Unfortunately, also according to RFC 2821, a mail server must not reject a message based on the contents of the HELO/EHLO. I break RFC and reject the message only when the user tries to HELO as the IP/hostname of our mail server as this is naught but a spammer tactic to try and get messages whitelisted. (Older SpamAssassins will whitelist based on HELO...)
It could indeed be a very bad thing to block mail when the user doesn't HELO with an FQDN, as many mail clients including, I believe, Outlook, HELO as other things such as the SMB name. If you're OK with not accepting mail from Outlook users, more power to you. I wish I had that luxury.
Besides, if I recall, the government seems to think that you do have the right to buy a pizza and have it delivered provided you're within a reasonable distance of the establishment that delivers even if you happen to live in a crime infested slum.
You recall incorrectly. Nobody can force a delivery driver to go into a dangerous neighborhood.
I don't care if I'm mixing the metaphors. You are taking a fanatical stance here. Everything you do is right. You can do no wrong. You really don't see anything wrong with that attitude?
There's nothing fanatical at all about my stance. I do see something wrong with the attitude you describe, but I am in no way engaging in it. I have said in other threads that SPEWS does make mistakes, how is that saying that they can do no wrong?
So, give me a surefire way to avoid getting on your witch-list?
There isn't one, my personal list is at my discretion. If you don't want to get on SPEWS, I would recommend not spamming and not giving money to organizations that do.
ISP hopping is not an option and neither is changing my e-mail address and url.
I'm just confused now. What the hell are you talking about?
If you seriously argue that ISP, e-mail and url hopping is my only option, that's just sabotaging my right to use the net in an effortless way. Spammers sure are annoying but they don't make me do that.
Why on earth would you do any of those things? I already told you how not to get on SPEWS, and the only way not to get on my personal blacklist is to avoid pissing me off.
Then why are you causing me more trouble than the spammers?
I am not SPEWS, but if SPEWS is causing you trouble, it is because you buy your internet access from a company that supports spam, or you are yourself a spammer. In either of those cases, I'm perfectly OK with "causing you trouble".
In your holy self-righteousness
In your redundance...
you are simply absolving yourselves of any collateral damage your little crusade is causing - like someone waging a holy war.
Again, collateral damage implies that the damage is unintentional. Indeed, if you support spam or spam yourself, we *want* to damage you in that way. It's a BOYCOTT.
You really think you are on a mission from god?
My religious beliefs (...or lack thereof) have nothing to do with my stance on e-mail abuse.
I bet you're the first to bitch about Ashcroft locking up people and not telling you why, only to get at thier friends. Or here, let me spell it out for you
Except, unlike Ashcroft, there's a public newsgroup watched by SPEWS, everyone in the SPEWS list is by nature known, and everyone has the choice to honor SPEWS or not. Wouldn't it be nice that if we noticed the government becoming corrupt, we could just ignore it and it would go away?
Oh, and there is the whole issue of drawing a comparison between e-mail and human life.
Your problem is that you think everyone who hates spews is a spammer. Remember, spammers are business people and DOSing a site doesn't make them any money. I think that the anti-spam sites in question have just pissed off some script kiddy. And you know what? I'm on the script kiddies side on this one.
Script kiddies working for spammers? Let me check my surprise-o-meter:
-=[----------]=- (0.0)
Nope, not freaking surprised at all. It's been readily apparent for a while.
Who says only the technically challenged can also be morally challenged?
SPEWS started with a good purpose: to fight Spam by punishing ISPs. Their purpose is good, however the way they go about achieving that is not.
How so? I think it's proven its effectiveness beautifully: we're having this conversation.
Getting listed on SPEWS is very arbitrary. And to get off of it is nigh on impossible.
Getting listed on SPEWS means you meet a certain set of criteria that I trust, or that a mistake has been made. When a legitimate mistake has been made, I have observed SPEWS fix it in a hurry and apologize profusely. That is not to say I haven't seen them being rude as hell to people who were lying to them, but...so?
Smart spammers (top 30 or so send 75% of the spam) are still able to get through, while innocents get shafted.
Logically, if you give money to a company that supports spam, you are not an innocent in the fight against spam. The fact that SPEWS has not been 100% effective as of yet is not really a substantial argument against it -- it has proven massively effective.
Which is why spammers seem to be making so much noise about SPEWS...there is finally a light at the end of the tunnel.
Well, if I had a service contract with you for IP service, I would definitely sue. People pay for access to the 'net. Not the subset of the net you find personaly non-repugnant.
Uhhh, if you had IP service through me, you would not be given access to my ISPs mail server.
The problem isn't the ISP blocking "their" traffic - it is the ISP blocking other people's traffic. Usually without informing their customers that said blocking is occurring.
No it isn't. If I run an ISP mail server, it is my traffic -- if it weren't it wouldn't be going over my wire to my server.
There is no effort to hide the fact that blocklists are in use at my ISP, as in a typical installation we explain verbosely why we are rejecting a message. We also provide a web contact form which anyone may use to mail us regardless of their IP, and postmaster is always delivered. This is the method recommended in just about every FAQ on the subject I've seen so I presume it isn't unusual.
In fact we go further than that, most of our blocklists simply add points to the final 'score' of the message. The decision is left to the customer regarding what to do with messages that score as spam, in addition to giving them the ability to add whitelists and change the score that determines a messages spam status.
At last check, not a single user had disabled spam filtering. Evidently, this major concern over the right to filter doesn't really exist. We have our share of out-right tin foil hat wearing customers, and not one of them has been uncomfortable with our spam filtering.
I know of no ISP that makes an effort to hide the fact that they filter spam.
This results in their customers not receiving email. The decision that the sender of that email wasn't legitimate has been removed from the user and the sender and placed in the hands of some anonymous third party.
The ISP of the customer is not an anonymous third party by any means. They are the ones who own the traffic thats going over their wire.
If you were talking about random backbones filtering port 25 traffic going through their networks, I would agree with you. I know of no effort to do this, however.
In general, the ISP answer to blocking complaints is they simply use the list and do not control the content of it. The blocking list provider - if contactable - claims they just make up the list and the use of it is outside of their control. This means nobody is accountable for blocking.
The choice to use a blocklist operated by someone else is no less a choice than operating one yourself. Which would you rather ISPs use: coordinated, open blocklists or private, confidential, and individually assembled and maintained blocklists?
Whitelisting specific IPs within the SPEWS blocklist would defeat the point, to establish lists of bad neighborhoods in order to clear them out.
The problem with this sort of censorship - and it is indeed censorship
It's censorship? Then so is painting over the graffiti that someone sprays on your house under cover of darkness.
is the user never hears about it.
Again, I know of no service which does not inform the user that they block spam. My service even offers users a page you can go to and inspect each spam that's been caught.
When a business is blocked they quickly discover that blocking has made email unreliable for communications with customers. They can either abandon email for important stuff or they can try to convince the blockers that their commercial use of email is valid.
Or, they can change providers to one which does not support spam. Or, they can implement a technical solution such as smarthosting.
This is extremely difficult. Why? Spammers use email - if you use email commercially, then you might be a spammer.
If you "cold call" a non-personal communication over e-mail, you are a spammer in my opinion.
If you get blocked and claim you were blocked in error, you might be lying. Spammers lie, so anything you say can be considered to be a lie. Why should anyone unblock a spammer?
If SPEWS made a habit of whitelisting "legitimate" IPs, it would be no better than any other blocklist. SPEWS is not a
But yes, you wield the unlogic of a true believer with a commendable skill: if you are not with us, you're against us. Let's go burn all those witches right away.
Uhhhh, what do the salem witch trials have to do with being "with us or against us"? You're mixing metaphors.
My gripe with you assholes is that you cost me money. Not because I spam, but because I subscribed to a network that got banned.
Which just substantiates my theory that your position is based not on a well-thought-out analysis of SPEWS premise or functional history, but simply based on the fact that you are a member of that segment of the population who is never willing to accept that they did anything wrong, instead preferring to blame it on others.
You are giving money to an organization which supports spam. You know what spam is, don't you? It's that half or three-quarters of your e-mail that you don't want: the ads for penis enlargements, low low mortgage rates, and porn. Well, the people who send that crap out need ISPs, and some nasty ISPs intentionally market to spammers who are willing to pay a premium for "bulletproof" service. Your ISP is likely one of those. Why do you want to support such an organization? Is it that you don't realize that your irresponsibility as a consumer is damaging the internet as a whole, or do you realize and just not care?
So you are right and everybody else is wrong. Way to make friends net-nazi.
I suppose using the continual stream of name-calling that you have exhibited thusfar in the thread is a better way to make friends?
Oh, but I forgot. You are not trying to make friends.
You are on a mission from the god to save the world - who cares if the world wants to be saved in the first place.
More apt than I think you intend. Most of the people involved with SPEWS (and likely the lionshare of those who use it) are folks who were here before the internet became chiefly known as a commercial resource. In other words, they understand why its bad to piss in the pool, whether you do or not.
1) Those listing criteria are not publicly specified - only a small group of network admins, and readers of NANAE, who are familiar with SPEWS understand their method. The vast majority of admins using these blacklists are people who are just desperate to stop spam so they install tool XYZ without realizing the implications. SPEWS feeds on this desperation to get their foot in the door - it's not until someone finds that a ton of their legitimate mail is being blocked due to deliberate "collateral damage" that they realize they need to ask their administrator to stop using SPEWS (or whitelist the hapless victim with whom they're trying to communicate).
Anyone who uses SPEWS thinking that its just another blocklist is a drooling moron who shouldn't be let near a keyboard. SPEWS makes it clear in every way possible that they are not simply a list of spammers. I would point you to their website, but...
At any rate, I know of plenty of competent admins who use SPEWS, and none of them have done so accidentally.
You are almost right with one point, however: SPEWS does feed on desperation, albeit of a different kind than you mention. Spam has become a desperate situation on the internet, and desperate times call for desperate measures.
As for SPEWS methods not being made public, they do not specify their criteria publically for good reason -- doing so would be providing the spammers with a road map of how to avoid getting SPEWS listed.
2) SPEWS keeps logs which are not deailed and often downright inaccurate.
As you offer no evidence to support this, I can't really comment aside from asking where you gained access to SPEWS' logs or knowledge of them.
In my perusal of NANAE/NANAB I have seen a few mistaken listings, but these have always been removed in a timely manner with simply a note to the group. Mistakes happen, but legitimate mistakes appear to be taken care of with concern by whoever it is that runs SPEWS.
3) SPEWS does not provide a way for spam filters to differentiate between real spammers and collateral damage. It's all listed the same.
SPEWS is not a list of spammers, thus, it does not distinguish between spammers and spam support organizations. Duh.
Trouble is when you're not a spammer and you're hosting at an ISP and the class C you're on gets listed.
That's exactly the purpose of SPEWS. To use the common analogy, you live in a filthy crimeridden slum. Trying to send e-mail to my server is equivalent to calling and trying to have a pizza delivered to your house. Knowing that you live in a filthy crimeridden slum is enough for me to know that I don't want to deliver a pizza to your house, whether you think you have the right to buy one or not.
If everyone stopped supporting that crime ridden ghetto in any way, sooner or later it would either cease to exist or it would be cleaned up. Same with your provider.
Yes, some may say "find another ISP", but that's not always easy; contracts may make that impossible for many months and the ISP may otherwise be fine as is.
If you signed a contract that you can't get out of without doing your homework on the company you had decided to go with, that is not our problem. What turns out to be our problem is that you are giving money to support an organization which supports spammers. (Only organizations which support spammers are intended to be on the SPEWS list) We would like you to stop that. We may very well exercise all our rights in an effort to convince you to do so, one such right being a list like SPEWS.
At any rate, there are plenty of other technical solutions to your problem even if you are unfortunately stuck in a slum. "Smart hosting" is one that immediately springs to mind.
If they block anything, they should only block the IP's that cause the problem, not large netblocks.
Why do you say that? The goal of SPEWS is not to list individual spammers, it is to list those who support spammers.
Earlier this week when people talked about the writer of SoBig leasing his virus network for spamming many people said spammers wouldn't want to be involved with virii/attacks. I think the DOSing of black list sites pretty much shows that the people sending spam have little moral problem with invading your computer to break the law.
That spammers have little moral problem with invading your computer should surprise no one. They already do it, probably several hundred times a day, to every mail server out there. From breaking their Terms of Service agreements to brute forcing usernames on mail servers to hijacking proxies to exploiting copies of the cursed FormMail, spammers have thrived on breaking the law and invading others' systems since day one.
Actually SPEWS is very effective. It makes people DO something about spammers they are harbouring or sharing space with. Naturally, that's why you hate them.
Of course SPEWS is effective -- if it weren't, you wouldn't see such a giant PR/DDoS effort by the spammers against SPEWS. It's probably THE most effective strategy for combatting spammers that has been tried yet.
I find it remarkable but not surprising that the "anti-spews" posts in here echo the arguments sometimes word for word of trolls on NANAE in months past. The spammers public relations machine is working overdrive against SPEWS (see: mobilization of Something Awful goons against NANAE/SPEWS/Kuro5hin).
Like we should all tell the spammers: I'm not buying it.
Go to nana-e, and they'll tell you that robots from space run SPEWS
Spammers with unbalanced ethics:lawyers ratios have already attempted to make life hell in court for blocklist owners that they could track down. I know of no instances where the spammers won, but the costs and hassles associated with defending yourself from a lawsuit exist whether one wins or loses.
Who can blame SPEWS for planning ahead for this? Answer: spammers who are really pissed off.
, and there's no way to get a hold of them. They start with Class C's, then progress to banning class A's.
That's the whole goal of SPEWS. SPEWS is not a list of spammers, its a Spam Prevention Early Warning System. Listing individual spammers addresses has not been entirely effective, as spammers simply find providers who are willing to lie for them, thus SPEWS was created to punish ISPs who are unresponsive to legitimate abuse reports. SPEWS exists to counterbalance the profit those ISPs may make from spammers with loss of profits from those who want to use the internet for a legitimate purpose.
Some of the crazies who post on nana-e even have the whole country of Brazil banned on their private lists.
I add a very very large score via SpamAssassin to any mail that comes from Brazil, Mexico, China, Taiwan, Korea, and several other nations who appear to be becoming spam havens. What's your point? I have, in many years on the net, never received an e-mail I wanted from those countries.
SPEWS had information too on DNS blackholing (i.e. preventing your users from going to internet sites) and on HTTP blocking.
Uhhhh...yes...and? Is there something immoral about administering the ISP you are responsible for in the manner you see fit? It's my business, I can do as I damn please. If I want to filter out every website except my own, that is my right. My customers vote with their business, they do not get a direct say in how I run my outfit. Every business owner understands this concept when it is put into their terms, yet spammers seem to be very against this right when it comes to ISP owners. Gee, wonder why.
If it was anyone else (the government) who was advocating this, people would be outraged.
So? Very often it is acceptable for an individual to do something that a government cannot. For instance, if the government tried to convince me to go to XYZ Church, I would be outraged. For an individual to do so is nothing short of normal.
OK, next someone gets to explain to me why 'liberty' is more important and desirable than 'safety from my fellow citizens'.
The two aren't necessarily opposed (especially considering the role of good governments in protecting their citizens rights from infringement by other citizens), only when one side or the other upsets the balance. For example, killing every single person in America save for yourself would provide you with tremendous 'safety from your fellow citizens'. So would taking away their right to leave their house.
But the question you pose belies a complete lack of understanding of history, and priority. The more everyone's liberties are restricted, the less likely it is that you will be physically harmed, this is true. But the founders of this nation apparently believed, as I do, that a long life of total restriction is much less appealing than one which is directly under your control and riskier. They also apparently believed, again as I do, that a people who readily surrender their rights to be protected by the government sooner or later find themselves in the same danger they were always facing, only this time by the very government they were hoping for protection by. Governments can be arbitrary and capricious, and your interpretation of life may run afoul of someone elses idea of safety no matter how absurd their logic. If they have power over you, it's not a matter of arguing superior logic. I'd remind you that there are plenty of people who justified the laws against sodomy with outlandish arguments that it was a public health concern.
Because personally, I have far more concerns about my fellow citizens than I do about the state.
"The state" is always made up of citizens, just ones with "legitimate" power over you as a private citizen. The legitimacy of their power is part of the danger.
If you have more concerns about your fellow private citizens than you do about tyrannical state administrators, you don't have much of a grasp of history, or even the current events of less free nations than our own.
But, I'm just some guy on slashdot. If you want to answer the question for yourself, go read the writings of people like Jefferson, Franklin, Adams, Hamilton, etc. and they will explain it to you with considerably more thoroughness and eloquence.
Israel is no more a Theocracy than the US. The US is a democracy yet at some stage it had slavery, women couldn't vote and the idea of a female or non-white president is still a joke. Israel is the only jewish country in a sense that it protects the jewish people. If you don't think that the jews have a right to their own country then have the guts to make that claim.
I care what other nations do only on a philosophical level, since I don't live there, although I do hold the idea that a nation based on extending privileges to certain races and religions is inferior on a moral level.
Yes, the US had slavery at some point in its history. Guess what, we don't now. That we as a nation did wrong at some point in our past does not mean we cannot point out the current wrongs of another nation.
In order to do that Israel has to have laws that would prevent millions of, for example muslim, immigrants from entering it and wiping it's jewish character in one year.
Sounds like the same fear put forth in the US at any number of times to justify ill treatment of its minorities, be they black, irish, italian, mexican, etc.
How can you make the opposite claim?? Are you seriously suggesting that Israel considered using nuclear weapons on it's neighbor countries or on the palestinians? God... use your brain.
Lack of proof is not proof of lack. I'd say Israel, as much as the US or any other country, has had contingency plans upon contingency plans. More to the point, I was just pointing out the absurdity of the previous poster stating an absolute when they had utterly no reason for doing so except their own bias.
Saying Israel is a liability for the US is one step away from claiming that the 911 attacks where planned by the Mosad.
No it isn't. Not in the least. But keep spouting crap like that, it discredits you more thoroughly than I could with pages of refutation.
Get real. Israle is an island of democracy in a fanatically islamic religious part of the world and if you can't see the benefit to the US by siding with Democracy then you're out of touch.
A democracy does not tilt the scales of the law to ensure that one contingent of its population always remains in power. Not every country that holds elections is a true, western-style democracy. See South Africa.
This comment right here is what convinced me you're not here for the serious debate. Taking any particular incident and generilizing from it a foreign policy is childish sophism. I can name to you a hunder injustices - horrible ones - done by the US, by accident or on purpose, to other countries. So what? Does that mean that the US is run by crazies?
My suggestion was that perhaps Israel isn't as much of an ally as we think. I can't recall a recent example of any other ally of ours intentionally sinking one of our clearly identified military ships. Typically that's an act of war, not friendship. It certainly doesn't engender my trust. How did this order make it through the Israeli command and control structure without someone stopping it? Where are our assurances that this cannot happen again?
Ariel Sharon is, to my knowledge, the only convicted war criminal to ever be formally invited to the White House, at least after his conviction. Perhaps being a war criminal doesn't make you crazy, but it also doesn't make inclined to trust you.
(btw, I didn't bother to check you link and I'm not confirming anything it might say as I think it is totally irrelevant to the discussion).
Thanks for just coming out and stating that you're closed minded, it saves me a lot of work.
That's like saying the US started WW2 because it drew first blood against the germans. The US was dragged into the war by the japanese. Israel was under siege by the forces of the surrounding arab nations and that's what caused it to finally react.
1. Maybe it's because Israel is the only democracy in the middle east.
Problem: Israel is a theocracy, not a democracy. The laws of that nation afford certain privileges to members of a specific religion, including things like citizenship rights. This is not a 'democratic republic' in the western style.
2. Or because Israel has had WMD for more than 20 years now and never even thought about initiating an assault (unlike the US, mind you).
How can you make this claim? Are you intimitely involved in the internal workings of the Israeli government, a most secretive organization? If not, what is your basis for making this claim?
3. Maybe it's because Israel protects the interests of the US in the middle east, provides intelligence for example - the only worthwhile intelligence the US has about the middle east, IMO.
In my personal opinion, Israel has become a liability for the US in the middle east, and is in fact one of the reasons why our public image is so bad there. We've blatantly supported one side in a fight spurred on by hatred on/from/for both sides.
4. Maybe it's because Israel isn't run by "crazies" - at least not more than the US is run by a war mongering illiterate. Such claims are prejudice.
Israel hasn't started any of the wars it was engaged in.
If you define "starting a war" as most people would interpret it, he who fires the first shot, this is not true. Using that definition, Israel started the 1967 war. Egypt had massed troops on their border (intentionally provocative, yes. act of war? no.) so Israel responded with a preemptive strike.
You might not agree with it's current internal security policy - with regards to the palestinians - but that's a very complicated issue
Bullshit. There's nothing complicated about "if you are the immediate family member of a suicide bomber, we're going to bulldoze your house". There's nothing complicated about "we're going to build civilian settlements on the front lines of occupied territory".
It's going to take seperation from the palestinians. It's going to take generations of healing and trust-building.
Everyone knows that trust-building starts with wall-building, right?
The area in Israel has no natural resources like Saudy Arabia or Kuwait
What about water? Especially in a desert, isn't that also a natural resource?
The worst thing you can do is fulfill the stereotype of the ingnorant american cowboy by oversimplifying a painful and serious situation and thinking every problem can be solved by using power and money.
Isn't that exactly what Israel is trying to do?
The unfortunately obligatory disclaimer: I am anything but antisemetic. I am marrying a lovely New York Jew, under a chuppa. I am criticizing the actions of a national government, not a race or a religion. This disclaimer exists because all too often anyone who criticizes Israel faces accusations of bigotry, which is the precise antithesis of all that I believe in.
Which is exactly how this sort of thing works. There's always going to be some reason to justify any government intrusion, and this is a favored technique of the proponents of it. But, without the government watching, [some nearly universally repellant thing] will happen! This is the essence of the "what about the children" argument.
Debating against this point puts one at an emotional disadvantage. Making the average person understand that however unacceptable a certain behavior is, there are limits that should not be surpassed in trying to eliminate it is practically impossible, particularly in this society ruled by fear and faux moralism.
The effectiveness of the "but you're safer this way" cannot be understated. Gun rights, free speech rights, even the right to a fair trial seem to be under attack, all apparently to "keep us safe". I live in fear that by the time the people learn the lesson that liberty is what keeps us safe, we'll have precious little left.
The idea the founding fathers put forth, through their own experience, was that life without liberty is worthless, worse than worthless in fact, it is perpetuating an evil.
Enough people agreed with that to eventually make our nation a pretty popular place. Popularity appears to have made us forget that.
Oft quoted, but not often enough: "Anyone who would trade essential liberty for a little temporary safety deserves neither liberty nor safety." --Benjamin Franklin
You said that it wasn't illegal to send postage due junk mail (a way of sending mail that is free to the sender).
No I didn't.
This is what I get for feeding the trolls. Yeargh.
Receiving e-mail is not free. Even if the user does not pay for it, which is usually not true, the ISP does.
So? What does that have to do with anything? Lots of things cost money to receive.
E-mail being one of them, which is exactly why spam is wrong and ought to be outlawed: it's no different than postage-due junk mail.
Where did you purchase your crystal ball? I checked fortune-tellers-online and they didn't have any. Perhaps a spammer sent you a crystal ball ad? I haven't seen that one yet.
You asked me a question. What did you want me to do, say "I don't know," or answer it to the best of my ability?
If you don't know, yes I would expect you to say I don't know, then if you wanted to make a guess, clearly label it as such.
So, you admit that you have no idea and have done no research, but you still know its FUD.
I have an idea, and I have done research. I just haven't read that particular report. And yes, I know it's FUD.
Way to completely ignore the context of my statement. I was referring to research on that particular report, which is the only research that is relevant to the topic of whether or not that report is FUD. You don't *know* it's FUD, you haven't even read it!!! You *guess* it's FUD.
This will probably be my last reply, as you are obviously trolling.
Why bother with this one unless you yourself are trolling?
What can I say, I feel strongly enough about this issue to discuss it, to the point of being trolled. But you still raise your first good point of this entire thread -- why bother with you? Touche. Good bye.
And another BS analogy.
OK, you don't seem to understand the difference between an analogy and an example. Have a nice day.
From dictionary.com:
ex*am*ple 1. One that is representative of a group as a whole: the squirrel, an example of a rodent; introduced each new word with examples of its use.
a*nal*o*gy 1. a. Similarity in some respects between things that are otherwise dissimilar.
b. A comparison based on such similarity. See Synonyms at likeness.
I don't see the difference between passing a specific law or regulation to prevent an action, and saying that an action is already forbidden by laws or regulations, as is the case with this. How is one a "technical solution" while the other is "legal"?
It's simple. The post office makes you pay to send mail. If you don't pay, it's theft, plain and simple. ISPs, on the other hand, want to make it free to send mail, and free to receive mail, and then bitch when people actually take advantage of that.
You're confusing the issue. You said that it wasn't illegal to send postage due junk mail (a way of sending mail that is free to the sender).
Receiving e-mail is not free. Even if the user does not pay for it, which is usually not true, the ISP does.
[Tracking down spammers costs...] More than the 10 billion dollars a year estimated lost revenue to spamming?
Yes, much much more.
Where did you purchase your crystal ball? I checked fortune-tellers-online and they didn't have any. Perhaps a spammer sent you a crystal ball ad? I haven't seen that one yet.
And this isn't just some up in the air FUD figure, this is the Department of Commerce estimating the costs of spam using a method they explain.
They explain their methods to come up with the brilliant statement that smoking pot causes terrorism too. The 10 billion dollar figure is FUD. Show me where they explain the methodology of this figure and I'll be more specific.
So, you admit that you have no idea and have done no research, but you still know its FUD. This will probably be my last reply, as you are obviously trolling.
Lost revenue is a bullshit figure to begin with. I could probably conjure up some numbers which show that Slashdot causes 10 billion dollars in lost revenue. Should we ban that? Television commercials during CNBC probably cost trillions of dollars in lost revenue. Let's make them illegal too.
More BS analogies and claims that utterly fail to address the facts. Yawn. This is getting boring.
6 minutes a day deleting spam + every office worker with an e-mail account in America is a lot of lettuce.
It's also incidental damages. If I shoot a coworker every time I receive a spam, does that mean that spammers are to blame for the murder of my coworkers?
And another BS analogy. How is it incidental that workers have to spend 6 minutes a day sifting through spam in their e-mail, and that this costs money in lost time? Saying that you're grasping for straws is giving you too much credit.
The bandwidth costs for spam on service providers are also enormous.
I'd say they're closer to zero. Most emails are tiny compared to porn and mp3s.
We aren't talking about one or two messages a day, or even one or two messages a day to a user. If you conservatively estimate that each user gets 100 spams of 2k each, multiplied by 10,000 users, that's 2 gigabytes a day. At the ISP I run, who's domain has existed for a very long time and so exists on practically every e-mail list out there, up that number to 1,500 per user. Yes, 1,500. My spam filter archives messages for 7 days, and it currently has 13,000 messages in it, so thats conservative, but I have aliases too so I get a touch more than our average customer. That's still 30GB a day. Calling that "near zero" is just plain stupid.
I guess we should make porn illegal while we're at it. Mp3s already are thanks in part to quoting such stupid figures as "lost potential revenue," right?
The difference between porn and mp3s are that the user wants that stuff, whereas nobody wants the spam. But its impossible to make it stop.
Assuming a law was passed that required law enforcement officers to act, I wouldn't say its too expensive.
That's precisely why I'm opposed to passing such a law in the first place.
Feel free to try it. If companies could get away with this, do you seriously think that they wouldn't do it?
I didn't say that it was possible to do it (send junk mail postage due). I just don't think there's a law specifically against it. The postal service has used a technical solution to the problem, not a legal one.
I don't see the difference between passing a specific law or regulation to prevent an action, and saying that an action is already forbidden by laws or regulations, as is the case with this. How is one a "technical solution" while the other is "legal"? This makes no sense.
Brilliant idea! I'm sure such a business [an ISP without an email account] would be a great success.
I think it would be too. Most people I know do not use their ISPs email account.
You don't know very many people, do you? Look, both of us are speaking in anecdotes, but the fact that I run an ISP and am familiar with the business ought to carry some weight...and in my experience, what you are saying is absolutely untrue. In fact, our service pulls in quite a bit of money with e-mail only accounts.
Tell you what, it's so brilliant an idea, I'm going to let you have first crack at it. Try it and let me know how it goes!
I don't have enough capital to start up a successful ISP. Care to loan me some?
I'm already wasting too much time talking to someone who obviously doesn't want to be convinced of anything.::Shrug::
Regardless of where the mail servers are, regardless of where the spam originates, there has to be some way to get their money from you to them. If those connected in that process were liable to be sued, get jail time, or better yet BOTH, do you really think they would risk it?
Tracking people down costs far too much money to bother, even if it is possible.
More than the 10 billion dollars a year estimated lost revenue to spamming? And this isn't just some up in the air FUD figure, this is the Department of Commerce estimating the costs of spam using a method they explain. 6 minutes a day deleting spam + every office worker with an e-mail account in America is a lot of lettuce. The bandwidth costs for spam on service providers are also enormous.
You can't sue everyone connected in that process, because many of them will be innocent victims.
Why do you make the assumption that I would sue innocent people? This is a pretty straw man you're setting up, I almost feel bad about knocking it down.
Are you going to sue paypal for accepting a payment from someone who happens to selling a product to someone who happens to have a reseller program which happens to have someone who sent a spam? You can't do that.
I can't even parse that. Your analogies are growing more and more outlandish. I would sue the spammer, and anyone who knowingly supported or allowed his spamming operation to take place. For every spam you get, someone did it, you cannot obfuscate this fact with confusing analogies.
Are you going to try to get a warrant from paypal?
Paypal doesn't issue warrants. If you mean a warrant for paypal, I already said, your example is bogus.
Too expensive, especially since that's only going to take you one step closer to finding the culprit.
Too expensive to who? Assuming a law was passed that required law enforcement officers to act, I wouldn't say its too expensive. It's their job. Besides, would you accept "it is too expensive to stop murderers so why bother" as an argument? I wouldn't. Criminals should be pursued, regardless of the monetary cost.
Or are you going to make some law a la the Patriot act forcing paypal to name names without a warrant?
I think you mean a Subpoena, and let me just say how hilarious it is that you accuse me of engaging in FUD by quoting a DoC figure, and in the same bre
Slashdot Mirror
Unfortunately, also according to RFC 2821, a mail server must not reject a message based on the contents of the HELO/EHLO. I break RFC and reject the message only when the user tries to HELO as the IP/hostname of our mail server as this is naught but a spammer tactic to try and get messages whitelisted. (Older SpamAssassins will whitelist based on HELO...)
It could indeed be a very bad thing to block mail when the user doesn't HELO with an FQDN, as many mail clients including, I believe, Outlook, HELO as other things such as the SMB name. If you're OK with not accepting mail from Outlook users, more power to you. I wish I had that luxury.
I doubt there is a secret spammer/script kiddy consipracy here.
You doubt there are script kiddie spammers, or script kiddies working for spammers?
In that case, you sound like the kind of investor I need to develop this great idea I had for an anti-gravity machine.
Ok. So your purpose is to get the end-users pissed off at you instead of the spammers.
Well done. I'm one of them. Your cure is worse than the disesase, you fucking net-nazis!
Stop giving money to companies that support spam, you fucking thoughtless-scumball.
[snip silly counter-analogy]
Besides, if I recall, the government seems to think that you do have the right to buy a pizza and have it delivered provided you're within a reasonable distance of the establishment that delivers even if you happen to live in a crime infested slum.
You recall incorrectly. Nobody can force a delivery driver to go into a dangerous neighborhood.
I don't care if I'm mixing the metaphors. You are taking a fanatical stance here. Everything you do is right. You can do no wrong. You really don't see anything wrong with that attitude?
There's nothing fanatical at all about my stance. I do see something wrong with the attitude you describe, but I am in no way engaging in it. I have said in other threads that SPEWS does make mistakes, how is that saying that they can do no wrong?
So, give me a surefire way to avoid getting on your witch-list?
There isn't one, my personal list is at my discretion. If you don't want to get on SPEWS, I would recommend not spamming and not giving money to organizations that do.
ISP hopping is not an option and neither is changing my e-mail address and url.
I'm just confused now. What the hell are you talking about?
If you seriously argue that ISP, e-mail and url hopping is my only option, that's just sabotaging my right to use the net in an effortless way. Spammers sure are annoying but they don't make me do that.
Why on earth would you do any of those things? I already told you how not to get on SPEWS, and the only way not to get on my personal blacklist is to avoid pissing me off.
Then why are you causing me more trouble than the spammers?
I am not SPEWS, but if SPEWS is causing you trouble, it is because you buy your internet access from a company that supports spam, or you are yourself a spammer. In either of those cases, I'm perfectly OK with "causing you trouble".
In your holy self-righteousness
In your redundance...
you are simply absolving yourselves of any collateral damage your little crusade is causing - like someone waging a holy war.
Again, collateral damage implies that the damage is unintentional. Indeed, if you support spam or spam yourself, we *want* to damage you in that way. It's a BOYCOTT.
You really think you are on a mission from god?
My religious beliefs (...or lack thereof) have nothing to do with my stance on e-mail abuse.
I bet you're the first to bitch about Ashcroft locking up people and not telling you why, only to get at thier friends. Or here, let me spell it out for you
Except, unlike Ashcroft, there's a public newsgroup watched by SPEWS, everyone in the SPEWS list is by nature known, and everyone has the choice to honor SPEWS or not. Wouldn't it be nice that if we noticed the government becoming corrupt, we could just ignore it and it would go away?
Oh, and there is the whole issue of drawing a comparison between e-mail and human life.
Your problem is that you think everyone who hates spews is a spammer. Remember, spammers are business people and DOSing a site doesn't make them any money. I think that the anti-spam sites in question have just pissed off some script kiddy. And you know what? I'm on the script kiddies side on this one.
Script kiddies working for spammers? Let me check my surprise-o-meter:
-=[----------]=- (0.0)
Nope, not freaking surprised at all. It's been readily apparent for a while.
Who says only the technically challenged can also be morally challenged?
SPEWS started with a good purpose: to fight Spam by punishing ISPs. Their purpose is good, however the way they go about achieving that is not.
How so? I think it's proven its effectiveness beautifully: we're having this conversation.
Getting listed on SPEWS is very arbitrary. And to get off of it is nigh on impossible.
Getting listed on SPEWS means you meet a certain set of criteria that I trust, or that a mistake has been made. When a legitimate mistake has been made, I have observed SPEWS fix it in a hurry and apologize profusely. That is not to say I haven't seen them being rude as hell to people who were lying to them, but...so?
Smart spammers (top 30 or so send 75% of the spam) are still able to get through, while innocents get shafted.
Logically, if you give money to a company that supports spam, you are not an innocent in the fight against spam. The fact that SPEWS has not been 100% effective as of yet is not really a substantial argument against it -- it has proven massively effective.
Which is why spammers seem to be making so much noise about SPEWS...there is finally a light at the end of the tunnel.
Well, if I had a service contract with you for IP service, I would definitely sue. People pay for access to the 'net. Not the subset of the net you find personaly non-repugnant.
Uhhh, if you had IP service through me, you would not be given access to my ISPs mail server.
The problem isn't the ISP blocking "their" traffic - it is the ISP blocking other people's traffic. Usually without informing their customers that said blocking is occurring.
No it isn't. If I run an ISP mail server, it is my traffic -- if it weren't it wouldn't be going over my wire to my server.
There is no effort to hide the fact that blocklists are in use at my ISP, as in a typical installation we explain verbosely why we are rejecting a message. We also provide a web contact form which anyone may use to mail us regardless of their IP, and postmaster is always delivered. This is the method recommended in just about every FAQ on the subject I've seen so I presume it isn't unusual.
In fact we go further than that, most of our blocklists simply add points to the final 'score' of the message. The decision is left to the customer regarding what to do with messages that score as spam, in addition to giving them the ability to add whitelists and change the score that determines a messages spam status.
At last check, not a single user had disabled spam filtering. Evidently, this major concern over the right to filter doesn't really exist. We have our share of out-right tin foil hat wearing customers, and not one of them has been uncomfortable with our spam filtering.
I know of no ISP that makes an effort to hide the fact that they filter spam.
This results in their customers not receiving email. The decision that the sender of that email wasn't legitimate has been removed from the user and the sender and placed in the hands of some anonymous third party.
The ISP of the customer is not an anonymous third party by any means. They are the ones who own the traffic thats going over their wire.
If you were talking about random backbones filtering port 25 traffic going through their networks, I would agree with you. I know of no effort to do this, however.
In general, the ISP answer to blocking complaints is they simply use the list and do not control the content of it. The blocking list provider - if contactable - claims they just make up the list and the use of it is outside of their control. This means nobody is accountable for blocking.
The choice to use a blocklist operated by someone else is no less a choice than operating one yourself. Which would you rather ISPs use: coordinated, open blocklists or private, confidential, and individually assembled and maintained blocklists?
Whitelisting specific IPs within the SPEWS blocklist would defeat the point, to establish lists of bad neighborhoods in order to clear them out.
The problem with this sort of censorship - and it is indeed censorship
It's censorship? Then so is painting over the graffiti that someone sprays on your house under cover of darkness.
is the user never hears about it.
Again, I know of no service which does not inform the user that they block spam. My service even offers users a page you can go to and inspect each spam that's been caught.
When a business is blocked they quickly discover that blocking has made email unreliable for communications with customers. They can either abandon email for important stuff or they can try to convince the blockers that their commercial use of email is valid.
Or, they can change providers to one which does not support spam. Or, they can implement a technical solution such as smarthosting.
This is extremely difficult. Why? Spammers use email - if you use email commercially, then you might be a spammer.
If you "cold call" a non-personal communication over e-mail, you are a spammer in my opinion.
If you get blocked and claim you were blocked in error, you might be lying. Spammers lie, so anything you say can be considered to be a lie. Why should anyone unblock a spammer?
If SPEWS made a habit of whitelisting "legitimate" IPs, it would be no better than any other blocklist. SPEWS is not a
But yes, you wield the unlogic of a true believer with a commendable skill: if you are not with us, you're against us. Let's go burn all those witches right away.
Uhhhh, what do the salem witch trials have to do with being "with us or against us"? You're mixing metaphors.
My gripe with you assholes is that you cost me money. Not because I spam, but because I subscribed to a network that got banned.
Which just substantiates my theory that your position is based not on a well-thought-out analysis of SPEWS premise or functional history, but simply based on the fact that you are a member of that segment of the population who is never willing to accept that they did anything wrong, instead preferring to blame it on others.
You are giving money to an organization which supports spam. You know what spam is, don't you? It's that half or three-quarters of your e-mail that you don't want: the ads for penis enlargements, low low mortgage rates, and porn. Well, the people who send that crap out need ISPs, and some nasty ISPs intentionally market to spammers who are willing to pay a premium for "bulletproof" service. Your ISP is likely one of those. Why do you want to support such an organization? Is it that you don't realize that your irresponsibility as a consumer is damaging the internet as a whole, or do you realize and just not care?
So you are right and everybody else is wrong. Way to make friends net-nazi.
I suppose using the continual stream of name-calling that you have exhibited thusfar in the thread is a better way to make friends?
Oh, but I forgot. You are not trying to make friends.
You are on a mission from the god to save the world - who cares if the world wants to be saved in the first place.
More apt than I think you intend. Most of the people involved with SPEWS (and likely the lionshare of those who use it) are folks who were here before the internet became chiefly known as a commercial resource. In other words, they understand why its bad to piss in the pool, whether you do or not.
1) Those listing criteria are not publicly specified - only a small group of network admins, and readers of NANAE, who are familiar with SPEWS understand their method. The vast majority of admins using these blacklists are people who are just desperate to stop spam so they install tool XYZ without realizing the implications. SPEWS feeds on this desperation to get their foot in the door - it's not until someone finds that a ton of their legitimate mail is being blocked due to deliberate "collateral damage" that they realize they need to ask their administrator to stop using SPEWS (or whitelist the hapless victim with whom they're trying to communicate).
Anyone who uses SPEWS thinking that its just another blocklist is a drooling moron who shouldn't be let near a keyboard. SPEWS makes it clear in every way possible that they are not simply a list of spammers. I would point you to their website, but...
At any rate, I know of plenty of competent admins who use SPEWS, and none of them have done so accidentally.
You are almost right with one point, however: SPEWS does feed on desperation, albeit of a different kind than you mention. Spam has become a desperate situation on the internet, and desperate times call for desperate measures.
As for SPEWS methods not being made public, they do not specify their criteria publically for good reason -- doing so would be providing the spammers with a road map of how to avoid getting SPEWS listed.
2) SPEWS keeps logs which are not deailed and often downright inaccurate.
As you offer no evidence to support this, I can't really comment aside from asking where you gained access to SPEWS' logs or knowledge of them.
In my perusal of NANAE/NANAB I have seen a few mistaken listings, but these have always been removed in a timely manner with simply a note to the group. Mistakes happen, but legitimate mistakes appear to be taken care of with concern by whoever it is that runs SPEWS.
3) SPEWS does not provide a way for spam filters to differentiate between real spammers and collateral damage. It's all listed the same.
SPEWS is not a list of spammers, thus, it does not distinguish between spammers and spam support organizations. Duh.
Trouble is when you're not a spammer and you're hosting at an ISP and the class C you're on gets listed.
That's exactly the purpose of SPEWS. To use the common analogy, you live in a filthy crimeridden slum. Trying to send e-mail to my server is equivalent to calling and trying to have a pizza delivered to your house. Knowing that you live in a filthy crimeridden slum is enough for me to know that I don't want to deliver a pizza to your house, whether you think you have the right to buy one or not.
If everyone stopped supporting that crime ridden ghetto in any way, sooner or later it would either cease to exist or it would be cleaned up. Same with your provider.
Yes, some may say "find another ISP", but that's not always easy; contracts may make that impossible for many months and the ISP may otherwise be fine as is.
If you signed a contract that you can't get out of without doing your homework on the company you had decided to go with, that is not our problem. What turns out to be our problem is that you are giving money to support an organization which supports spammers. (Only organizations which support spammers are intended to be on the SPEWS list) We would like you to stop that. We may very well exercise all our rights in an effort to convince you to do so, one such right being a list like SPEWS.
At any rate, there are plenty of other technical solutions to your problem even if you are unfortunately stuck in a slum. "Smart hosting" is one that immediately springs to mind.
If they block anything, they should only block the IP's that cause the problem, not large netblocks.
Why do you say that? The goal of SPEWS is not to list individual spammers, it is to list those who support spammers.
Earlier this week when people talked about the writer of SoBig leasing his virus network for spamming many people said spammers wouldn't want to be involved with virii/attacks. I think the DOSing of black list sites pretty much shows that the people sending spam have little moral problem with invading your computer to break the law.
That spammers have little moral problem with invading your computer should surprise no one. They already do it, probably several hundred times a day, to every mail server out there. From breaking their Terms of Service agreements to brute forcing usernames on mail servers to hijacking proxies to exploiting copies of the cursed FormMail, spammers have thrived on breaking the law and invading others' systems since day one.
Actually SPEWS is very effective. It makes people DO something about spammers they are harbouring or sharing space with. Naturally, that's why you hate them.
Of course SPEWS is effective -- if it weren't, you wouldn't see such a giant PR/DDoS effort by the spammers against SPEWS. It's probably THE most effective strategy for combatting spammers that has been tried yet.
I find it remarkable but not surprising that the "anti-spews" posts in here echo the arguments sometimes word for word of trolls on NANAE in months past. The spammers public relations machine is working overdrive against SPEWS (see: mobilization of Something Awful goons against NANAE/SPEWS/Kuro5hin).
Like we should all tell the spammers: I'm not buying it.
Go to nana-e, and they'll tell you that robots from space run SPEWS
Spammers with unbalanced ethics:lawyers ratios have already attempted to make life hell in court for blocklist owners that they could track down. I know of no instances where the spammers won, but the costs and hassles associated with defending yourself from a lawsuit exist whether one wins or loses.
Who can blame SPEWS for planning ahead for this? Answer: spammers who are really pissed off.
, and there's no way to get a hold of them. They start with Class C's, then progress to banning class A's.
That's the whole goal of SPEWS. SPEWS is not a list of spammers, its a Spam Prevention Early Warning System. Listing individual spammers addresses has not been entirely effective, as spammers simply find providers who are willing to lie for them, thus SPEWS was created to punish ISPs who are unresponsive to legitimate abuse reports. SPEWS exists to counterbalance the profit those ISPs may make from spammers with loss of profits from those who want to use the internet for a legitimate purpose.
Some of the crazies who post on nana-e even have the whole country of Brazil banned on their private lists.
I add a very very large score via SpamAssassin to any mail that comes from Brazil, Mexico, China, Taiwan, Korea, and several other nations who appear to be becoming spam havens. What's your point? I have, in many years on the net, never received an e-mail I wanted from those countries.
SPEWS had information too on DNS blackholing (i.e. preventing your users from going to internet sites) and on HTTP blocking.
Uhhhh...yes...and? Is there something immoral about administering the ISP you are responsible for in the manner you see fit? It's my business, I can do as I damn please. If I want to filter out every website except my own, that is my right. My customers vote with their business, they do not get a direct say in how I run my outfit. Every business owner understands this concept when it is put into their terms, yet spammers seem to be very against this right when it comes to ISP owners. Gee, wonder why.
If it was anyone else (the government) who was advocating this, people would be outraged.
So? Very often it is acceptable for an individual to do something that a government cannot. For instance, if the government tried to convince me to go to XYZ Church, I would be outraged. For an individual to do so is nothing short of normal.
OK, next someone gets to explain to me why 'liberty' is more important and desirable than 'safety from my fellow citizens'.
The two aren't necessarily opposed (especially considering the role of good governments in protecting their citizens rights from infringement by other citizens), only when one side or the other upsets the balance. For example, killing every single person in America save for yourself would provide you with tremendous 'safety from your fellow citizens'. So would taking away their right to leave their house.
But the question you pose belies a complete lack of understanding of history, and priority. The more everyone's liberties are restricted, the less likely it is that you will be physically harmed, this is true. But the founders of this nation apparently believed, as I do, that a long life of total restriction is much less appealing than one which is directly under your control and riskier. They also apparently believed, again as I do, that a people who readily surrender their rights to be protected by the government sooner or later find themselves in the same danger they were always facing, only this time by the very government they were hoping for protection by. Governments can be arbitrary and capricious, and your interpretation of life may run afoul of someone elses idea of safety no matter how absurd their logic. If they have power over you, it's not a matter of arguing superior logic. I'd remind you that there are plenty of people who justified the laws against sodomy with outlandish arguments that it was a public health concern.
Because personally, I have far more concerns about my fellow citizens than I do about the state.
"The state" is always made up of citizens, just ones with "legitimate" power over you as a private citizen. The legitimacy of their power is part of the danger.
If you have more concerns about your fellow private citizens than you do about tyrannical state administrators, you don't have much of a grasp of history, or even the current events of less free nations than our own.
But, I'm just some guy on slashdot. If you want to answer the question for yourself, go read the writings of people like Jefferson, Franklin, Adams, Hamilton, etc. and they will explain it to you with considerably more thoroughness and eloquence.
Israel is no more a Theocracy than the US. The US is a democracy yet at some stage it had slavery, women couldn't vote and the idea of a female or non-white president is still a joke. Israel is the only jewish country in a sense that it protects the jewish people. If you don't think that the jews have a right to their own country then have the guts to make that claim.
I care what other nations do only on a philosophical level, since I don't live there, although I do hold the idea that a nation based on extending privileges to certain races and religions is inferior on a moral level.
Yes, the US had slavery at some point in its history. Guess what, we don't now. That we as a nation did wrong at some point in our past does not mean we cannot point out the current wrongs of another nation.
In order to do that Israel has to have laws that would prevent millions of, for example muslim, immigrants from entering it and wiping it's jewish character in one year.
Sounds like the same fear put forth in the US at any number of times to justify ill treatment of its minorities, be they black, irish, italian, mexican, etc.
How can you make the opposite claim?? Are you seriously suggesting that Israel considered using nuclear weapons on it's neighbor countries or on the palestinians? God... use your brain.
Lack of proof is not proof of lack. I'd say Israel, as much as the US or any other country, has had contingency plans upon contingency plans. More to the point, I was just pointing out the absurdity of the previous poster stating an absolute when they had utterly no reason for doing so except their own bias.
Saying Israel is a liability for the US is one step away from claiming that the 911 attacks where planned by the Mosad.
No it isn't. Not in the least. But keep spouting crap like that, it discredits you more thoroughly than I could with pages of refutation.
Get real. Israle is an island of democracy in a fanatically islamic religious part of the world and if you can't see the benefit to the US by siding with Democracy then you're out of touch.
A democracy does not tilt the scales of the law to ensure that one contingent of its population always remains in power. Not every country that holds elections is a true, western-style democracy. See South Africa.
This comment right here is what convinced me you're not here for the serious debate. Taking any particular incident and generilizing from it a foreign policy is childish sophism. I can name to you a hunder injustices - horrible ones - done by the US, by accident or on purpose, to other countries. So what? Does that mean that the US is run by crazies?
My suggestion was that perhaps Israel isn't as much of an ally as we think. I can't recall a recent example of any other ally of ours intentionally sinking one of our clearly identified military ships. Typically that's an act of war, not friendship. It certainly doesn't engender my trust. How did this order make it through the Israeli command and control structure without someone stopping it? Where are our assurances that this cannot happen again?
Ariel Sharon is, to my knowledge, the only convicted war criminal to ever be formally invited to the White House, at least after his conviction. Perhaps being a war criminal doesn't make you crazy, but it also doesn't make inclined to trust you.
(btw, I didn't bother to check you link and I'm not confirming anything it might say as I think it is totally irrelevant to the discussion).
Thanks for just coming out and stating that you're closed minded, it saves me a lot of work.
That's like saying the US started WW2 because it drew first blood against the germans. The US was dragged into the war by the japanese. Israel was under siege by the forces of the surrounding arab nations and that's what caused it to finally react.
Under siege? My dictionary defines a siege as:
1. Maybe it's because Israel is the only democracy in the middle east.
Problem: Israel is a theocracy, not a democracy. The laws of that nation afford certain privileges to members of a specific religion, including things like citizenship rights. This is not a 'democratic republic' in the western style.
2. Or because Israel has had WMD for more than 20 years now and never even thought about initiating an assault (unlike the US, mind you).
How can you make this claim? Are you intimitely involved in the internal workings of the Israeli government, a most secretive organization? If not, what is your basis for making this claim?
3. Maybe it's because Israel protects the interests of the US in the middle east, provides intelligence for example - the only worthwhile intelligence the US has about the middle east, IMO.
In my personal opinion, Israel has become a liability for the US in the middle east, and is in fact one of the reasons why our public image is so bad there. We've blatantly supported one side in a fight spurred on by hatred on/from/for both sides.
4. Maybe it's because Israel isn't run by "crazies" - at least not more than the US is run by a war mongering illiterate. Such claims are prejudice.
If it wasn't "crazy" of Israel to sink a US military ship flying a US flag, what was it?
Israel hasn't started any of the wars it was engaged in.
If you define "starting a war" as most people would interpret it, he who fires the first shot, this is not true. Using that definition, Israel started the 1967 war. Egypt had massed troops on their border (intentionally provocative, yes. act of war? no.) so Israel responded with a preemptive strike.
You might not agree with it's current internal security policy - with regards to the palestinians - but that's a very complicated issue
Bullshit. There's nothing complicated about "if you are the immediate family member of a suicide bomber, we're going to bulldoze your house". There's nothing complicated about "we're going to build civilian settlements on the front lines of occupied territory".
It's going to take seperation from the palestinians. It's going to take generations of healing and trust-building.
Everyone knows that trust-building starts with wall-building, right?
The area in Israel has no natural resources like Saudy Arabia or Kuwait
What about water? Especially in a desert, isn't that also a natural resource?
The worst thing you can do is fulfill the stereotype of the ingnorant american cowboy by oversimplifying a painful and serious situation and thinking every problem can be solved by using power and money.
Isn't that exactly what Israel is trying to do?
The unfortunately obligatory disclaimer: I am anything but antisemetic. I am marrying a lovely New York Jew, under a chuppa. I am criticizing the actions of a national government, not a race or a religion. This disclaimer exists because all too often anyone who criticizes Israel faces accusations of bigotry, which is the precise antithesis of all that I believe in.
Liberty is 'safety' from the state. "Liberty to be safe from my fellow citizens" is a misapplication of the word "liberty".
Which is exactly how this sort of thing works. There's always going to be some reason to justify any government intrusion, and this is a favored technique of the proponents of it. But, without the government watching, [some nearly universally repellant thing] will happen! This is the essence of the "what about the children" argument.
Debating against this point puts one at an emotional disadvantage. Making the average person understand that however unacceptable a certain behavior is, there are limits that should not be surpassed in trying to eliminate it is practically impossible, particularly in this society ruled by fear and faux moralism.
The effectiveness of the "but you're safer this way" cannot be understated. Gun rights, free speech rights, even the right to a fair trial seem to be under attack, all apparently to "keep us safe". I live in fear that by the time the people learn the lesson that liberty is what keeps us safe, we'll have precious little left.
The idea the founding fathers put forth, through their own experience, was that life without liberty is worthless, worse than worthless in fact, it is perpetuating an evil.
Enough people agreed with that to eventually make our nation a pretty popular place. Popularity appears to have made us forget that.
Oft quoted, but not often enough: "Anyone who would trade essential liberty for a little temporary safety deserves neither liberty nor safety." --Benjamin Franklin
You said that it wasn't illegal to send postage due junk mail (a way of sending mail that is free to the sender).
No I didn't.
This is what I get for feeding the trolls. Yeargh.
Receiving e-mail is not free. Even if the user does not pay for it, which is usually not true, the ISP does.
So? What does that have to do with anything? Lots of things cost money to receive.
E-mail being one of them, which is exactly why spam is wrong and ought to be outlawed: it's no different than postage-due junk mail.
Where did you purchase your crystal ball? I checked fortune-tellers-online and they didn't have any. Perhaps a spammer sent you a crystal ball ad? I haven't seen that one yet.
You asked me a question. What did you want me to do, say "I don't know," or answer it to the best of my ability?
If you don't know, yes I would expect you to say I don't know, then if you wanted to make a guess, clearly label it as such.
So, you admit that you have no idea and have done no research, but you still know its FUD.
I have an idea, and I have done research. I just haven't read that particular report. And yes, I know it's FUD.
Way to completely ignore the context of my statement. I was referring to research on that particular report, which is the only research that is relevant to the topic of whether or not that report is FUD. You don't *know* it's FUD, you haven't even read it!!! You *guess* it's FUD.
This will probably be my last reply, as you are obviously trolling.
Why bother with this one unless you yourself are trolling?
What can I say, I feel strongly enough about this issue to discuss it, to the point of being trolled. But you still raise your first good point of this entire thread -- why bother with you? Touche. Good bye.
And another BS analogy.
OK, you don't seem to understand the difference between an analogy and an example. Have a nice day.
From dictionary.com:
ex*am*ple
1. One that is representative of a group as a whole: the squirrel, an example of a rodent; introduced each new word with examples of its use.
a*nal*o*gy
1. a. Similarity in some respects between things that are otherwise dissimilar.
b. A comparison based on such similarity. See Synonyms at likeness.
I don't see the difference between passing a specific law or regulation to prevent an action, and saying that an action is already forbidden by laws or regulations, as is the case with this. How is one a "technical solution" while the other is "legal"?
It's simple. The post office makes you pay to send mail. If you don't pay, it's theft, plain and simple. ISPs, on the other hand, want to make it free to send mail, and free to receive mail, and then bitch when people actually take advantage of that.
You're confusing the issue. You said that it wasn't illegal to send postage due junk mail (a way of sending mail that is free to the sender).
Receiving e-mail is not free. Even if the user does not pay for it, which is usually not true, the ISP does.
[Tracking down spammers costs...] More than the 10 billion dollars a year estimated lost revenue to spamming?
Yes, much much more.
Where did you purchase your crystal ball? I checked fortune-tellers-online and they didn't have any. Perhaps a spammer sent you a crystal ball ad? I haven't seen that one yet.
And this isn't just some up in the air FUD figure, this is the Department of Commerce estimating the costs of spam using a method they explain.
They explain their methods to come up with the brilliant statement that smoking pot causes terrorism too. The 10 billion dollar figure is FUD. Show me where they explain the methodology of this figure and I'll be more specific.
So, you admit that you have no idea and have done no research, but you still know its FUD. This will probably be my last reply, as you are obviously trolling.
Lost revenue is a bullshit figure to begin with. I could probably conjure up some numbers which show that Slashdot causes 10 billion dollars in lost revenue. Should we ban that? Television commercials during CNBC probably cost trillions of dollars in lost revenue. Let's make them illegal too.
More BS analogies and claims that utterly fail to address the facts. Yawn. This is getting boring.
6 minutes a day deleting spam + every office worker with an e-mail account in America is a lot of lettuce.
It's also incidental damages. If I shoot a coworker every time I receive a spam, does that mean that spammers are to blame for the murder of my coworkers?
And another BS analogy. How is it incidental that workers have to spend 6 minutes a day sifting through spam in their e-mail, and that this costs money in lost time? Saying that you're grasping for straws is giving you too much credit.
The bandwidth costs for spam on service providers are also enormous.
I'd say they're closer to zero. Most emails are tiny compared to porn and mp3s.
We aren't talking about one or two messages a day, or even one or two messages a day to a user. If you conservatively estimate that each user gets 100 spams of 2k each, multiplied by 10,000 users, that's 2 gigabytes a day. At the ISP I run, who's domain has existed for a very long time and so exists on practically every e-mail list out there, up that number to 1,500 per user. Yes, 1,500. My spam filter archives messages for 7 days, and it currently has 13,000 messages in it, so thats conservative, but I have aliases too so I get a touch more than our average customer. That's still 30GB a day. Calling that "near zero" is just plain stupid.
I guess we should make porn illegal while we're at it. Mp3s already are thanks in part to quoting such stupid figures as "lost potential revenue," right?
The difference between porn and mp3s are that the user wants that stuff, whereas nobody wants the spam. But its impossible to make it stop.
Assuming a law was passed that required law enforcement officers to act, I wouldn't say its too expensive.
That's precisely why I'm opposed to passing such a law in the first place.
Why, because
Feel free to try it. If companies could get away with this, do you seriously think that they wouldn't do it?
::Shrug::
I didn't say that it was possible to do it (send junk mail postage due). I just don't think there's a law specifically against it. The postal service has used a technical solution to the problem, not a legal one.
I don't see the difference between passing a specific law or regulation to prevent an action, and saying that an action is already forbidden by laws or regulations, as is the case with this. How is one a "technical solution" while the other is "legal"? This makes no sense.
Brilliant idea! I'm sure such a business [an ISP without an email account] would be a great success.
I think it would be too. Most people I know do not use their ISPs email account.
You don't know very many people, do you? Look, both of us are speaking in anecdotes, but the fact that I run an ISP and am familiar with the business ought to carry some weight...and in my experience, what you are saying is absolutely untrue. In fact, our service pulls in quite a bit of money with e-mail only accounts.
Tell you what, it's so brilliant an idea, I'm going to let you have first crack at it. Try it and let me know how it goes!
I don't have enough capital to start up a successful ISP. Care to loan me some?
I'm already wasting too much time talking to someone who obviously doesn't want to be convinced of anything.
Regardless of where the mail servers are, regardless of where the spam originates, there has to be some way to get their money from you to them. If those connected in that process were liable to be sued, get jail time, or better yet BOTH, do you really think they would risk it?
Tracking people down costs far too much money to bother, even if it is possible.
More than the 10 billion dollars a year estimated lost revenue to spamming? And this isn't just some up in the air FUD figure, this is the Department of Commerce estimating the costs of spam using a method they explain. 6 minutes a day deleting spam + every office worker with an e-mail account in America is a lot of lettuce. The bandwidth costs for spam on service providers are also enormous.
You can't sue everyone connected in that process, because many of them will be innocent victims.
Why do you make the assumption that I would sue innocent people? This is a pretty straw man you're setting up, I almost feel bad about knocking it down.
Are you going to sue paypal for accepting a payment from someone who happens to selling a product to someone who happens to have a reseller program which happens to have someone who sent a spam? You can't do that.
I can't even parse that. Your analogies are growing more and more outlandish. I would sue the spammer, and anyone who knowingly supported or allowed his spamming operation to take place. For every spam you get, someone did it, you cannot obfuscate this fact with confusing analogies.
Are you going to try to get a warrant from paypal?
Paypal doesn't issue warrants. If you mean a warrant for paypal, I already said, your example is bogus.
Too expensive, especially since that's only going to take you one step closer to finding the culprit.
Too expensive to who? Assuming a law was passed that required law enforcement officers to act, I wouldn't say its too expensive. It's their job. Besides, would you accept "it is too expensive to stop murderers so why bother" as an argument? I wouldn't. Criminals should be pursued, regardless of the monetary cost.
Or are you going to make some law a la the Patriot act forcing paypal to name names without a warrant?
I think you mean a Subpoena, and let me just say how hilarious it is that you accuse me of engaging in FUD by quoting a DoC figure, and in the same bre