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NSI to be RBL'ed?
From: Paul A Vixie
Subject: possible RBL event coming up involving NSI
------- Blind-Carbon-Copy
To: interest@mail-abuse.org
cc: rbl@mail-abuse.org
Subject: possible RBL event coming up involving NSI
Date: Fri, 30 Jul 1999 16:02:14 -0700
From: Paul A Vixie
You are receiving this because you are either an interested outsider, or a staff member or volunteer, or a customer of M.A.P.S., LLC. Note our new domain name, mail-abuse.org. (The old maps.vix.com domain name gave some the false impression that MAPS was not a separate company.)
Today we received the letter below from NSI in response to our repeated attempts to get them to stop sending unsolicited bulk commercial e-mail to all domain holders. In this letter, NSI implies that they will sue us for damages and incite entities like Amazon.com to do likewise if we decide to blackhole them, and then go on to say that they have no intention of stopping the current business practice of these which caused our complaints.
They are pretty much daring us to blackhole them. The board of MAPS, LLC will make its final determination in the next few days, and if we do decide to blackhole NSI it's going to get ugly. As an interested party, we want you all to know what's happening.
=================================
July 30, 1999
VIA FIRST CLASS AND
ELECTRONIC MAIL
Nick Nicholas, Executive Director
Mail Abuse Prevention System, LLC
950 Charter Street
Redwood City, CA 94063
Re: Nomination of NSI for Black List
Dear Mr. Nicholas:
Thank you for the opportunity to respond to your email to me dated July 16, 1999, regarding the Realtime Blackhole List ("Black List") managed by the Mail Abuse Prevention System LLC.
Enclosed is a copy of a letter I sent today to Mr. James Wagner, President of Hypertouch, Inc., the complainant who apparently prompted your July 16 email to me. Network Solutions has removed Mr. Wagner's name from its mailing list. As noted in the letter, Mr. Wagner could have avoided receiving the subject email in the first place had he simply followed the mailing list removal procedure specified in an email transmitted to him on March 30, 1999.
There can be no doubt that Network Solutions has an existing business relationship with the administrative, technical and billing contacts for a given domain name registered with Network Solutions. These people are the principal points of contact through which Network Solutions transacts business with its customers. They have been so designated by our customers in their domain name registration agreements with Network Solutions.
These are precisely the types of relationships that the California legislature wanted to shield from the restrictions contained in its unsolicited email statutes. Indeed, the statute's protection of communications between persons involved in existing business relationships reflects the state's determination that such communications are not "spam," but rather vital catalysts to free and open commerce. We are aware of no law that prohibits companies from communicating with their own customers.
We respectfully suggest that MAPS and any other person involved in the compilation and dissemination of the Black List adopt a definition of spam that is consistent with the principles recognized by California. Any more expansive definition is overly broad and may unreasonably restrain trade. Indeed, it is apparent that Mr. Wagner's principal concern about Network Solutions' emails is the competitive threat they represent to his company's ISP business. Those emails reference Internet companies that are competitors of Mr. Wagner's company, Hypertouch, Inc. It appears Hypertouch, Inc. hopes to shelter itself from such competition by combining with those who control the Black List and its technology to restrain such competition.
If inclusion on the Black List will effectively block Network Solutions from contacting 40% of the Internet, as you claimed in your email of July 29, 1999, MAPS's actions would have severe and irreparable consequences on the company's relationship with its customers. Network Solutions has over 5,000,000 customers. Consequently, if you place Network Solutions on the Black List, 2,000,000 (40%) of its own customers presumably would be unable to receive important information from Network Solutions, including invoices and deactivation notices, possibly leading to the revocation of their domain name registrations. You should be prepared to accept the consequences of your actions should a company such as Amazon.com lose its domain name, and thus its e-commerce business, as a result of having its notices and invoices intercepted and destroyed. It is difficult to believe that MAPS would be willing to take such drastic actions based on the self-serving complaint of Mr. Wagner.
Indeed, MAPS's overly expansive definition of spam exposes MAPS and those who own or control the Black List to, inter alia, civil claims of: (1) illegal combination in restraint of trade violating Section 1 of the Sherman Act, 15 U.S.C. ? 1; (2) unfair competition; and (3) intentional interference with contractual relationships.
Network Solutions will not hesitate to take all actions necessary to protect its rights and ensure that its channels of communications to its own customers remain open. I hope that such measures will be unnecessary and that you will opt not to include the company on the Black List. p
Please advise me of your decision and do not hesitate to contact me if you wish to discuss this matter further.
Very truly yours,
Jonathan W. Emery
==============
I love lawyers. All they seem to know how to do is threaten and bully, regardless of how empty their threats are.
As I understand it, RBL is a subscription service. That is, the sites that use the RBL have chosen to participate, and are voluntarily not receiving email from anyone on the list. So, if you can't send mail to me, it's because I've chosen not to listen to you. All the ISP's that I've seen that use the RBL announce this fact, so businesses that use them should be aware of this.
Secondly, email is not a legally binding (or allowable) method of conducting business. You can't send invoices only by email, and then claim in court that you gave proper notice (at least in the US). Email has no guaranty of delievery, and the courts have not reconized it as a reliable method for transmitting legal/business documents. So NSI's invoice threat is moot. If they aren't sending invoices to Amazon via methods other than email, then terminate Amazon.com for some reason that was indicated in the email, well, guess who's liable for interference of interstate commerce? NSI!
Dolts.
I don't like the RBL. I think it's a poor (both technical and political) method of attempting to control SPAM. However, I dislike NSI even more. And if the Commerce Department is now stating that the whois database is it's property (which it is), then I can't wait for them to stick it to NSI for illegal use of government property for private commercial gain.
NSI sucks hard. They just need to die. Or at least fire all their top management.
-Erik
There are always four sides to every story: your side, their side, the truth, and what really happened.
That was FUNNY.
;)
:)
I wonder if they really thought anyone would give a flying fsck about some non-existant risk of Amazon suing them. If I was Amazon.com, and my ONLY billing invoice was set to be e-mail, and I lost my domain, there's three things I'd do:
1) Sue Network Solutions for removing my domain because of a lack of a response on a non legally-binding communcation medium.
2) Fire the admin who set up the domain not to have postal billing notification
3) Contact anyone I could to have said admin "disappeared"
Personally, I don't understand why someone would set up e-mail notification in the first place. I mean, come on! Sure, most clients are that stupid, but most ISP's should have the brains to point out to the clients the problems inherant in doing that.
Blacklist them. Serves them right. As has been said many times before, Network Solutions do not own the Internet, they're just unfairly utilizing an inappropriate monopoly situation created by a US Government that repeatly shows itself to be the premier organization of cluelessness and idiocity in the world.
Maybe the Government should be blacklisted to, just on general principle.
.. is that MAPS has gone up against bigger companies and won...
Anyone remember when Microsoft was RBL'ed?
They poised, and they threatened, and then they backed down... MS is bigger than NSI could ever hope to be, and they have WAY more money to throw at lawyers.
AOL, also was blackholed as well; with the same results; denials, threats, submission.
If MS couldn't win, then what makes NSI think they will? This letter just shows exactly how clueless they are. Someone should send them a wake-up call. Paul Vixie doesn't back down.
1) NSI's definition of "customer" is bogus. Yes, a company has certain rights to communicate with its customers (see below). But the status of "customer" implies the meeting of a willing buyer and willing seller. Because NSI has had a monopoly these past few years, we can't assume "willing buyer". Who knows how many people would have gone to a different source for TLDs had one been available? I know I would have. Therefore, we as buyers are in an *enforced* customer relationship, and NSI shouldn't assume that the usual privileges apply.
2) Even if we were truly NSI's "customers", opt-out bulk e-mail is still not part of the "usual privileges" package vendors earn from such a relationship. I've seen the e-mail in question -- it's a pure sales pitch, *not* administrative. It's not central (or even related) to the functioning of the relationship, and one has no opportunity to opt-out at the time the relationship is started. In short: appallingly bad marketing. But what moves NSI from the world of Bad Marketing and into the sphere of Theft is the cost-transference nature of e-mail.
--Tom
Tom Geller
>
>
Opens with ad hominem arguments and ends with moot threats. I think I can see why it got flamebaited.
That said, the AC who wrote the article did have some good points, which probably bear repeating:
and consequently,
One problem, though - most of these concerns are valid only for situations in which an ISP is RBLed, and customers of the ISP wonder why their mail is blocked. For a blocking of NSI (or RealNetworks' mail servers), only those machines would be blackholed - and thus, only users on those spamming machines (in this case, presumably just a mailing 'bot) are likely to suffer collateral damage.
An RBL for an ISP is different - it passes the support load from the newbie customers of the ISP on to the support department of the ISP. On the other hand - when all else, including the efforts of the RBL team to resolve the situation peacefully, has failed, maybe that's the only option left. If an ISP chooses to harbor spammers, its customers will suffer, and leave.
Maybe that's fair, maybe it's not (and it's certainly a valid subject for debate), but that's not what we're talking about here.
An RBL for a spam-spewing mail server in a single domain inconveniences only the ability of that server to spew spam. If the server exists solely as a spam hydrant, then the collateral damage is essentially zero.
Finally, in MAPS' defence, it's hard to get a site on the RBL. Writing Nick (Nick Nicholas, former pacbell.net abuse god :) and saying "I mailed abuse@isp.com and they ignored me" isn't enough. A history of abuse must be established and documented, as well as attempts by phone as well as e-mail to resolve the situation. The MAPS team then goes out and attempts to resolve the situation themselves. Their decision to place a site on the RBL isn't an everyday occurrence; it's a last resort reserved for the most brazen of offenders.
I am surprised that they didn't try the more effective "if you blackhole us, we will delete your domain". It would be more effective, and its legal footing would be just as shaky
NSI: We're a 600 pound gorilla, and we intend to behave as badly as we want to. Get in our way, and we'll squash you.
If RBL is to mean anything, they really have no choice but to blacklist NSI at this point. MANY people have complained about SPAM from NSI.
NSI, because of their special monopoly position, has a higher obligation than most companies to not spam. It's not as if most of the people on their list could have chosen another registrar that doesn't spam (at least not when they gave NSI their email address).
For those who will have problems if NSI is blacklisted, there are several options. Tell NSI to send invoices by snail mail, de-configure RBL, or go to another registrar. I suggest the latter if at all possible.
The MAPS RBL has blocked whole backbones before (AGIS, for the Cyberpromotions fiasco they had). Real Networks got thrown in, even after they sent a legal threat to MAPS. MAPS has not received any orders against the listing.
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