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Perspectives on Spamhaus's Dilemma
The Illinois court that told Spamhaus to stop blocking the spammer filing suit against them — an order which Spamhaus ignored — is now considering ordering ICANN to pull Spamhaus's domain records. While Gadi Evron, whose blog posting is linked above, urges everyone to beat the judge with a clue stick, a guest writer on his blog counsels much greater restraint. Anti-spam lawyer Matthew Prince explains how Spamhaus got into its current pickle — apparently by following conflicting legal advice at two points in the process — and what they might have to do to get out. 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?
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?
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.
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...
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.
If I've ever heard a compelling argument for an independent ICANN, this is it!
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
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
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So you can use the spamhaus' DNS server, querying it directly, using its ip.
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.
"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
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
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.":
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.
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.
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.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
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?