Well, I had just read the post someone made about something happening in France, where the guy found out that someone had opened lots of accounts in the guy's own name. Wouldn't *THAT* be nice... someone steals your identity to hide income so that they don't have to report it, and that you would, and then you find out about it and then take the money!:-)
Yeah, and such criminals, or hired representatives, would be too squeamish to come by your house one day, armed, looking for said money?
It depends on who uses your servers. If you run an ISP and have a service contract to provide email to people, then you don't have the right to arbitrarily censor people's email, in my opinion.
An ISP is not a common carrier, it is a business. If they're breaking a contract, the wronged party should hold them to the agreement, possibly escalating to a lawsuit. Blame the one breaking the contract, do not blame a blocklist the ISP uses. If they're not breaking a contract, and not breaking any laws or regulations, one can only vote with those methods available, like one's feet.
Boycott whatever you like, but it's immoral to boycott on other people's behalf just because you can.
Can you rephrase this? This doesn't make sense. SPEWS cannot block inbound email anywhere, except on their own servers. Only the administrators of a mail server can cause mail inbound to their server to be blocked using SPEWS' list. You're misplacing blame.
Would you blame a *nix OS vendor for providing/dev/null if a postmaster redirects his incoming email there?
The similarity, I thought, was rather clear. All I am saying is that the RIAA and anti-spam activists have laws that they believe support their position. Furthermore, they are willing to use the legal system to seek financial remedy from the perceived violators. Last, the similarity lies in the fact that, regardless of how the case is decided (settlement or verdict), the threat of financial penalty is likely to alter behavior (basic economic theory).
But I'd still like to see SPEWS sued into the stone age. If you want to block spam, that's fine... but you just can't convince me that blocking thousands of legit servers, just because they're close to spam servers, is in any way a good practice.
You believe rogue and clueless providers force spammers to sit in one spot within their networks? How quaint.
How can you prove the damages are $500 per email. That seems a little outrageous.
Statutory damages, not actual damages. The practice is detrimental in ways that cannot be accurately quantified, so the legislature specified minimum damages (as in court awards) for the offense.
This is similar to the USA-wide ban on junk faxes for which the recipient can sue for $500 (possibly tripled) per offense. Of course, hardly anyone utilizes these laws, which means junk faxers are still around, making profit on illegal activities.
This is a problem easily solved with technology, thanks.
This does not appear to be true, demonstrated easily by the fact that spam is still a problem. Either it's not solvable by technology or not "easily", then.
Spam filters at the user's mail client don't prevent billions of spams from pounding AOL's mailservers every single day.
Under your "logic" (note the quotes), you would encourage a city to put up military roadblocks, and prevent anyone from going in, when they find one crack dealer in your neighborhood.
Please. SPEWS is intended for blocking email, not EVERYTHING.
I have the freedom to associate with whomever I want. So do you. Do not our servers have the right to associate with whichever servers we choose? Apparently not, in your opinion.
And when you go to complain, noone exists. Not "you know their name, but don't have access to them", but "nobody knows their names, and we won't tell you".
There's a reason for that, too. Simply running a blocklist, no matter how gentle, will get you harassment from spammers, death threats, frivolous lawsuits, etc. Those who formed SPEWS simply wanted to avoid all that. (I am not SPEWS, nor do I know who is.)
Anti-spam litigants seem pretty similar to the RIAA in their tactics of making it hurt--financially--for illegal activity.
In what way are the tactics similar? You don't say, and I certainly don't see any similarities. Perhaps you could elaborate?
In this judgement, an individual plaintiff convinced a judge that massive bombardments of get-rich-quick scam emails was prohibited by a specific anti-trespass law and was awarded far less than the statutory damages for it.
In the RIAA lawsuits, a massive corporation is tracking down petty criminals (like a 12 year old girl who thought she was legally downloading music) and threatening them with massive lawsuits, generally settling out of court. Have there actually been judgements against any of those attacked by the RIAA, or have they all been out-of-court settlements by people afraid to go toe-to-toe with an entity with bottomless legal funds?
Radio? New music? Right. The one hard-rock radio station in the market where I live spends half the time playing songs that were overplayed in the early and mid 1990s.
I really don't want to listen to Smells Like Teen Spirit for the trillionth time.
I've never seen a library that had an up-to-date collection of music, usually because they were massively under-funded. Perhaps libraries in your area are better funded?
I fail to see how Cloudmark's SpamNet is P2P. From what I can see, it's has community features, but it is done through central servers at Cloudmark. Take out Cloudmark's central servers, SpamNet does not function.
Some of the crazies who post on nana-e even have the whole country of Brazil banned on their private lists.
If someone never gets anything from Brazil other than megabytes of spam, and you never expect to, blocking Brazil for your own mailbox(es) makes sense. I still get vast quantities of spam from Brazil and I don't believe I've *EVER* gotten a response from the ISPs down there that allow it.
I hate spam with a passion, but words cannot describe my pleasure in seeing these blacklists, especially SPEWS, shut down. They are pure evil in their methods, and largely ineffective against spam while causing massive inconvenience for ISPs and legitimate users of the network.
Do not the administrators of a mail server have the right to choose what traffic they do and do not accept? Centralized blocklists only have an effect if admins choose to use them. It's their system, so it's their choice whether or not to use it.
You seem to believe that a blocklist can force someone to use it to block traffic. It can't.
Slashdot Mirror
While not the final solution, I sure hope that biometric IDs arrive soon. Otherwise the system is just way to easy to exploit!
I think I'd rather someone stole my ID card than kill me for my eyeballs.
Well, I had just read the post someone made about something happening in France, where the guy found out that someone had opened lots of accounts in the guy's own name. Wouldn't *THAT* be nice... someone steals your identity to hide income so that they don't have to report it, and that you would, and then you find out about it and then take the money! :-)
Yeah, and such criminals, or hired representatives, would be too squeamish to come by your house one day, armed, looking for said money?
That would be fun.
D'oh! I get it now!!! $65 Billion or 65 Billion Dollars, not $65 Billion Dollars (65 billion dollars dollars).
Curse you, Vash the Stampede!
One wonders why was this modded 'Troll'? This was pretty funny.
Fax.com is a nasty outfit. Read this dossier on them. Also read this story and this FCC report and this lawsuit by the California Attorney General's office which detail the kind of sleazy behavior fax.com and its constituents engage in.
It depends on who uses your servers. If you run an ISP and have a service contract to provide email to people, then you don't have the right to arbitrarily censor people's email, in my opinion.
/dev/null if a postmaster redirects his incoming email there?
An ISP is not a common carrier, it is a business. If they're breaking a contract, the wronged party should hold them to the agreement, possibly escalating to a lawsuit. Blame the one breaking the contract, do not blame a blocklist the ISP uses. If they're not breaking a contract, and not breaking any laws or regulations, one can only vote with those methods available, like one's feet.
Boycott whatever you like, but it's immoral to boycott on other people's behalf just because you can.
Can you rephrase this? This doesn't make sense. SPEWS cannot block inbound email anywhere, except on their own servers. Only the administrators of a mail server can cause mail inbound to their server to be blocked using SPEWS' list. You're misplacing blame.
Would you blame a *nix OS vendor for providing
The FTC action against Miss Cleo was persued because the FTC
- saw "laws that they believe support their position"
- were "willing to use the legal system to seek financial remedy from the perceived violators"
- and "the threat of financial penalty is likely to alter behavior".
I don't really find anything significant about this observation. This is how the tort system works. (IANAL)But I'd still like to see SPEWS sued into the stone age. If you want to block spam, that's fine... but you just can't convince me that blocking thousands of legit servers, just because they're close to spam servers, is in any way a good practice.
You believe rogue and clueless providers force spammers to sit in one spot within their networks? How quaint.
How can you prove the damages are $500 per email. That seems a little outrageous.
Statutory damages, not actual damages. The practice is detrimental in ways that cannot be accurately quantified, so the legislature specified minimum damages (as in court awards) for the offense.
This is similar to the USA-wide ban on junk faxes for which the recipient can sue for $500 (possibly tripled) per offense. Of course, hardly anyone utilizes these laws, which means junk faxers are still around, making profit on illegal activities.
This is a problem easily solved with technology, thanks.
This does not appear to be true, demonstrated easily by the fact that spam is still a problem. Either it's not solvable by technology or not "easily", then.
Spam filters at the user's mail client don't prevent billions of spams from pounding AOL's mailservers every single day.
Under your "logic" (note the quotes), you would encourage a city to put up military roadblocks, and prevent anyone from going in, when they find one crack dealer in your neighborhood.
Please. SPEWS is intended for blocking email, not EVERYTHING.
I have the freedom to associate with whomever I want. So do you. Do not our servers have the right to associate with whichever servers we choose? Apparently not, in your opinion.
And when you go to complain, noone exists. Not "you know their name, but don't have access to them", but "nobody knows their names, and we won't tell you".
There's a reason for that, too. Simply running a blocklist, no matter how gentle, will get you harassment from spammers, death threats, frivolous lawsuits, etc. Those who formed SPEWS simply wanted to avoid all that. (I am not SPEWS, nor do I know who is.)
WTF are you talking about? It was the spammers (ie: Mark Felchstain and the alleged members of his "organization") who sued.
There were two cases mentioned. You apparently only read about the second one.
Anti-spam litigants seem pretty similar to the RIAA in their tactics of making it hurt--financially--for illegal activity.
In what way are the tactics similar? You don't say, and I certainly don't see any similarities. Perhaps you could elaborate?
In this judgement, an individual plaintiff convinced a judge that massive bombardments of get-rich-quick scam emails was prohibited by a specific anti-trespass law and was awarded far less than the statutory damages for it.
In the RIAA lawsuits, a massive corporation is tracking down petty criminals (like a 12 year old girl who thought she was legally downloading music) and threatening them with massive lawsuits, generally settling out of court. Have there actually been judgements against any of those attacked by the RIAA, or have they all been out-of-court settlements by people afraid to go toe-to-toe with an entity with bottomless legal funds?
I found an article on this, Case of 19 terrorists unravelling, though the link to Echelon and the nuclear power plant appears somewhat tenuous.
...and new relevence to the term "protoculture".
You don't own a radio?
Radio? New music? Right. The one hard-rock radio station in the market where I live spends half the time playing songs that were overplayed in the early and mid 1990s.
I really don't want to listen to Smells Like Teen Spirit for the trillionth time.
Not to mention that the commercial radio stations play what the labels want us to hear.
Ever hear of a library?
I've never seen a library that had an up-to-date collection of music, usually because they were massively under-funded. Perhaps libraries in your area are better funded?
"You can't prove a negative" only applies to Empirically gained knowledge, not Logic.
Example?
"You can't prove a negative" is an axiom. It doesn't require proof.
Not a very good axiom if one can prove it false.
Theorem: Your statement is false.
Proof:
Note the following counterexamples:
QED
I fail to see how Cloudmark's SpamNet is P2P. From what I can see, it's has community features, but it is done through central servers at Cloudmark. Take out Cloudmark's central servers, SpamNet does not function.
This is the web. Publicize it and draw attention to the problem. Advocate not using that particular blocklist.
Without spamming, of course.
Some of the crazies who post on nana-e even have the whole country of Brazil banned on their private lists.
If someone never gets anything from Brazil other than megabytes of spam, and you never expect to, blocking Brazil for your own mailbox(es) makes sense. I still get vast quantities of spam from Brazil and I don't believe I've *EVER* gotten a response from the ISPs down there that allow it.
I hate spam with a passion, but words cannot describe my pleasure in seeing these blacklists, especially SPEWS, shut down. They are pure evil in their methods, and largely ineffective against spam while causing massive inconvenience for ISPs and legitimate users of the network.
Do not the administrators of a mail server have the right to choose what traffic they do and do not accept? Centralized blocklists only have an effect if admins choose to use them. It's their system, so it's their choice whether or not to use it.
You seem to believe that a blocklist can force someone to use it to block traffic. It can't.
The sad thing is that I just had to explain this joke to someone who claims to be a geek.
it is believed (but not quite proven) that there is no highest prime
I'm puzzled that you've not seen the proof of this, since it's been around since 300 BC or so.