing our service provider using terms like "incompetent". They are doing exactly what they are being paid to do. It is not their job to decide on either our behalf or our list recipients' what constitutes unwanted mail, and indeed I would switch away from them to another provider if they started adding involuntary spam(+false positive) controls on my personal incoming mail.

The thing that most annoys me about the position taken by Hotmail and AOL here is that it's so darned hypocritical. I also get the incoming mail to our organisation's general contact address, which runs to a few hundred spams per day, and say 20 legit mails on a busy day. Looking at yesterday's logs, a very significant minority of the spam came via Hotmail or AOL systems, while none whatsoever touched our service provider. By Hotmail and AOL's own argument, the rest of the Internet should therefore cut them off entirely, as they generate (not forward, generate) more spam than all the small ISPs put together.

--
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Re:Perspective from a damaged party by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · 2006-10-09 23:41 · Score: 1

Incidentally, further to my previous reply, I just wanted to pick up on this point you made:

But because they are incompetent and allow so much spam to be sent from their network, they are doubtless placing an unreasonable burden on the rest of us.

I doubt that very much, because unless you are one of their customers too, there is no reason you would be receiving any mail passing through their system. Remember, we're only talking about them forwarding incoming mails to another address as specifically requested by one of their customers, not them letting their customers spam others (which, as far as I know, they never have and never would).

--
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Re:Perspective from a damaged party by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · 2006-10-09 23:51 · Score: 1

In reply to your first point:

You could talk to your ISP about the problem or choose an ISP who prevents unwanted harrassment of other ISP's users.

What "unwanted harrassment"? The vast majority of users receiving mail via the service in question will be technically knowledgable people who have deliberately set up the e-mail forwarding, and who quite possibly have also opted not to have any additional spam controls placed on it because they want to perform their own filtering.

The problem here is that AOL, Hotmail et al. assume this is a mistake on their user's part and that the incoming messages they decide are spam are not wanted by their user, which of course is fine until they make a mistake and get a false positive, which is probably why the user opted not to have spam controls run by others in the first place.

In reply to your second point:

The users of these companies choose to have their email automatically filtered by whatever rules their ISP imposes on them.

I would accept that argument if I believed it were a fair representation of what happens. In practice, I suspect very few people know enough about spam and spam-blocking to make any sort of informed decision here, and if you took a random sample of AOL users, I very much doubt any of them would feel they had made any active choices in this regard.

If you wish to be proactive and not have your users bothered with switching, then maybe you need to move to a non-spam supporting ISP?

As I've mentioned elsewhere, I don't have a spam-supporting ISP right now. They don't orginate spam, nor run open relays. The only spam they'll be emitting in any significant quantity is stuff that came from outside, and is being forwarded automatically at the request of one of their users. They're no more responsible for this, nor authorised to block it for that matter, than any other part of the Internet infrastructure through which that message will pass from the real problem (the person or organisation originating it) to the recipient.

--
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Re:Perspective from a damaged party by theLOUDroom · 2006-10-10 00:36 · Score: 1

Putting your comments in bold or capitals doesn't make them any more true, you know.

Nor does it make them untrue. I was just hoping you'd pull your head out of your ass and listen.

Do you really not appreciate the difference between a service that originates spam, and a service that is a mere conduit acting on the explicit request of its legitimate customers?

This is simply a lie. Spammers are not "legitimate customers". Customers yes, legitimate no.

By your argument, we should either shut down the entire Internet, or require every mid-stream service provider who carries e-mail to filter it

Actually, all that needs to be done is for your ISP to properly respond to reports of abuse on their network. It's that simple. Your argument can easily be disproven by looking at all the ISPs that: A) Don't actively filter and B) aren't on the blacklist.

You are choosing to assosciate yourself with a disreputable ISP. This means other networks can and do flag your traffic as such. If you don't like the results, don't do it. All this pissing and moaning about how it's not fair is just stupid. You know what's going on here. You know spam is pouring out of that network. You choose to be a part of it. You pay the price.

--
Life is too short to proofread.
Re:Perspective from a damaged party by rtb61 · 2006-10-10 00:44 · Score: 1

That is not quite accurate, as I have had email blocked that was not spam and did not come from an bad ISP. It means you have to adjust filtering to allow known contacts to get through, the problem is you have to go through you spam to make the adjustment (back to square 1).
For inexperienced users this is often beyond their abilities. A real problem that has to be addressed prior to IPv6 and widespread VOIP. Just imagine voice spam, endless phone calls and trying to filter out billions of IP addresses, the real headache is only just beginning. Idiot civil court judges are of no benefit and where international boundries are crossed, perhaps those judgements should be forwarded to a federal court for revue prior to a judgement being handed out.

--
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Re:Perspective from a damaged party by Antique+Geekmeister · 2006-10-10 00:45 · Score: 1

Please learn to read your logs. From my experience over the last 5 years, almost all of thse "aol.com" and "hotmail.com" addresses are forged, and many of them are being forwarded through careless providers like the ones hosting your mailing list.

From your own description, your provider is not doing the basic steps to block such abuses: that's all it takes to stay off Spamhaus's blacklists. It is unfortunate that other providers dump mail rather than bouncing it, but be realistic: bounce messages to such forged addresses are usually undeliverable, and rather than being forced to carry the spam, the bounce, the report that the bounce failed, and the continuing message failure notices, it's much easier to just ignore the message in the first place.
Re:Perspective from a damaged party by Antique+Geekmeister · 2006-10-10 00:48 · Score: 1

There is almost no way to tell a "forwarded email" from a forged email, unless you are using something like SRS. And mail forwarding is becoming increasingly abused: if you can't do basic spam filtering locally, spam runs that wind up getting forwarded will seriously impinge on the receiving server.
Re:Perspective from a damaged party by screaser · 2006-10-10 01:39 · Score: 1

> What I don't understand is why so many people here are describing our service provider using terms
> like "incompetent". They are doing exactly what they are being paid to do.

Regardless of your beliefs that what they are doing is morally (or whatever) correct...

If you were to switch to a trusted ISP your company's BL problems would go away. As an IT person at your company I'd say you have an obligation to make the switch.
Re:Perspective from a damaged party by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · 2006-10-10 07:44 · Score: 1

Throwing in pointless ad hominem attacks doesn't make your case any more convincing either. Your signature is quite apt, as you have obviously completely failed to grasp the situation I have described in this thread.

Nowhere have I indicated that my service provider's customers are spammers, nor described spammers as legitimate. Indeed, as I have noted explicitly already, this provider has very sensible policies on such matters, and any of their customers found spamming would probably be kicked far faster than any of the big name mail services would get around to it.

The customers in question are paying for a mail forwarding service. Mail goes to someone@theirdomain.com (hosted by my service provider) and is then forwarded, at the explicit request of the person owning theirdomain.com to another address specified by that person. The only spam is coming in from outside.

Actually, all that needs to be done is for your ISP to properly respond to reports of abuse on their network. It's that simple. Your argument can easily be disproven by looking at all the ISPs that: A) Don't actively filter and B) aren't on the blacklist.

From direct firsthand experience with several such issues at several organisations over several years, that's a load of crap. One ISP's abuse is another's inconvenience. Responding to requests from RBLs does not in any way guarantee that you will be unblocked; indeed, in several of the cases I'm thining of the only reason the person/organisation was on the RBL was because they were unfortunate enough to share a block with a known spammer, and the RBL blocked the lot and refused to lift the block on those people even when they indicated that they had nothing to do with the spammers. I've also seen e-mail correspondence chains that were published by some service providers after these encounters, which made it absolutely clear that the services in question were already taking reasonable steps to limit spam, yet didn't get them taken off the blacklist.

RBLs have no code of conduct and are not regulated, and they frequently act like the kind of bully who has no supervision and throws their weight around with impunity. The sooner you realise this, the more sense you'll make in this discussion.

You know spam is pouring out of that network. You choose to be a part of it. You pay the price.

I don't know that. Actually, I rather suspect it's not, and that the problem is caused entirely by automated systems on big providers' networks being too stupid to understand what's going on. In any case, I don't pay the price at all: no-one pays me to run that list, and the vast majority of our members will get the messages. It's those who use the services that arbitrarily block our provider who are losing out.

--
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Re:Perspective from a damaged party by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · 2006-10-10 07:54 · Score: 1

The thing is, it's not a company, it's a not-for-profit organisation run by volunteers (including me). Switching would incur very significant expenses and take a lot of time, not to mention that I have no guarantee that I will receive the same excellent levels of service and support from any other provider that I receive from the much-recommended organisation we currently use. Obviously I do not view this problem as their fault, I am perfectly content to stay where we are, and I have no obligation to spend my time and my organisation's money moving to another provider because some third party is screwing around, particularly when there is no guarantee that any alternative provider won't get screwed the same way next week.

--
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Re:Perspective from a damaged party by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · 2006-10-10 08:06 · Score: 1

Please learn to read your logs. From my experience over the last 5 years, almost all of thse "aol.com" and "hotmail.com" addresses are forged, and many of them are being forwarded through careless providers like the ones hosting your mailing list.

Please don't assume I'm naive or incompetent. I'm well aware of what my logs say, and in fact I've just this moment received a mail that (looking at those logs) appears to have been forwarded through a big name service provider using exactly the same approach that our service provider uses. Perhaps we should disconnect Microsoft from the Internet to reduce spam as well?

From your own description, your provider is not doing the basic steps to block such abuses: that's all it takes to stay off Spamhaus's blacklists.

The problem in our case wasn't Spamhaus; it was a slightly different example of a heavy-handed approach to spam control causing collateral damage.

As for "being realistic": I don't understand how you can think it's unacceptable for one service provider to forward (not originate) mails in "common carrier" fashion, even though that's exactly what they're being paid to do and have been explicitly instructed to do by the person receiving those mails, yet it's fine for other service providers to disregard the basic protocols as specified in RFCs that define how the Internet is supposed to work.

I think you're exaggerating with the volume of mail you claim that would produce as well: one bounce message going out, and possibly one incoming "bounce failed" message in reply, should be all that's necessary. In fact, if their system is using the protocol properly, they should immediately discover that the address isn't valid, and neither message should ever be sent. Of course, we've already established that they don't use the protocol properly. Perhaps they should work on that, rather than appointing themselves judge, jury and executioner for every small ISP on the planet?

--
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Re:Perspective from a damaged party by theLOUDroom · 2006-10-10 11:09 · Score: 1

That is not quite accurate, as I have had email blocked that was not spam and did not come from an bad ISP.

This article is about Spamhaus, a listing of bad networks. There are other methods that people apply to block spam, but these are not relevant to the discussion at hand.

--
Life is too short to proofread.
Re:Perspective from a damaged party by theLOUDroom · 2006-10-10 11:20 · Score: 1

Nowhere have I indicated that my service provider's customers are spammers

You've done everything but.

From direct firsthand experience with several such issues at several organisations over several years, that's a load of crap.

Prove it. I'm not going to just take your word.

RBLs have no code of conduct and are not regulated, and they frequently act like the kind of bully who has no supervision and throws their weight around with impunity. The sooner you realise this, the more sense you'll make in this discussion.

RBLs have no obligation to protect your silly feelings or make life easy for you. They exist for various stated purposes and people choose to use them.

What it comes down to is that you're a self-important jerk who thinks, "How dare someone refuse email from me!"
You're not citing a case where your ISP was unjustly blacklisted. You actually haven't gone into any detail as to why they were/are. You're just bitching because something's inconvenient for you.
Tough shit. SPAM is a problem. Blacklists are part of the solution. Whiny people who think that the entire problem should be pushed onto the poor end-user are not.

--
Life is too short to proofread.
Re:Perspective from a damaged party by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · 2006-10-10 14:49 · Score: 1

You really haven't been following this discussion at all, have you?

I don't personally care a whole lot about this case, since as I pointed out elsewhere, I'm only running the IT for this organisation as a volunteer anyway. If someone wants to sign up for our mailing list, but uses a crappy ISP that blanket blocks, that's really not my problem. I suspect, however, that others who are also caught out by such tactics would care rather more, which is why I offered the example.

As for the RBL cases, do your own homework. Two minutes with Google will turn up ample evidence of RBLs blacklisting people who aren't really spammers at all, and then being crappy about removing them. Hell, just read some of the other comments elsewhere in this discussion. Whether you "take my word" or not is your business, and personally, since you obviously aren't bothering to think about what's being written in this discussion anyway, I don't much care.

--
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Re:Perspective from a damaged party by theLOUDroom · 2006-10-10 15:55 · Score: 1

Two minutes with Google will turn up ample evidence of RBLs blacklisting people who aren't really spammers at all

Just as you've failed to actually assert that your ISP is actually an innocent victim, you fail to provide evidence to back this up.

A two minute Google search will also tell me that the moon landing was faked.

--
Life is too short to proofread.
Re:Perspective from a damaged party by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-13 00:53 · Score: 0

OK, so list for me 10 networks that are reputable, and that can be garunteed to be so for the next full year.

Come one now, who is it safe to buy service from?
Re:Perspective from a damaged party by ChiRaven · 2006-10-15 23:29 · Score: 1

It's not just the big guys, either. I frequently send mail to a particular domain run by a local (relatively small) cable tv provider in the midwest. From time to time I get a rejection because they say that they are receiving too much spam from my originating domain and are blocking all mail from my domain until the problem is corrected. My originating domain is 'ameritech.net', and is owned by AT&T, the country's largest telecom company. I've had similar problems, by the way, with this same cable tv outfit blocking email I send from my email address with "yahoo.com'.

So it's not just the big guys who are not playing nice in this game. Sometimes the customers of the big providers get hit the same as anybody else.

My perspective.. by Kadmos · 2006-10-09 12:08 · Score: 1

#ping www.e360insight.com
PING www.e360insight.com (63.78.194.3) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from host3.e360data.com (63.78.194.3): icmp_seq=1 ttl=50 time=257 ms

#whois 63.78.194.3
UUNET Technologies, Inc. UUNET63 (NET-63-64-0-0-1)
63.64.0.0 - 63.127.255.255
E360INSIGHT, LLC UU-63-78-194-D8 (NET-63-78-194-0-1)
63.78.194.0 - 63.78.194.255

# ARIN WHOIS database, last updated 2006-10-08 19:10
# Enter ? for additional hints on searching ARIN's WHOIS database.

#echo "63.64.0.0/10 REJECT e360insight + hosting ISP (UUNET)" \
>> /etc/postfix/client_checks.cidr

Not just independent... by Roger+W+Moore · 2006-10-09 12:11 · Score: 1

...but international. It is not sufficient to simply make ICANN an independent company based in the US since then it will still be subject to US courts which those of us in the rest of the world do not have to pay any attention to.

In fact putting it under UN control would probably be the best way to proceed since the UN can never decide anything and so it would be able to operate independently but being part of an international inter-governmental organization would make it above the courts of any one nation.

.org != .us by e_AltF4 · 2006-10-09 12:20 · Score: 1

Get a clue why .org != .us :-)

Re:.org != .us by arivanov · 2006-10-09 17:57 · Score: 1

I have a clue. But the judge does not. So he might as well prove that it is a "==" because he can smack an injunction on networksolutions to this exact same effect and there is nothing at all networksolutions can (and will) do to fight it.

While theoretically org, com, int, etc are all "international" they are run from the US and the infrastructure on which they are run is also mostly located in the US (check the routing table for the networksolutions AS - it has no non-US uplinks). As a result any domain under org, com, int is subject to the vagaries of US law. While the target organisation may reside outside US jurisdiction the infrastructure hosting it is not.

So as far as SPAMHAUS is concerned the only way of getting out of the way of the US legal system is to move shop outside the US completely and tell the US legal system to shag itself sideways.

The alternative is US to declare in something that has the force of law that the infrastructure (and provisioning systems) for running the DNS system is extraterritorial and outside the jurisdiction of the US judicial system. So far it has not done it.

--
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/

The judgment was obtained under false pretenses by Pig+Hogger · 2006-10-09 12:26 · Score: 1

The judgment was obtained under false pretenses.

Lindtard bamboozled the court when he lied that Spamhaus had any business in Illinois, which is not the case at all.

When Spamhaus pointed that fact to the court, the court ignored it, so the counsel did the only thing they could do, withdraw because the court was clearly acting on wrong information and, in any case, had absolutely no jurisdiction on Spamhaus.

When the court will realize it was bullshitted by Lindtard, it will gladly send him for a nice ass reaming at the PMITA jail...

NOT a first amendment issue by coyote-san · 2006-10-09 12:30 · Score: 1

Good grief, Charlie Brown!

This is NOT a First Amendment issue. The FA only applies to government entities and organizations acting on its behalf. It does not apply to private entities.

Second, even the FA is not absolute. It's well-established that the government can limit the "time, manner and place" of public speech. E.g., you can't use a blowhorn on a public street in a residential neighborhood at 3 AM. There's also that whole 'FALSELY yelling fire in a crowded theater' point, but let's not go there since it does not mean what people think it means. Just look at how it's usually misquoted. (*)

Finally, "freedom of speech" is actually better described as "freedom to dissent" and refers to political speech. You have absolutely no right to demand that I pay attention to you. You have absolutely no right to demand that I not pay attention to Bob when Bob tells me to pay no attention to you.

To be honest I can't understand why the case wasn't thrown out immediately. I'm not even a lawyer yet I can think of several solid grounds for immediate dismissal with prejudice.

(*) Let us be absolutely clear. If you're in a crowded theater and you don't warn others of a fire, esp. in the late 19th/early 20th century when it was common to have massive loss of life in pre-fire-retardant theater fires, then you are a despicable human being not even worthy of being spat upon. You ignored an imminent threat to life and property, and towards what end?

In fact that very threat is why FALSELY yelling fire was so reprehensible. Anyone who did it had to know that people would panic and some would probably be injured. Broken bones are better than death, in the event of an actual fire, but if there is no fire....

A contemporary analogy may be going to the airport with a box of baking soda and flinging it across a concourse while shouting "anthrax!". Do you think people should just quietly leave if they think they see someone actually spreading anthrax spores?

--
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken

Re:Um, the problem was that they switched horses.. by snarkth · 2006-10-09 12:30 · Score: 1

I can't think of anything more likely to P.O. a judge than to ask to get into his courtroom, then call him a buffoon.

Well, they didn't call him a buffoon, but they did imply, in a sense, that his opinion was irrelevant.

But any judge who can't stand a few insults, perhaps should not be a judge, eh? It comes with the territory.

*snark*

Re:Guns don't kill people. People kill people. by DavidTC · 2006-10-09 12:53 · Score: 1

Um, quite a few of us don't use it as a 'blocking list', we use it a tiny part in the overall decision to block.

--
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?

MOD POINTS OVER HERE PLEASE by macdaddy · 2006-10-09 13:01 · Score: 1

This needs a few more positive mod points and the parent needs many less. Schmuck.

Yes, by The+Cisco+Kid · 2006-10-09 13:16 · Score: 1

ICANN may well pull spamhaus.org - so what.

ICANN has no control over http://www.spamhaus.org.uk/ and I'm sure SH either already has, or has begun, making its records available there. Its website already is.

yet another reason.... by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 13:17 · Score: 0

Here's yet another reason why the root DNS *must* be taken away from the idiotic Americans.

If one American idiot can control a company that isn't even *IN* the USA, then it's time for the rest of the world to step in and take over. Let the yanks play in their own little walled off corner of the internet, while everyone else carries on without them.

Where are all those Americans now who were saying, "this would never happen!!!111!!one!!! The innocent little USA would NEVER abuse its position!" Dead silence....

When you asked your ISP for spam-blocking? by billstewart · 2006-10-09 13:45 · Score: 1

Are you asking when you asked your email provider to block spam for you, or when you asked them to use a *specific* method of spam-blocking? You asked them to do *some* spam-blocking for you when you signed up for email service, because almost all email providers have to provide it as a part of doing business; otherwise they lose customers to other providers that *do* block spam, as well as getting their mail servers overwhelmed by the load and therefore increasing their costs.

If you're asking when you opted in to that particular method of blocking spam, that depends on your provider - some give you lots of feature choices, others give you "take it or leave it". One of my email providers lets you pick countries to block or flag email from - my spam load dropped by 50% or more when I blocked China, Korea, and Brazil. Another email provider I use has several blocking lists as part of Spamassassin weights, and I run procmail to delete mail with heavy spam-assassin weights, whitelist friends and mailing lists, flag suspicious stuff, etc.

And what are you doing getting email service from your ISP, instead of getting a portable address and mail service so that when you change ISPs you can keep your address and mail? Much less when Comcast is your ISP? Duh!

--

Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks

Free Speech by Spamhaus by billstewart · 2006-10-09 14:05 · Score: 1, Insightful

Sorry if this is troll bait, but...

Spamhaus puts out a list of people they believe to be jerks.
You can decide whether to use it or not.
One of these jerks decided to sue Spamhaus to stop letting people know they were jerks.
The jerks allege that telling everybody you're a jerk is "restraint of trade".
Spamhaus isn't based in the US, so they don't think the court in Illinois has jurisdiction over them.
If Spamhaus were to sue the jerks in a UK court, for something like libel, they could probably get a judgement - UK courts are at least as expansive about lawsuits against defendants anywhere in the world, and have a lower burden of proof on libel/slander suits than US courts do.
By suing Spamhaus, in such a blatantly incorrect way, the alleged jerks have demonstrated that they *really are* jerks. I wouldn't do business with them, where "doing business" includes accepting email.

--

Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks

Re:Mod Off-topic. This is about SMTP spamblocking by efalk · 2006-10-09 14:05 · Score: 1

When Spamhaus bothers to defend themselves, the spammers tend to get stomped on badly once the judge realizes what the case is about.

Unfortunately, that's not the case. Spamhaus was sued by spammers previously in 2003. Spamhaus won. The court did not punish the spammers in any way. Even when you win a lawsuit, you're still out legal costs, which can be unbelievable, especially if discovery is involved.

I was sued by a spammer last year, and just arguing jurisdiction alone (I won) cost me tens of thousands of dollars. The judge did *nothing* to the spammer who wasted its time and my money.

This is the spammer tactic. They have no chance of winning on the merits; instead, they hope to bankrupt the anti-spam movement. Spamming pays well, and spam-fighting is a mostly volunteer effort. The spammers can afford to bring one frivolous lawsuit after another against us and the courts let them do it. Eventually the spammers will wear us down and then destroy email they way they destroyed usenet.

US Legal System by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 14:12 · Score: 0

There is no "grey" area. It's black or white. The dickhead spammer who conned the judge into an injunction doesn't care about grey. He wants Spamhaus to remove him from being blacklisted. The judge said to unblock him. The judge isn't going to call up and try and persuade them. The judge isn't going to re-consider. Spamhaus is going to have to take their case to a higher court.

What Spamhaus should do is unblock spam for a period of time. Let the effects of that sink in, and then make SURE that the news media and government institutions know what happened and why, with a big fat finger pointing at the stupid judge. Then you might find someone that will fast track this to a higher court so that the injunction can be over-ruled, and Spamhaus can go about their business. THAT is one of the better ways for this scenario to play out. The worst thing would be for federal marshals to seize the operating hardware from Spamhaus, shut it down, and arrest various members of Spamhaus.

Another way to operate would be to move offshore, somewhere that the retarded US legal system has no effects. Spamhaus can keep their customers. The moron spammer will not have a leg to stand on.

Aggressive Spam Blocking vs. False Positives by billstewart · 2006-10-09 14:30 · Score: 1

Spammers are really aggressive. Unfortunately, this means that anything you do to prevent false positives is a potential target for them to exploit, and false positives are the bane of spam-blocking.

Some spam blockers are really aggressive also, and some of them are really difficult to interact with once they decide they don't like you. Unfortunately, AOL has a reputation for being one of them, and it has a lot of subscribers so people really care. It *is* possible to deal with AOL's policies, at least most of the time, though they apparently do a bloody inadequate job of following SMTP standards when they don't like you (e.g. silently dropping spam after accepting it as opposed to rejecting it with a 55x or whatever), but it's difficult, and some ISPs aren't very good at it.

Forwarding mail to an AOL account without spam-filtering it first is one classic problem ISPs face. Either you make sure you filter the spam (which still risks false positives, and also risks missing some potential spams that AOL's rules rejected but yours didn't), or you do something to make AOL not notice that you sent them mail they think is spam.

Maybe you just refuse to forward mail to AOL.
Maybe you need to encrypt all the emails you forward, so AOL just sees "Encrypted message #12345 forwarded from user@example.net" and has to decrypt it to find out that it's spam.
Maybe you don't forward the message itself, but a note about "Pick up your forwarded email at https://example.net/~user/mail/12345".
Maybe you keep a pool of different email server IP addresses, round-robin your email forwarding to AOL among the ones it hasn't blocked yet :-)

I run a much smaller mailing list - a few hundred people, 2-3 messages a week on the main list. Fairly often I get bouncegrams back about greylisting, some of which are quite obscure, depending on what lies the greylister is telling the sender. And sometimes it's just hard to tell what the bouncegrams are complaining about. The recent entertainment has been that somebody either on the list or somebody who knows somebody on the list seems to have a virus, so I keep getting bounces from random mailer-daemons saying that "ex-user@example.com is unknown, couldn't deliver this message (and then the virus)." They're usually distinguishable from the bouncegrams I usually get that say "550 spammers-fake-return-address@example.com: User Unknown" which are returning a copy of the majordomo help message sent to people who send mail to listname-request@mydomain.example.org.

--

Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks

Unfortunate wording on Linford's part by SpammersAreScum · 2006-10-09 14:44 · Score: 1

As I understand it, one of the key legal arguments is that SpamHaus does not block any emails, but simply provides a list which MTA owners can use to block if they choose. In the ArsTechnica article (http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061009-793 8.html), though, Steve Linford is quoted as saying, "Spamhaus.org blocks 50 billion spam messages per day." Seems like he should have chosen his words with more caution.

Spamhaus is consistently accurate, conservative by billstewart · 2006-10-09 14:51 · Score: 1

There are spam-blocker lists that wildly blast anybody with IP addresses near suspected spammers, and are virtually impossible to get off of, even if you're only getting collateral damage because your ISP shares an upstream with another ISP that had a spammer or two. SPEWS has this reputation, and there are some other lists that nobody bothers using. Collateral damage is part of the *point* of some of those services - they're trying to pressure ISPs to be really aggressive about beating up on spammers, and they don't mind a lot of false positives.

But Spamhaus has a reputation that you only get on their bad list if you're actively provably spamming, and their lists are pretty conservative. They're not trying for collateral damage or overkill, they're trying to nail the top spam sources for you. They may have had an occasional conflict or lapse in judgement over the years, but they're fundamentally good guys running a high-quality user-safe service.

That doesn't mean that the only thing you can do with their list is block all traffic from addresses on it. One use for block lists (DNSBL, SURBL, etc.) is to use as Spamassassin weights, so they each kick in a few points of threshold-nearing badness if you're on them. Another use is driving redirects - your main email server receives an incoming connection, and if it's from an address on the Blocking List, you not only tell it to come back later (greylisting is a *great* zombie defense), but you tell it to use your secondary email server, where blacklisted or non-whitelisted mail senders can fight their way through a 100+ Load Average to get into a Spamassassin that's tuned to check for a lot more rules, heavily validate sending addresses with the mail servers they're allegedly coming from, etc., throws in an occasional teergrube delay, and in general gets much more hostile treatment that systems that aren't on blocking lists. I might even trust SPEWS for that kind of decision, but certainly Spamhaus is a good start.

By the way, in addition to zombies, one of the most common sources of spam recently has been servers that announce previously unused IP address space on the global BGP routes, send some mail for a few minutes, and then de-announce their routes so nobody can check up on them. Typically the routes are stolen out of some not very well protected source, or are for instance more-specific routes from another provider's larger block of addresses. Greylisting turns out to just work on any of these that don't stick around, because if their address space has disappeared in 5 minutes, it won't be around 30 minutes later to retransmit and get itself on a whitelist.

--

Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks

Silly Geeks by frankenheinz · 2006-10-09 16:59 · Score: 0

I think its funny how geekdom gets its panties in a bunch over the notion that Spamhaus might have to defend itself in a court of law. Of course this is going to happen. Spamhaus is in the business of defaming people's business assets (IPs). So long as their representations (concerning spam source) are accurate, they'll prevail. But if they screw up they need to pay. No matter what, they need to be held accountable just like any other person or entity and indeed they are. Sorting out who's who and what's what is what court are for. (The British can't complain. Hell, they practicaly invented the system that Illinois uses.) Given Spanhaus's feeble handling of this action, they can pretty much count on more litigation. Time to establish a Spamhaus legal defense fund. And by the way, does anyone serious seriously regard the argument that "it's not spamhaus' fault if sysadmins wanna use their RBL."? Well, OK, but only if you want to turn 700 years of Anglo-american defamation jurisprudence on its head. Good luck with that. (My apologies to civil law countries and third-worlders.)

--
The law is not an ass. No really.

Re:Um, the problem was that they switched horses.. by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 18:25 · Score: 0

"But the individuals affected by the order may be unable to set foot in the U.S. for the rest of their lives, even to change planes." Is it supposed to be bad?

More to the point, since thye can be arrested, secretly detained and tortured without any charges or right of appeal, without any judgement against them, does this really make the situation noticably worse?

once you are in MY blacklist, you are there FOREVE by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 18:28 · Score: 0

"once you are in MY blacklist, you are there FOREVER"

Wow, thats pretty clever.

I'd like to know how you identify the "you" bit.

I wonder if you are talking about IP addresses, or domain names, or email addresses instead of people.

I think what you say means that if my webhoster allocates me an ip address that someone else hsa used to get into your blacklist, that I am then in your blacklist - while of course the spammer actually has a new ip address.

I'm just trying to work out precisely how clever that is. I suppose being able to say it is a good stress reducer...

Of course if you do it based on domain name, using the domain registrant is the significant key, then that is pretty clever.

Otherwise it sounds like it might be easier to just whitelist your other email account.

Re:Um, the problem was that they switched horses.. by theLOUDroom · 2006-10-09 18:48 · Score: 1

Then they claimed it didn't.

Which is something that is obvious to anyone with a functioning brain.

Spamhaus does not have operations in the US. The court is in the US.

How much are you supposed to respect a judge who is obviously dishonest/incompetent? Not only does the court not have jurisdiction, there are indications they might not receive a fair trial.
Isn't there some point at which a court no longer deserves your respect?
This court is listed among the top judicial hellholes in the country. I would contend that as soon as they figured this out, they made the right choice by cutting off contact.

The right resolution for this case is for the judge to spend a few days in jail. His actions are a grevious abuse of the public trust that has been placed in him. For fuck's sake, Spamhaus wasn't even properly served. They sent a freakin EMAIL. Any mistakes on Spamhaus' part pales in comparison to that single fact.

Try looking at it from their perspective. You get an email that you're being sued frivilously in a disrepuatble court in a foreign country that doesn't respect the rights of non-citizens.

--
Life is too short to proofread.

Troll? Why? by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 19:18 · Score: 0

If the judge is ruling differently because of personal feelings, then they are no judge. The judge could zap a contempt of court on them for ignoring the court, but the ruling should not be influenced by the actions of the accused.

However, the judicial system IS broken. What happens when you are in contempt of court, but that court IS contemptible?

this happened before to me ... by freaker_TuC · 2006-10-09 19:48 · Score: 1

I've got sued by a bank called the Zurcher Kantonal Bank because its letters are also in the nickname "zkboi". The bank ordered me to take down my website; together with a heavy fine charged per day, because I was destroying "their image". While the website had nothing to do with the financial sector and does only contain my diary and articles about things I care about on the world; they still managed to win the case, even when they have registered their trademark -after- when I've started using my nickname on the net.

The next step would have been giving my domain to them; or being pulled out by the Internet registry.
It's already possible, nothing new here, the ones with the money will have the most to say already ...

There is no such thing as freedom on the Internet ; freedom can be bought or taken by money.

--
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..

mmhh by masterkain · 2006-10-09 21:08 · Score: 1

that's why I use greylisting

This already happens by giafly · 2006-10-09 21:48 · Score: 1

... except that the system is simple and informal. If you're a legitimate email broadcaster, like my company, you contact the ISP/blacklist supplier and explain, and almost all the time you get immeditely unblocked. BTW problems are rare and mainly concern sending from newly-created domains, which everyone is very suspicious of, but which clients like because they can e.g. replicate their new product name in the URL.

--
Reduce, reuse, cycle

Fool by RMH101 · 2006-10-09 22:36 · Score: 1

Let's put this more simply. A hardware shop, called Spamhaus, sells hammers.
You sign up for a service, which has small print stating that in cases of extreme stupidity, they will hit customers who abuse their services with said hammers.
You then blame Spamhaus for getting hit with a hammer.

Re:Fool by Stone+Pony · 2006-10-09 23:10 · Score: 1

But in the case of Spamhaus, what the small print actually says is "the shop supplying the hammers will decide whether you have acted in the proscribed manner. There is no right of appeal. The first time you will know that you are even under investigation is when you get hit. The only way of stopping the beating is to acknowledge that you were acting in the proscribed manner, and to stop doing so. The hammer shop is always right. You are always wrong. Have a nice day".
There's a huge reservoir of goodwill towards Spamhaus because they're fighting the good fight; but every time I read anything on Slashdot about their behaviour, their position seems to be that they should be insulated from any kind of accountability simply because they're on the side of the angels. Let's just admit that it's possible that they are wrong sometimes (or at least that they could be in the future, if you're too much of a fanboy to accept that they ever have been to date); that their being wrong has (would have) real consequences for innocent parties; and that they don't seem to have adequate mechanisms for dealing with that possibility. A touch more humility about their own flawlessness might also have prevented them from making what appears to have been a royal screw-up of their defence in this particular case.

Re:Um, the problem was that they switched horses.. by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-09 23:10 · Score: 0

> By doing so, they implicitly agreed that the Federal Court had jurisdiction.

Oh ? And according to what UK law ?

What puzzles me in the article is the US bias. It sort of assumes that, at a meta-level, UK citizen are bonded to the /way/ US juridiction work.

Why ?

Let's say that, in sealand, when you are issued a court order, if you reply to the email, you implicitly agree that the court have juridiction. Sealand court A send you an court-order email, and you reply by "You have no juridiction". Do they have juridiction then ? Of course not !

Those clowns in the USA have no juridiction over UK citizen running a UK business.

Period.

Hr. Charles Kocoras by yiorgos · 2006-10-09 23:20 · Score: 1

an then I can sue Charles Kocoras for being responsible for clogging my mailbox!

The order itself by Rebuke · 2006-10-09 23:49 · Score: 1

For those that haven't read the actual proposed court order, all the way through it talks about blocking www.spamhaus.org - well fine, block the www. bit, but that means the sbl/rbl will be fine since that doesn't use www. anywhere.

Before people try and state the obvious that ICANN can't specifically block the www. bit alone, they can only block the entire spamhaus.org domain, I would have thought that since it's presumably not ICANN's place to do *more* than the court order says, they simply can't comply with it for technical reasons...

Re:There is just one thing that can clear up the m by dsci · 2006-10-10 00:57 · Score: 1

That's six things.

--
Computational Chemistry products and services.

Reality check. by jotaeleemeese · 2006-10-10 06:17 · Score: 1

Important messages are not to be sent by email.

This tool has never been designed for that purpose.

Email is a non guaranteed delivery mechanism, you are assuming the wrong conclussions.

--
IANAL but write like a drunk one.

Re:once you are in MY blacklist, you are there FOR by walt-sjc · 2006-10-10 07:50 · Score: 1

Dude - don't know if you are just clueless or trolling, but my blacklists are based on IP addresses (like most blacklists) and also regex patterns on reverse DNS. These are not the only anti-spam measures I have by a longshot, but the combined local and DNSBL based blacklists do reduce (with minimal resource usage) the amount of email that needs additional analysis by 90%.

And yes, there can be collateral damage when an ISP reuses a spammers old IP address. This is why blacklists like spamhaus are better for everyone rather than individual lists. Of course I and most admins have a way to let you out of our blacklists, but you need to request the removal one blacklist at a time, and there may be hundreds of thousands.

new idea by Fuzzums · 2006-10-10 07:52 · Score: 1

ICANN.EU

--
Privacy is terrorism.

Hotmail is not for people that need to RECEIVE !!! by hadaso · 2006-10-10 10:42 · Score: 1

> ... and rather than being forced to carry the spam, the bounce,
> the report that the bounce failed, and the continuing message
> failure notices, it's much easier to just ignore the message
> in the first place.

All that's needed to bounce a message is to issue a 550 SMTP error code, or to just drop the connection. No need to "carry the spam, the bounce, the report that the bounce failed..."

What Hotmail really does is accept the email, send an OK that says it was accepted for delivery to the recipient, and then drop the message anyway without informing anyone. This completely breaks the email system's built in reliability by giving a false acknowlegement of receipt to the sender. Deleting mail without reading it should be done only by the end user (manually or automatically).

Anyway, Hotmail is not a real email provider. It is a tool to drive traffic to MSN and to promote its brand. People that really need to receive all their incoming email shouldn't use Hotmail, and it is not reliable as an email receiving service.

Re:Um, the problem was that they switched horses.. by Mr.+Protocol · 2006-10-10 10:51 · Score: 1

Well, according (again) to the lawyer who wrote the article, there was a well-recognized method by which Spamhaus could have responded to the suit by saying "You don't have jurisdiction." They didn't do that. They responded by saying, in effect, "Please transfer jurisdiction to federal court." Closely followed by, "Oh well, never mind! Get lost."

Of course the federal court doesn't have jurisdiction over a U.K. company that doesn't do business in the U.S. But the judge does have jurisdiction over ICANN, and can grant the plaintiff relief that way. The fact that this would be a startlingly bad idea from several perspectives no longer really enters into it.

Something like this was bound to happen someday. In fact it'll happen again and again until either a) the DNS fractures, or b) all semblances of Internet governance go sovereign. The U.S. government has already said they'll do what they can to prevent (b) from happening, by insisting that ICANN belongs to the Dept. of commerce, forever and amen.

That leaves (a).

Ready, folks?

Tell them their email provider is unreliable by hadaso · 2006-10-10 11:08 · Score: 1

If no bounce message was created it means the email message was completely received at the recipient's MX (that is the recipient's SMTP server issued a "250 OK" in response to end of data, and this means the email message was fuly received and is stored on that server).

So if anyone complains about not receiving the email you sent them, tell them the truth: the email was delivered and received by their email hosting service. For some reason their email provider that had the email message has not delivered it to their mailbox. If it bothers them they can contact their email provider about it.

You might want to post a copy of your mail message on a website (perhaps password protected) so that those of your members that choose to use an email service that censors their mail would be able to read the announcements there.

I had a student that emailed me a day before an exam and asked for sample exams. I tried to send her and it kept bouncing. So she had to study without those sample exams. It is the recipeient's choice whether to receive their email or not, and if they wish to delegate the responsibility to an incompetent email operator there's a price associated with this.

Re:Tell them their email provider is unreliable by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · 2006-10-10 15:01 · Score: 1

That's pretty much my view of things as well. I was genuinely surprised by how many people in this thread think it's my service provider who is in the wrong, though. I obviously didn't explain myself very clearly, because most of them seem to think my service provider is a spammer, or that its customers are, neither of which is likely to be true for reasons I thought I'd explained. I'm also surprised by how many people think a reply along the lines of "well, e-mail isn't reliable so you shouldn't use it to send important information anyway" makes it all OK.

--
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Re:Tell them their email provider is unreliable by RallyDriver · 2006-10-12 16:54 · Score: 1

There is no way for AOL to tell the difference between a legitimate non-filtering forwarding service, an open relay, and a spammer that just fakes headers to make themselves look like a forwarder. All three look identical from a receiving ISP's perspective.

If there was a secure way for the forwarder to tag the forwarded email as something you deliberately asked them to do (spam and all) then ISPs would be able to tell the difference, but there isn't so they have to make do with the tools they have, with the result that a provider is held accountable for the stuff that eminates from their IP addresses.

Charles Stiles** is a good guy, who wants to deliver the mail people want, and not the stuff that they don't.

Your ISP needs to get out of the spam forwarding business, either by not forwarding at all, or by filtering the spam, and then sign up with AOL's whitelist.

** AOL chief Postmaster
Re:Tell them their email provider is unreliable by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · 2006-10-13 02:43 · Score: 1

The service in question does already add an X-Whatever header indicating the result of their spam score. It's just that as a general principle, they take the view that such automated processing should be advisory and user-configurable, so they flag and forward everything unless otherwise requested by their users.

They have introduced a policy in response to this issue that they will not forward mails that their system flags as likely spam to the services that won't accept it. Of course, this means they are now as likely as AOL or Hotmail to block a few legitimate e-mails as well (though at least they will generate a proper bounce message if they do so).

--
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.

RBL that is not intended to block spam by hadaso · 2006-10-10 11:22 · Score: 1

> ... distributing the list with the explicit instructions
> that it is not intended to be used to block spam ...

That's exactly what SpamCop says (or used to say) on their faq.
In that case because it is really not suitable as the sole criterion to blocking spam (they recommend using it as one factor in a more complete slution like SpamAssassin, but people still use it to block spam).

However, in the Spamhaus case, at least XBL is certainly intended for blocking spam.

I did contact them by hadaso · 2006-10-10 11:39 · Score: 1

I did use their contact form and put this:

Thank you for bringing up the Spamhaus BL issue.
It would teach the public that blocking spammers
is not an effective way to avoid spam.
Putting you all in jail would be much more efective!

Their response was:

Thank you for your interest in e360insight.com.
An e360insight.com representative will be in touch
with you shortly.

(actually their first response was that the email address I put in was invalid. It was valid, but they truncated it. So I had to truncate it to fit in. That limits the amount of info I can store in that spamtrap.)

Re:Um, the problem was that they switched horses.. by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-11 01:10 · Score: 0

> But the judge does have jurisdiction over ICANN, and can grant the plaintiff relief that way.

Sure, but that seems (to me) a different problem, and a purely US internal one, that spamhaus don't have to be concerned with.

I'd say that the only problem here is, as you pointed, that the .org domain is under control from a company that is under control from the us goverment.

Spamhaus (and all non-us entities) should take non-us managed domains. [joke] As we (non-us people) are all potential terrorists, it will not take long before we loose our .org/.com and .net [/joke]

no! pick me. by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-11 08:59 · Score: 0

no, this is it!

spamhaus fault by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-12 07:11 · Score: 0

No one can argue that spamhaus provides a great service to the internet. But when you analyze what is happening here, it seems the judge is leaving spamhaus several oppertunities to correct this situation. First when looking at this issue you must review US court docets in which spammers have time and time again found that they get defeated in US courts, As stated by many other posts here Spamhaus is an optional list implimented by administrators to cut spam from there networks. All perfectly legal under US law. The issue here is that spamhaus decided to not show up for court. This is where it all went horribly wrong. As Under US law if there is a no-show the plantiff has a right to a default judgement. Basically the spammer in this case gets every thing they ask for because spamhaus is not fighting.

They are arguing jurisdiction. This is a very bad and wrong argument for the a very simple reason.

1) Rather it is free or not they are producing a product. This product is being sold/used in the USA. By default this gives US courts jurisdiction under commerece laws.

Think of it this way. Toyota is a Japan company. They sale a product in the US. It would be very dangerous prcidence to say that US courts had no jurisdiction over toyota. What if toyotas products are causing harm or issues? Of course US has jurisdiction over the case maybe not over the company but definatly over the case.

The issue at hand is spamhaus needs to reopen the case fight the spammers and defeat them in court, counter sue them for damages and attorney fees. Thus protecting them selves from future litigation when they defeat this spammer and get rewarded a cash settlement out of the spammers pocket.

In this case spamhaus is creating there own headaches......

Fight spamhaus Fight!!!!

Another huge kettle of worms not thought of by TheQuietDan · 2006-10-12 13:54 · Score: 1

If they pull this domain, what happens if a court in another country orders them to pull the domain of someone, what will they do, they already have set the precedent of pulling domains. Country with religious repression orders the pulling of church domains. Communist country orders the domain of DEmocrats. etc... What a big mess this could start.

Not "State of Illinois" by dogregor · 2006-10-16 07:16 · Score: 1

Point of order, people -- this was a Federal District Court, part of the national court system. It happens to sit in Illinois, but its jurisdiction includes a goodly chunk of the country (much more than Illinois) and, unless reversed on appeal by a higher Federal court (or if other district court(s) made decisions that differed materially), can set precedent for the entire country (not that a default judgement will set much of a precedent).

Its jurisdiction does not, of course, go beyond the borders of the United States.

As always, IANAL.

Re:Not "State of Illinois" by budgenator · 2006-10-16 11:32 · Score: 1

Yes I later googled for the judge and found out who he was and he is the chief judge of that federal district court and by no means a light-weight either. Actually the jurisdiction thing may be true technically, but there are laws on the federal books that instead o f saying something like "it is legal for anyone in the United States to ...." says "it is illegal for anyone to ... " we have brought a few back to the US kicking and screeming to face an US court.

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Perspectives on Spamhaus's Dilemma

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