Nope. He might be able to if they called it "Star Wars: Episode 7", though. Especially if the parody was not so obvious. People might consider Booble to be part of Google since Google has sites with names such as Froogle.
It' just consumer protection, and defending their good name. People might find Booble a poor quality site, and this would affect Google negatively.
Someone else pointed out the benefits of compression. A point that I had totally missed. I agree it pretty much solves the problem.
I would suggest that it would be nice for the committee responsible for XML to suggest a standard compression algorithm so that text editors and generic XML editors and renderers could be written to read a compressed file directly.
I think I'm probably biased towards graphics file formats, where the file size is a lot more important, and the data typically has most of the same information. And I had a lot of fun working some of these out:)
It's not the tools that matter. Find a tool that you can use. It's all there is too it. It's the game that's important. Decide which sort of game you really love playing, and really want to produce a level for. If possible find several games. Flexibility is a good thing, so is the ability to focus on something else.
Then just get a game level working. Try things out. See what works. Find a playtester. Do not give the playtester any advice at all. Just observe. They should be able to work things out themselves. It helps to make them visually attractive if you're using them as marketting tools, so see what you can do about lighting.
There's a point. Does the XML spec allow for compression, or is it an aftermarket add-on that some vendors have chosen? It would make sense to have a standard algorithm so that generic XML editors can handle compressed files.
It makes files so absolutely huge. Even something like "A" is a least 14 bytes, whereas in a binary format, it would probably be 2 at most (identifier byte and note byte).
Binary formats, while harder to design for extendibility when using this sort of data, are a lot more compact.
No, it isn't a derivitive. The only derivitive work is the wrapper class, and that's questionable. The wrapper may well make the driver compatible with a number of different kernels. The binary module is only a derived work of the wrapper.
This is important since one of the imperial measurements still rigourously enforced in Britain is the pint of beer.
The other interesting aspect is that this may have accelerated the adoption of the metric system, at least for groceries, since a 1 litre carton looks roughly the same size as 2 pints, but is cheaper to produce since it only contains about 9 tenths of the amount.
Our solution was to write a proprietry driver, and then write a wrapper for this to interface it to the kernel. Release the wrapper under the GPL, then release our proprietry software as closed source.
I'm not sure if you're 100% serious, or trying to annoy our mutual friend here, but you have some interesting ideas here.
As a general overview this could actuially work. SPAM laws don't seem to make it a crime to provide services to spammers, but this would be useful. ISPs and hosts would not be harmed unduly since most of them already have this policy, and those that don't probably find spammers are only a small proportion of their customers.
I agree that a requirement that an ISP attempts to deliver all non-spam emails is a good idea. It's also a good suggestion that ISP's are informed that they have been blocked. This gives them an opportunity to fix the problem.
I think there are a few flaws in your proposals, but these could be ironed out with a little work. I also get the feeling that this guy isn't responsible for a significant number of users, and isn't typical of a mail admin. Most ISP admins don't block based soleley on SPEWS and even if they do use SPEWS, will make exceptions based on ranges that they know are not spammers.
I'm sure they would have loved the chance to pick a up lot of potential customers for their code licencing initiative. After all, surely everyone there was using their code.
SPEWS is used only by mail admins who WANT it. Even if it does, as you claim, reduce the functionality of email, it is an entirely voluntary service.
And the admin's customers, Who don't realise they have it, and even if they did probably don't know that they're not receiving al their email. Most people who use email have no idea what SPEWS is, have no idea that it causes overblocking, and just want their ISP to deliver their email.
No, I'm blaming SPEWS for having a faulty policy, and admins who use spews for pretty much the same thing.
No, SPEWS does. A lot of people have misconceptions about what SPEWS does -- they assume that they've already got a general idea, so they skim the FAQ, miss important bits and forget to read for context,
Perhaps if the FAQ was clearer, then there wouldn't be so many misonceptions. It is not clear. Where does it spell out explicitely that SPEWS lists IPs that are not responsible for spamming? Answer 42 is where, and even that's not particularly clear.
If it wanted to be taken more seriously, then A5: Would say something like "All IPs of a spam friendly ISP are listed if they fail to do anything about SPAM. This may include IP addresses that belong to other customers of the ISP, who do not spam. These are considered collatoral damage.. Perhaps a little work on the wording would be needed, but surely it makes what SPEWS does a lot clearer.
I tentatively accept this, but don't think that they deserve to be blocked because of this.
Then don't block their mail.
Well, I don't. I think it's asinine of you to block them because of it.
Why should I have to set up my own list when a perfectly useful list that operates under a philosophy with which I agree is available?
Where did you get the impression that I think you should?
So what, you think that they should be regulated? With what part of "my server, my rules" don't you agree?
Nope. I think they should show more responsibility to their users. The part of "my server, my rules" I disagree with is that it isn't your mail, but your customers' mail, and the rules are idiotic.
Check the contract with your ISP. Delivering all "legitimate" mail may be a nice thing to do, but I don't know of any ISP that is contracutally obligated to do it.
Check the basic concept of decent customer service. Or do you feel that an ISP is also entitled to arbitrarily dump any customer's email on a whim?
Further, as an ISP, I'm within my rights to define mail from NAC.net as "illegitimate", regardless of who at NAC.net actually sent it.
If it's a contract, then you are not within your rights t do that at all. If it uses the word "illegitimate", then it is a utually agreed definition of illegitimate, and since it is a non-negotiated contract, typically any legal disputes will generally favour the customer.
Why do you hate spam so much anyway? I hate it because it reduces the functionality of my email. I hate SPEWS, because it does exactly the same.
I also consider the whole attitude hypocritical. SPEWS refuses to accept any responsibility for blocking, but they expect me to take responsibility to find out whether my ISP's ISP's server host has a policy against their other customers harbouring spammers. Aside from the fact that this in not neccesarily possible, why should SPEWS expect me to take responsibibility, when they don't have the responsibility to admit that their actions harm ISPs that do not spam.
SPEWS does not make it clear what they do. A lot of people know, but I suspect that a lot don't. The website really needs to be looked at to make sure this is made clear. The "Why is spews" question does not make it clear that SPEWS punishes spammer's ISP's and their other customer. You have to go down to the "Why was I blocked", which if I was using SPEWS, isn't a question I would ask. It doesn't make it particularly clear that it includes non-spamming IPs. I suspect most people expect it to behave like other lists.
And of course, a reductio ad absurdum of the policy would mean that the IP number registries would also be responsible for assigning IP addresses to spam friendly ISPs. Hence they, and all their customers should be blocked. I think that will include everyone.
So you would actually say that Dan Pollock is preventing banner advertisements from reaching my computer?
You say that subscribers to a subscriber to a spam friendly ISP are supporting spam. I tentatively accept this, but don't think that they deserve to be blocked because of this. I say the person who configues a deny list, is blocking an IP. set up your own list, then you are blocking them, and the person who wrote the software is assisting.
I'd hardly think that boycotts are illegal.
They're not. Just a the wrong solution in this case. Mail admins have too much power to be so arbitrary about how they wield it.
Odd, I never noticed a clause in my contract with my ISP guaranteeing that any email sent to me would be delivered. In fact, I know that mail sent to me is NOT always delivered, because I choose to use my ISP's spam filtering solutions. I don't think that any sane ISP would make such a promise, because it's impossible to guarantee 100% email delivery. If the mailserver dies or a router fails, mail may well be lost.
There's a difference between inability to deliver, and a policy of not delivering.
It is disreputable to block email that they know is not spam.
Only if they claim to block 100% of all spam and nothing more.
Surely then, it would be perfectly acceptable to turn off the mailserver for a day. It is an obligation to attempt to deliver as much legitimate mail as possible. Attempting to block mail that isn't spam is not what your customers want you to do. My opinions change when it comes to individuals using SPEWS. Then they can block for whatever arbitrary reason they like. I think it's stupid, but they have that right. However, If it was only individuals, then SPEWS wouldn't be so effective.
Frank Stevenson reports three attacks on various parts of CSS, ranging in complexity from 2^24 to 2^8. For a ballpark comparison, my PC bought in late 2000 running the distributed.net client can run through 2^20 RC5 keys in one second.
Surely if there are methods that don't require an exhaustive search, that means that it's broken rather than it's weak though. It wasn't broken when it was decided on. (I'm no expert on crypto, so I may be wrong). It was still weak when it was decided on, but that's another matter.
Would you approve of XOR with a constant 8-bit key being called "encryption"?
Nope. That's already broken, and trivial. You can get the key by XORing the plaintext with the encrypted text.
You have to "decrypt" MP3 files with Winamp to be able to play them on PCM hardware too.
No you don't. The intention of encoding the mp3 isn't obfuscation. It's compression. There is clearly a difference. I'm sure most cryptographers would be on your case pretty damn quick if you even suggested that mp3 was an encryption mechanism, whereas they would probably say that CSS is an encryption mechanism, albeit a poor one.
A key of that length isn't very "secret". In practical, human-scale terms, CSS is no more "secret" than a Caesar cipher, as it takes no longer to decrypt a text than to copy an encrypted text.
So, what length is secret?
CSS is a lot more secret than a caesar cipher. There are only 26 possible keys to brute force for caesar. There are substantially more possible CSS keys. Anyway, I'm not sure it can be reasonably brute forced. At 100 million keys per second, it will still take some hours to break.
And CSS is "simply a different way of representing" data.
Hardly. It's a way of obfuscating data.
Watch somebody implement CSS as a stream cipher for one of the popular crypto APIs. Then it'd have a substantial non-circumventing use as required by 1201(b). In fact, any general-use program that brute-forces encryption keys has a substantial non-circumventing use, namely that of research into the strength of the cipher.
I agree. The DMCA's restrictions on reverse engineering are draconian and largely illogical. I just can't agree that a weak encryption mechanism should be excluded from the law purely because it is weak. I will agree that the law shouldn't protect them in the first place.
Yes, but you have to go to an unusual step of decrypting. I think the idea is that you will see there's a lock there, and decide that you other people don't want you to access it. There isn't really another reasonable purpose for CSS other than to prevent access.
Not quite sure why I'm arguing. I think the whole mechanism from implementation to legal backing is flawed at least,and based on false assumptions. Still, I think that if you assume that the law is valid, and that the assumption that the only pirates want access to the key is valid, then it's reasonable to argue that CSS protects it. It differs from a compression scheme, since it has a secret key, and it differs from a modulo add, since that is simply a different way of representing digits.
The fact that the key and algorithm are embedded in an executable, in which there is no barrier to acces sit prevents it from becoming a trade secret. Once you release any product, I think reverse engineering is fair game. Nobody stops me from taking any physical good apart to see how they work.
It's NOT THEIR FAULT THAT YOUR ISP ALLOWS CRIMINAL ACTIVITY ON THEIR NETWORK!
It's their fault they're listing innocent IPs.
SPEWS does not overblock. SPEWS lists IP space owned by spammers and spam-support outfits. Overblocking would be if they deliberately listed IP space not owned by spam-support outfits. Thus far, you've not demonstrated that they are doing this.
They have managed to inlcude a lot of IP ranges leased by people who do not spam. I can not accept that a subscriber to an ISP always has a choice in whether they use that ISP. SPEWS has a choice whether or not to make an exception.
What is to stop the spam-friendly ISP from moving the spammer to a new IP address in their network?
The fact that someone else happens to be using them.
SPEWS can't force anyone to filter based upon SPEWS listings. The "power" that they have is so effortlessly taken away that I don't see how they can legitimately be blamed for email being lost.
Because they have been given resposibility for blocking, yet show no signs of being responsible themselves. Nevertheless, many admins make them solely responsible for their spam blocking. I think SPEWS should have better rules as to what is and isn't a spammersite, or at least be more honest about how they include IP's that are exclusively owned by non-spammers. I also think admins should stop using SPEWS.
We're getting somewhere now. No one is obliged to use SPEWS, either.
I know. One of my points is that people should not use it.
They got smacked with legal threats from big companies with lots of money over perfectly legitimate listings. As such, it was demonstrated that spammers who had money to throw around or spam-friendly ISPs with sufficient funding could litigate their way out of a listing without actually stopping the spam. SPEWS is a response to this problem.
I'm surprised that if spam is so universally hated, they can't manage to come up with a practically unlimited defence fund by asking people to donate. Since it's apparently just an opinion, it would be an open and shut case anyway. A motion to dismiss would be relatively inexpensive. The only reason they would need to hide is if the legality of what they are doing is not as clear cut as they like to think.
No, an ISP using SPEWS's list causes the mail to be blocked. SPEWS does not "cause" mail blockage any more than Dan Pollock "causes" advertising banners being blocked from my computer
They're both identical situations, and you've just come up with another example of an external source using your computer to perform an action through means of a config file.
What about the actions of spam-friendly ISPs affecting the innocent? You don't seem to have a problem with that. Further, keep in mind that SPEWS's list is only effective upon mailservers where the admins CHOOSE to implement SPEWS-based filtering. This is their right. They can choose to filter mail based upon the number '5' appearing in the IP address, and it's perfectly legal, even though it may well affect the "innocent".
Oh, I do have a problem with ISPs affecting the innocent. I think the solution is worse than the problem. I would also thing it irresponsible to filter based on the number 5 appearing in the IP address. I think it's irresponsible to use SPEWS (Assuming you have other users. If you have no other customer, then do whatever you feel like)
I'm sorry. I should have said "corrupt or incompetent".
You either don't know a lot about the law, or expect a judge to have the same level of familiarity with email as you have.
[SPEWS] made their choice, and they've made their policies known. Don't like them? Don't use their list.
I'll also try and encourage other people not to use it.
I don't think you can. If an employeee blabs, while the employee is liable for civil action, it would probably be possible to get an injunction against the person the employee blabbed to.
Also note that if I trick someone else into telling it, while they may be liable, I am not, and can use my knowledge in any way I want. (Which, BTW, is one of the few forms of legal blackmail...I can offer to sign an NDA if they will pay me X amount of money.)
Your ISP is being punished. Their netspace is being made less valuable. You just happen to be leasing netspace that has been rendered less valuable thanks to your ISP's refusal to act on spam complaints.
Yes. It's being made deliberately, and maliciously less valuable.
You just happen to be leasing netspace that has been rendered less valuable thanks to your ISP's refusal to act on spam complaints.
No. It's being made less valuable thanks to SPEWS' policy of overblocking.
As such, it is not you being punished, it's your ISP and you're just being affected by their punishment.
Yet they could choose to punish the ISP without any collatoral harm to me.
No, but if you have a neighbour who arranges armed robberies to visitors of the property and your landlord knows about it but does nothing to stop it, a number of delivery companies may refuse to provide service in your area. They're not punishing you specifically, or any of your law-abiding neighbours, they're just protecting themselves and you happen to be impacted as a result.
This is a false analogy. The delivery company has no choice but to put themselves at risk todeliver to me. However, it is possible to block spammer IP addresses without blocking my IP ranges.
Post to NANAE, reference the SPEWS case ID
I see. Personally, I like to keep my correspondance private. usenet is a poor means to communicate for many reasons. There's not even any proof that it's been read. There are many other reasons to want to communicate with an organisation. This is why they usually have contact addresses.
IP addresses get blocked because ISPs choose to filter based upon SPEWS listings. The ISPs running the mailservers are the ones doing the blocking. SPEWS isn't blocking any traffic, except possibly to their own machines (though SPEWS has no mailservers).
Yes, so SPEWS listing those sites causes them to be blocked. Hence, should SPEWS desire to cause a site to be blocked, they have that power.
Repeating a falsehood does not make it into truth.
Yes. That was my argument.
Dan Pollock adding an adserver to his sample hosts file causes people like me who use his listings to block all advertisement banners automatically. Cause and effect. Nonetheless, Dan Pollock is not blocking advertisements from my computer. Only I have the authority to do that.
Yes he is. He is configuring your host file for you. I would guess that the way you configure the banner blocker is by editting a text file. The person who edits the file is the person who does the blocking.
Do you have a better solution for pressuring ISPs to drop websites advertised through unsolicited bulk email?
It's not a problem. They can keep the website up as long as they like. I'm not obliged to download it. It may have escaped your notice, but all I want to do is stop spam. I'll happily block it. I'll happily sue spammers, and encourage other people to do both. However, when the actions of anti-spammers start affecting the innocent, I have issues.
If they are legitimate websites, then they're not spamming. If they are an actual referral service (and not a spammer pretending to be running a referral service so that he can blame his spam runs on "referral abuse" -- this happens very often nowadays) and they promplty terminate the referral ID of anyone who spams, then they're not going to arouse the ire of SPEWS. Only websites where the owner either spams or condones spamming amongst his affiliates need to be taken down.
Well, this is fairly reasonable. How does SPEWS determine which ones are legitimate, and which are spammers though? And how is the ISP to know which complaints of spam are legitimate? A series of false spam complaints to an ISP will be indistinguishable form a series of legitimate complaints. How about malicious spam sent out in an attempt to discredit the webs
If you know CSS, then it only takes a few seconds to find a key. Based on that, how can you justify calling the key a trade secret?
You do have to go to some length to figure it out though. It may be secured fairly weakly, but it's still protected, and the protection can have no plausable purpose other than preventing unauthorised access.
I have a few US imports. Roughly 7 or 8, and about 40 or so UK releases. It's actually rarely worth importing these days. The ones I have either showed no signs of becoming available in England for many months, or had feautres that aren't on the region 2 release.
The principle of the thing is important though. At first, the region 2 releases were extremely sparse of features. Because the European distributors had to compete with the US editions, they had to add the features.
No one is treating you as though you've done something wrong. They're treating your ISP as though your ISP has done something wrong (and they have by hosting spammers) and as such they're rejecting packets from your ISP.
Which means I'm being punished for something that someone else did wrong. This seems a little unfair. I think a lot of companies have done a lot of unethical things. I don't try to punish their customers. Sure, I'll try to convince their customers to change, but I'm not going to bully them into doing so. If I have a problem with a noisy neighbour, I am not going to disturb the sleep of his landlord's other tenants to apply pressure to the landlord.
Why do you need to contact them?
To point out that they had made a mistake. To see if they have further information proving that the IP addresses are used by spammers. To help clarify why they were blocked. To explain the situation. To explain that they have cleaned up their act, and to ask to be removed from the list.
They don't block jack shit. This has been restated so many times that the only reasons for repeating it are utter stupidity or outright dishonesty. Are you lying, or just an idiot?
Then why do IP addresses get blocked every time they add one to the list? I have backed up my argument that SPEWS blocks IP addresses time and time again. Nobody has convinced me otherwise. Adding an IP address causes all SPEWS subscribers to block that IP address automatically. Cause and effect. And restating something does not make it true.
SPEWS does not claim to list only spammers. SPEWS openly states that they list IP ranges owned by spam support services. This is what they do. ISPs that support spammers get their IP blocks listed in SPEWS. That's it.
SPEWS does claim to block spam though. This is not what they do. They punish spammers.
Repeat spam runs with no action taken by the ISP -- spamvertised websites staying up despite numerous spam runs.
I didn't know they also listed IP addresses from websites. Strange. Most of my web sites I visit don't seem to get to me through my mail server. This seems a little unfair. I have received spam for legitimate websites thanks to a referals scheme. The websites then ban the referal ID when I complain. Should their ISP ditch their site because they were advertised by spam?
What would happen if spammers spamvertised spews.org? How much spam would it take for spews.org's IP address to be added to SPEWS?
If the spamvertised website is still up and running, then nothing satisfactory has been done about the spammers.
What about if the spammer protested, and managed to get a court injunction preventing the host from barring their access? Do you really think that it's right to penalise an ISP for obeying the law?
No personal contact is needed. The effect of a proper abuse policy at an ISP should be readily apparent by the disapperance of a spamvertised website within a very short time after the first spam run.
Really? It's not remotely possible that the people running SPEWS could have missed a reasonable explanation for subscribing to an ISP that supports spammer?
Slashdot Mirror
Nope. He might be able to if they called it "Star Wars: Episode 7", though. Especially if the parody was not so obvious. People might consider Booble to be part of Google since Google has sites with names such as Froogle.
It' just consumer protection, and defending their good name. People might find Booble a poor quality site, and this would affect Google negatively.
Someone else pointed out the benefits of compression. A point that I had totally missed. I agree it pretty much solves the problem.
I would suggest that it would be nice for the committee responsible for XML to suggest a standard compression algorithm so that text editors and generic XML editors and renderers could be written to read a compressed file directly.
I think I'm probably biased towards graphics file formats, where the file size is a lot more important, and the data typically has most of the same information. And I had a lot of fun working some of these out:)
It's not the tools that matter. Find a tool that you can use. It's all there is too it. It's the game that's important. Decide which sort of game you really love playing, and really want to produce a level for. If possible find several games. Flexibility is a good thing, so is the ability to focus on something else.
Then just get a game level working. Try things out. See what works. Find a playtester. Do not give the playtester any advice at all. Just observe. They should be able to work things out themselves. It helps to make them visually attractive if you're using them as marketting tools, so see what you can do about lighting.
Doesn't matter. Proficiency with tools is not important. Employers are looking for someone who knows how to create a good game.
There's a point. Does the XML spec allow for compression, or is it an aftermarket add-on that some vendors have chosen? It would make sense to have a standard algorithm so that generic XML editors can handle compressed files.
It makes files so absolutely huge. Even something like "A" is a least 14 bytes, whereas in a binary format, it would probably be 2 at most (identifier byte and note byte).
Binary formats, while harder to design for extendibility when using this sort of data, are a lot more compact.
No, it isn't a derivitive. The only derivitive work is the wrapper class, and that's questionable. The wrapper may well make the driver compatible with a number of different kernels. The binary module is only a derived work of the wrapper.
IIRC an Imperial pint is 18 fl. oz.
I think it's 20 fl. oz.
This is important since one of the imperial measurements still rigourously enforced in Britain is the pint of beer.
The other interesting aspect is that this may have accelerated the adoption of the metric system, at least for groceries, since a 1 litre carton looks roughly the same size as 2 pints, but is cheaper to produce since it only contains about 9 tenths of the amount.
We had exactly this problem.
Our solution was to write a proprietry driver, and then write a wrapper for this to interface it to the kernel. Release the wrapper under the GPL, then release our proprietry software as closed source.
I'm not sure if you're 100% serious, or trying to annoy our mutual friend here, but you have some interesting ideas here.
As a general overview this could actuially work. SPAM laws don't seem to make it a crime to provide services to spammers, but this would be useful. ISPs and hosts would not be harmed unduly since most of them already have this policy, and those that don't probably find spammers are only a small proportion of their customers.
I agree that a requirement that an ISP attempts to deliver all non-spam emails is a good idea. It's also a good suggestion that ISP's are informed that they have been blocked. This gives them an opportunity to fix the problem.
I think there are a few flaws in your proposals, but these could be ironed out with a little work. I also get the feeling that this guy isn't responsible for a significant number of users, and isn't typical of a mail admin. Most ISP admins don't block based soleley on SPEWS and even if they do use SPEWS, will make exceptions based on ranges that they know are not spammers.
I wonder how BIOSes with hard-wired Microsoft-based DRM would cooperate with this scheme.
At the time of writing - I suspect all of them.
I'm sure they would have loved the chance to pick a up lot of potential customers for their code licencing initiative. After all, surely everyone there was using their code.
And the admin's customers, Who don't realise they have it, and even if they did probably don't know that they're not receiving al their email. Most people who use email have no idea what SPEWS is, have no idea that it causes overblocking, and just want their ISP to deliver their email.
No, I'm blaming SPEWS for having a faulty policy, and admins who use spews for pretty much the same thing.
No, SPEWS does. A lot of people have misconceptions about what SPEWS does -- they assume that they've already got a general idea, so they skim the FAQ, miss important bits and forget to read for context,
Perhaps if the FAQ was clearer, then there wouldn't be so many misonceptions. It is not clear. Where does it spell out explicitely that SPEWS lists IPs that are not responsible for spamming? Answer 42 is where, and even that's not particularly clear.
If it wanted to be taken more seriously, then A5: Would say something like "All IPs of a spam friendly ISP are listed if they fail to do anything about SPAM. This may include IP addresses that belong to other customers of the ISP, who do not spam. These are considered collatoral damage.. Perhaps a little work on the wording would be needed, but surely it makes what SPEWS does a lot clearer. Then don't block their mail.
Well, I don't. I think it's asinine of you to block them because of it.
Why should I have to set up my own list when a perfectly useful list that operates under a philosophy with which I agree is available?
Where did you get the impression that I think you should?
So what, you think that they should be regulated? With what part of "my server, my rules" don't you agree?
Nope. I think they should show more responsibility to their users. The part of "my server, my rules" I disagree with is that it isn't your mail, but your customers' mail, and the rules are idiotic.
Check the contract with your ISP. Delivering all "legitimate" mail may be a nice thing to do, but I don't know of any ISP that is contracutally obligated to do it.
Check the basic concept of decent customer service. Or do you feel that an ISP is also entitled to arbitrarily dump any customer's email on a whim?
Further, as an ISP, I'm within my rights to define mail from NAC.net as "illegitimate", regardless of who at NAC.net actually sent it.
If it's a contract, then you are not within your rights t do that at all. If it uses the word "illegitimate", then it is a utually agreed definition of illegitimate, and since it is a non-negotiated contract, typically any legal disputes will generally favour the customer.
I also consider the whole attitude hypocritical. SPEWS refuses to accept any responsibility for blocking, but they expect me to take responsibility to find out whether my ISP's ISP's server host has a policy against their other customers harbouring spammers. Aside from the fact that this in not neccesarily possible, why should SPEWS expect me to take responsibibility, when they don't have the responsibility to admit that their actions harm ISPs that do not spam.
SPEWS does not make it clear what they do. A lot of people know, but I suspect that a lot don't. The website really needs to be looked at to make sure this is made clear. The "Why is spews" question does not make it clear that SPEWS punishes spammer's ISP's and their other customer. You have to go down to the "Why was I blocked", which if I was using SPEWS, isn't a question I would ask. It doesn't make it particularly clear that it includes non-spamming IPs. I suspect most people expect it to behave like other lists.
And of course, a reductio ad absurdum of the policy would mean that the IP number registries would also be responsible for assigning IP addresses to spam friendly ISPs. Hence they, and all their customers should be blocked. I think that will include everyone.
So you would actually say that Dan Pollock is preventing banner advertisements from reaching my computer?
You say that subscribers to a subscriber to a spam friendly ISP are supporting spam. I tentatively accept this, but don't think that they deserve to be blocked because of this. I say the person who configues a deny list, is blocking an IP. set up your own list, then you are blocking them, and the person who wrote the software is assisting.
I'd hardly think that boycotts are illegal.
They're not. Just a the wrong solution in this case. Mail admins have too much power to be so arbitrary about how they wield it.
Odd, I never noticed a clause in my contract with my ISP guaranteeing that any email sent to me would be delivered. In fact, I know that mail sent to me is NOT always delivered, because I choose to use my ISP's spam filtering solutions. I don't think that any sane ISP would make such a promise, because it's impossible to guarantee 100% email delivery. If the mailserver dies or a router fails, mail may well be lost.
There's a difference between inability to deliver, and a policy of not delivering.
Only if they claim to block 100% of all spam and nothing more.
Surely then, it would be perfectly acceptable to turn off the mailserver for a day. It is an obligation to attempt to deliver as much legitimate mail as possible. Attempting to block mail that isn't spam is not what your customers want you to do. My opinions change when it comes to individuals using SPEWS. Then they can block for whatever arbitrary reason they like. I think it's stupid, but they have that right. However, If it was only individuals, then SPEWS wouldn't be so effective.
Well, okay, but for all we know, all known encryptions schemes may well be broken. It wasn't known to be broken when it was decided on.
Frank Stevenson reports three attacks on various parts of CSS, ranging in complexity from 2^24 to 2^8. For a ballpark comparison, my PC bought in late 2000 running the distributed.net client can run through 2^20 RC5 keys in one second.
Surely if there are methods that don't require an exhaustive search, that means that it's broken rather than it's weak though. It wasn't broken when it was decided on. (I'm no expert on crypto, so I may be wrong). It was still weak when it was decided on, but that's another matter.
Would you approve of XOR with a constant 8-bit key being called "encryption"?
Nope. That's already broken, and trivial. You can get the key by XORing the plaintext with the encrypted text.
You have to "decrypt" MP3 files with Winamp to be able to play them on PCM hardware too.
No you don't. The intention of encoding the mp3 isn't obfuscation. It's compression. There is clearly a difference. I'm sure most cryptographers would be on your case pretty damn quick if you even suggested that mp3 was an encryption mechanism, whereas they would probably say that CSS is an encryption mechanism, albeit a poor one.
A key of that length isn't very "secret". In practical, human-scale terms, CSS is no more "secret" than a Caesar cipher, as it takes no longer to decrypt a text than to copy an encrypted text.
So, what length is secret?
CSS is a lot more secret than a caesar cipher. There are only 26 possible keys to brute force for caesar. There are substantially more possible CSS keys. Anyway, I'm not sure it can be reasonably brute forced. At 100 million keys per second, it will still take some hours to break.
And CSS is "simply a different way of representing" data.
Hardly. It's a way of obfuscating data.
Watch somebody implement CSS as a stream cipher for one of the popular crypto APIs. Then it'd have a substantial non-circumventing use as required by 1201(b). In fact, any general-use program that brute-forces encryption keys has a substantial non-circumventing use, namely that of research into the strength of the cipher.
I agree. The DMCA's restrictions on reverse engineering are draconian and largely illogical. I just can't agree that a weak encryption mechanism should be excluded from the law purely because it is weak. I will agree that the law shouldn't protect them in the first place.
Yes, but you have to go to an unusual step of decrypting. I think the idea is that you will see there's a lock there, and decide that you other people don't want you to access it. There isn't really another reasonable purpose for CSS other than to prevent access.
Not quite sure why I'm arguing. I think the whole mechanism from implementation to legal backing is flawed at least,and based on false assumptions. Still, I think that if you assume that the law is valid, and that the assumption that the only pirates want access to the key is valid, then it's reasonable to argue that CSS protects it. It differs from a compression scheme, since it has a secret key, and it differs from a modulo add, since that is simply a different way of representing digits.
The fact that the key and algorithm are embedded in an executable, in which there is no barrier to acces sit prevents it from becoming a trade secret. Once you release any product, I think reverse engineering is fair game. Nobody stops me from taking any physical good apart to see how they work.
It's NOT THEIR FAULT THAT YOUR ISP ALLOWS CRIMINAL ACTIVITY ON THEIR NETWORK!
It's their fault they're listing innocent IPs.
SPEWS does not overblock. SPEWS lists IP space owned by spammers and spam-support outfits. Overblocking would be if they deliberately listed IP space not owned by spam-support outfits. Thus far, you've not demonstrated that they are doing this.
They have managed to inlcude a lot of IP ranges leased by people who do not spam. I can not accept that a subscriber to an ISP always has a choice in whether they use that ISP. SPEWS has a choice whether or not to make an exception.
What is to stop the spam-friendly ISP from moving the spammer to a new IP address in their network?
The fact that someone else happens to be using them.
SPEWS can't force anyone to filter based upon SPEWS listings. The "power" that they have is so effortlessly taken away that I don't see how they can legitimately be blamed for email being lost.
Because they have been given resposibility for blocking, yet show no signs of being responsible themselves. Nevertheless, many admins make them solely responsible for their spam blocking. I think SPEWS should have better rules as to what is and isn't a spammersite, or at least be more honest about how they include IP's that are exclusively owned by non-spammers. I also think admins should stop using SPEWS.
We're getting somewhere now. No one is obliged to use SPEWS, either.
I know. One of my points is that people should not use it.
They got smacked with legal threats from big companies with lots of money over perfectly legitimate listings. As such, it was demonstrated that spammers who had money to throw around or spam-friendly ISPs with sufficient funding could litigate their way out of a listing without actually stopping the spam. SPEWS is a response to this problem.
I'm surprised that if spam is so universally hated, they can't manage to come up with a practically unlimited defence fund by asking people to donate. Since it's apparently just an opinion, it would be an open and shut case anyway. A motion to dismiss would be relatively inexpensive. The only reason they would need to hide is if the legality of what they are doing is not as clear cut as they like to think.
No, an ISP using SPEWS's list causes the mail to be blocked. SPEWS does not "cause" mail blockage any more than Dan Pollock "causes" advertising banners being blocked from my computer
They're both identical situations, and you've just come up with another example of an external source using your computer to perform an action through means of a config file.
What about the actions of spam-friendly ISPs affecting the innocent? You don't seem to have a problem with that. Further, keep in mind that SPEWS's list is only effective upon mailservers where the admins CHOOSE to implement SPEWS-based filtering. This is their right. They can choose to filter mail based upon the number '5' appearing in the IP address, and it's perfectly legal, even though it may well affect the "innocent".
Oh, I do have a problem with ISPs affecting the innocent. I think the solution is worse than the problem. I would also thing it irresponsible to filter based on the number 5 appearing in the IP address. I think it's irresponsible to use SPEWS (Assuming you have other users. If you have no other customer, then do whatever you feel like)
I'm sorry. I should have said "corrupt or incompetent".
You either don't know a lot about the law, or expect a judge to have the same level of familiarity with email as you have.
[SPEWS] made their choice, and they've made their policies known. Don't like them? Don't use their list.
I'll also try and encourage other people not to use it.
Their actions are posting a list of IP blocks.
This has the resultant action of causing damag
I can get an employee drunk, etc. If I do, I win
I don't think you can. If an employeee blabs, while the employee is liable for civil action, it would probably be possible to get an injunction against the person the employee blabbed to.
Also note that if I trick someone else into telling it, while they may be liable, I am not, and can use my knowledge in any way I want. (Which, BTW, is one of the few forms of legal blackmail...I can offer to sign an NDA if they will pay me X amount of money.)
Extortion is not legal blackmail.
Your ISP is being punished. Their netspace is being made less valuable. You just happen to be leasing netspace that has been rendered less valuable thanks to your ISP's refusal to act on spam complaints.
Yes. It's being made deliberately, and maliciously less valuable. You just happen to be leasing netspace that has been rendered less valuable thanks to your ISP's refusal to act on spam complaints.
No. It's being made less valuable thanks to SPEWS' policy of overblocking.
As such, it is not you being punished, it's your ISP and you're just being affected by their punishment.
Yet they could choose to punish the ISP without any collatoral harm to me.
No, but if you have a neighbour who arranges armed robberies to visitors of the property and your landlord knows about it but does nothing to stop it, a number of delivery companies may refuse to provide service in your area. They're not punishing you specifically, or any of your law-abiding neighbours, they're just protecting themselves and you happen to be impacted as a result.
This is a false analogy. The delivery company has no choice but to put themselves at risk todeliver to me. However, it is possible to block spammer IP addresses without blocking my IP ranges.
Post to NANAE, reference the SPEWS case ID
I see. Personally, I like to keep my correspondance private. usenet is a poor means to communicate for many reasons. There's not even any proof that it's been read. There are many other reasons to want to communicate with an organisation. This is why they usually have contact addresses.
IP addresses get blocked because ISPs choose to filter based upon SPEWS listings. The ISPs running the mailservers are the ones doing the blocking. SPEWS isn't blocking any traffic, except possibly to their own machines (though SPEWS has no mailservers).
Yes, so SPEWS listing those sites causes them to be blocked. Hence, should SPEWS desire to cause a site to be blocked, they have that power.
Repeating a falsehood does not make it into truth.
Yes. That was my argument.
Dan Pollock adding an adserver to his sample hosts file causes people like me who use his listings to block all advertisement banners automatically. Cause and effect. Nonetheless, Dan Pollock is not blocking advertisements from my computer. Only I have the authority to do that.
Yes he is. He is configuring your host file for you. I would guess that the way you configure the banner blocker is by editting a text file. The person who edits the file is the person who does the blocking.
Do you have a better solution for pressuring ISPs to drop websites advertised through unsolicited bulk email?
It's not a problem. They can keep the website up as long as they like. I'm not obliged to download it. It may have escaped your notice, but all I want to do is stop spam. I'll happily block it. I'll happily sue spammers, and encourage other people to do both. However, when the actions of anti-spammers start affecting the innocent, I have issues.
If they are legitimate websites, then they're not spamming. If they are an actual referral service (and not a spammer pretending to be running a referral service so that he can blame his spam runs on "referral abuse" -- this happens very often nowadays) and they promplty terminate the referral ID of anyone who spams, then they're not going to arouse the ire of SPEWS. Only websites where the owner either spams or condones spamming amongst his affiliates need to be taken down.
Well, this is fairly reasonable. How does SPEWS determine which ones are legitimate, and which are spammers though? And how is the ISP to know which complaints of spam are legitimate? A series of false spam complaints to an ISP will be indistinguishable form a series of legitimate complaints. How about malicious spam sent out in an attempt to discredit the webs
If you know CSS, then it only takes a few seconds to find a key. Based on that, how can you justify calling the key a trade secret?
You do have to go to some length to figure it out though. It may be secured fairly weakly, but it's still protected, and the protection can have no plausable purpose other than preventing unauthorised access.
I have a few US imports. Roughly 7 or 8, and about 40 or so UK releases. It's actually rarely worth importing these days. The ones I have either showed no signs of becoming available in England for many months, or had feautres that aren't on the region 2 release.
The principle of the thing is important though. At first, the region 2 releases were extremely sparse of features. Because the European distributors had to compete with the US editions, they had to add the features.
No one is treating you as though you've done something wrong. They're treating your ISP as though your ISP has done something wrong (and they have by hosting spammers) and as such they're rejecting packets from your ISP.
Which means I'm being punished for something that someone else did wrong. This seems a little unfair. I think a lot of companies have done a lot of unethical things. I don't try to punish their customers. Sure, I'll try to convince their customers to change, but I'm not going to bully them into doing so. If I have a problem with a noisy neighbour, I am not going to disturb the sleep of his landlord's other tenants to apply pressure to the landlord.
Why do you need to contact them?
To point out that they had made a mistake. To see if they have further information proving that the IP addresses are used by spammers. To help clarify why they were blocked. To explain the situation. To explain that they have cleaned up their act, and to ask to be removed from the list.
They don't block jack shit. This has been restated so many times that the only reasons for repeating it are utter stupidity or outright dishonesty. Are you lying, or just an idiot?
Then why do IP addresses get blocked every time they add one to the list? I have backed up my argument that SPEWS blocks IP addresses time and time again. Nobody has convinced me otherwise. Adding an IP address causes all SPEWS subscribers to block that IP address automatically. Cause and effect. And restating something does not make it true.
SPEWS does not claim to list only spammers. SPEWS openly states that they list IP ranges owned by spam support services. This is what they do. ISPs that support spammers get their IP blocks listed in SPEWS. That's it.
SPEWS does claim to block spam though. This is not what they do. They punish spammers.
Repeat spam runs with no action taken by the ISP -- spamvertised websites staying up despite numerous spam runs.
I didn't know they also listed IP addresses from websites. Strange. Most of my web sites I visit don't seem to get to me through my mail server. This seems a little unfair. I have received spam for legitimate websites thanks to a referals scheme. The websites then ban the referal ID when I complain. Should their ISP ditch their site because they were advertised by spam?
What would happen if spammers spamvertised spews.org? How much spam would it take for spews.org's IP address to be added to SPEWS?
If the spamvertised website is still up and running, then nothing satisfactory has been done about the spammers.
What about if the spammer protested, and managed to get a court injunction preventing the host from barring their access? Do you really think that it's right to penalise an ISP for obeying the law?
No personal contact is needed. The effect of a proper abuse policy at an ISP should be readily apparent by the disapperance of a spamvertised website within a very short time after the first spam run.
Really? It's not remotely possible that the people running SPEWS could have missed a reasonable explanation for subscribing to an ISP that supports spammer?
If you insist
"hsilop"