Every time something really new gets posted it seems like we here this massive chorus of:
This is not new. PLC (Power Line Communications) have been tried in Europe. Somehow, almost every single one of the trials got silently cancelled. We had PLC here in Finland. Had. The company providing PLC switched over to WLAN.
This time, they naysayers are right. Might it be that the power companies actually don't have the required expertise in the area of communications?
I suspect that the trial won't live too long. As soon as the Ohio National Guard gets their band filled with interference... <g>
You find out where an email came from. Track it back to the ISP. Find out where it came from. Track it back to the next ISP. Check their logs. Continue until you get to a modem pool/DSL connection. There's your guy.
More likely this will happen: Track it to that zombie at the other end of a, say, Brazilian Telefonica's DSL line. Say couple of swearwords. Rinse and Repeat with the next mail, and the next, and the next...
During the last two big e-mail virus outbreaks most of the cr*p that landed in my inbox came from Brazilia, Romania and Poland. Those countries are known as places where it's practically pointless to send abuse reports, because the reports are not acted upon. Actually, the Polish zombie was silenced in approximately 30 hours from the first mail I received -- abysmally slow response, given that I sent my first abuse reports during a normal working day (Central European time). That zombie alone flooded my mailbox with literally hundreds of megabytes of binary bioweapons.
I'd say that most ISP's in the world will cooperate in matters like this. However, there are plenty of those that don't (e.g. Telefonica Empres AS in Brazil, pcnet in Romania, T-dialin in Germany...)
by labeling me as a spammer even though I've never touched the stuff in my life
Sounds like your IP is inside a CIDR block listed by SPEWS (or something similar). If it happened to be SPEWS (your symptoms certainly match), did you actually bother to read the SPEWS FAQ?
There certainly is a reason why you got blocked.
Either someone has sent spam from your IP (if you have dynamic IP) or spam has been sent from the same netblock (and your ISP didn't bother to eject the spammer scum).
If you present this kind of accusations, we (or at least I) would like to hear some more details...
Disclaimer: I'm not American, I'm an EU citizen. My knowledge of American constituion might be limited.
Does because I have to click 'DELETE' a few times REALLY count as a justifable reason to restrict free speech, with open speech being THE MOST IMPORTANT ELEMENT of any democracy?
Aha, so you're one of the JHD crowd (Just Hit Delete). Fine then. I'd say that spam is, as a problem, bigger than that. According to some estimates, about 50% of the E-mail traffic is spam. I'm not too greatly affected by spam, but e.g. my father's signal-to-noise ratio is usually terrible (usually about 30 spams per one legit e-mail).
Besides, at least here in $MY_COUNTRY, commercial speech is not the same as free speech. I agree that political speech (as long as it is not inflammatory) must be free. I'm also a strong believer in the freedom of assembly. However, spam is not free speech: it is commercial in nature, not political. Besides, political free speech does not use up a citizen's resources without the citizen's consent. Therefore, IMHO, free speech clause does not apply to spam. I'd quote the Finnish constitution's relevant section, but am too lasy to look it up.
Making a profitable activity illegal DOES NOT MAKE IT GO AWAY.
Sad but true. Here in Finland spam is already (in most cases) illegal (prior consent required), but the few spammers/scammers/MLMs are usually not prosecuted to the full extent of the law. The cases that I know, the police did not even conduct a pretrial investigation.
They'll just relocate overseas, to where there are no restrictions. Suddenly, sure, you've got no bulk e-mail coming from within the United States - but you've got even more pouring in from China, Taiwan, South America, and any other country without anti-spam laws.
Further, it would be a country with no fair business regulations either. Want a working "opt out" link? Forget it. Valid return address? Never. ANY legal recourse against the spammers? Not a chance.
I usually feed my spam to SpamCop. Usually the source is a raped proxy in South Korea or China. If the source happens to be in USA, then it's a 0wn3d ATT broadband or RR cable user. Mexico and Brazil are also prominient among the sources of spam. I can't see what would change if the spammers relocated.
What comes to the validity of return addresses or legal recourses against spammers, the return addresses are usually clearly faked (friend@public, my own e-mail address, etc). When it's a real address, then it's usually a joe-job (i.e. a real person's, a third party's, address inserted as a return address -- guess who is then buried under zillions of bounces?). As to the legal recourse, locating the actual spammer is pain. The data that might lead to the tracks of the spammer, their domain's whois info, is usually faked. It might look valid, but the location is nonexistent.
Their Privacy policy allows selling your email address to advertisers.
Is this the privacy policy you're referring to: http://www.telstra.com.au/privacy/docs/0855ppol.pd f
(If not, could you give a pointer to that privacy policy?)
I glimpsed at that PDF, and I couldn't find a paragraph that would refer to selling the addresses to the spammers.
However, I kinda wonder about Section (2)(10) -- does Telstra provide some sort of health services? If not, then WTF is it doing with anyone's health information!?
Somewhere in the article the professor stated that also the color of the cord (24 different colors) could matter, which then gives you 128 * 24 = 3024 permutations. Wait, 3024 is larger that 1500... oh well, perhaps an anthropologist just can't use a calculator...
We still have the problem of blank media levies in Finland. The current levy is 0.25 (euro-)cents per minute for data CD-R(W)'s and 0.19 cents per minute for (computer-writeable) DVD-R(W)'s. Per CD/DVD, the levy is about 20 cents (little more in USD cents).
However, not everybody has to pay the levy: if a company makes a written statement that it won't record copyright-royalty-due material on CD's, the company can then buy levy-free CD's. However, the option is only available to companies, not to private individuals.
Of course it's common knowledge that to avoid it, you just buy your media from out of country and you don't get the levy added on. Too bad for Canadian retailers...
Well... at least here in Finland (which is scarily close to Sweden), people do that (import CD's for their own use). The catch is that if you import more than 20 (or so) at a time, you have to pay the levy. People have tried this, and the CD's got stuck in the customs and were released only after the levies were paid.
I mean, if you're paying a tax to pirate music on CD-R, you might as well pirate it right? You've already paid.
Actually, an acquitance of mine met the bit^H^H^Hlady in charge of the levy department of Teosto (our local RIAA-equivalent). When this acquitance of mine suggested what is said in the quote above to the Teosto boss she just about blew her fuse... according to her, the levies are used to support domestic artists (most of whom suck big time).
The point is that while most people who do copy music copy music composed & performed by foreign artists, the levies do not go to those foreign artists. Basically that means that the system is grossly unfair for anybody but our domestic artists.
That said, to people living in Sweden, DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES let your law makers get ANY levy/fee/tax on blank media in at ANY amount.
Be happy if the fee is levied only on removable media. Here they're thinking of levying that levy on ALL medias to which you can record music, up to and including computer hard disks. I really do hope that the proposed act does not pass in the parliament.
Slashdot Mirror
This is not new. PLC (Power Line Communications) have been tried in Europe. Somehow, almost every single one of the trials got silently cancelled. We had PLC here in Finland. Had. The company providing PLC switched over to WLAN.
This time, they naysayers are right. Might it be that the power companies actually don't have the required expertise in the area of communications?
I suspect that the trial won't live too long. As soon as the Ohio National Guard gets their band filled with interference... <g>
You lose a finger only in the case you actually soak it in the liquid. If you just dip it in, nothing happens. I've tried...
Pray, tell me, who would collect the tax? How could we enforce the tax in the countries in where most of the spam originates, ie. Brazil and Romania?
More likely this will happen: Track it to that zombie at the other end of a, say, Brazilian Telefonica's DSL line. Say couple of swearwords. Rinse and Repeat with the next mail, and the next, and the next...
During the last two big e-mail virus outbreaks most of the cr*p that landed in my inbox came from Brazilia, Romania and Poland. Those countries are known as places where it's practically pointless to send abuse reports, because the reports are not acted upon. Actually, the Polish zombie was silenced in approximately 30 hours from the first mail I received -- abysmally slow response, given that I sent my first abuse reports during a normal working day (Central European time). That zombie alone flooded my mailbox with literally hundreds of megabytes of binary bioweapons.
I'd say that most ISP's in the world will cooperate in matters like this. However, there are plenty of those that don't (e.g. Telefonica Empres AS in Brazil, pcnet in Romania, T-dialin in Germany...)
Sounds like your IP is inside a CIDR block listed by SPEWS (or something similar). If it happened to be SPEWS (your symptoms certainly match), did you actually bother to read the SPEWS FAQ?
There certainly is a reason why you got blocked. Either someone has sent spam from your IP (if you have dynamic IP) or spam has been sent from the same netblock (and your ISP didn't bother to eject the spammer scum).
If you present this kind of accusations, we (or at least I) would like to hear some more details...
Aha, so you're one of the JHD crowd (Just Hit Delete). Fine then. I'd say that spam is, as a problem, bigger than that. According to some estimates, about 50% of the E-mail traffic is spam. I'm not too greatly affected by spam, but e.g. my father's signal-to-noise ratio is usually terrible (usually about 30 spams per one legit e-mail).
Besides, at least here in $MY_COUNTRY, commercial speech is not the same as free speech. I agree that political speech (as long as it is not inflammatory) must be free. I'm also a strong believer in the freedom of assembly. However, spam is not free speech: it is commercial in nature, not political. Besides, political free speech does not use up a citizen's resources without the citizen's consent. Therefore, IMHO, free speech clause does not apply to spam. I'd quote the Finnish constitution's relevant section, but am too lasy to look it up.
Sad but true. Here in Finland spam is already (in most cases) illegal (prior consent required), but the few spammers/scammers/MLMs are usually not prosecuted to the full extent of the law. The cases that I know, the police did not even conduct a pretrial investigation.
I usually feed my spam to SpamCop. Usually the source is a raped proxy in South Korea or China. If the source happens to be in USA, then it's a 0wn3d ATT broadband or RR cable user. Mexico and Brazil are also prominient among the sources of spam. I can't see what would change if the spammers relocated.
What comes to the validity of return addresses or legal recourses against spammers, the return addresses are usually clearly faked (friend@public, my own e-mail address, etc). When it's a real address, then it's usually a joe-job (i.e. a real person's, a third party's, address inserted as a return address -- guess who is then buried under zillions of bounces?). As to the legal recourse, locating the actual spammer is pain. The data that might lead to the tracks of the spammer, their domain's whois info, is usually faked. It might look valid, but the location is nonexistent.
Is this the privacy policy you're referring to: http://www.telstra.com.au/privacy/docs/0855ppol.p
(If not, could you give a pointer to that privacy policy?)
I glimpsed at that PDF, and I couldn't find a paragraph that would refer to selling the addresses to the spammers.
However, I kinda wonder about Section (2)(10) -- does Telstra provide some sort of health services? If not, then WTF is it doing with anyone's health information!?
Somewhere in the article the professor stated that also the color of the cord (24 different colors) could matter, which then gives you 128 * 24 = 3024 permutations. Wait, 3024 is larger that 1500... oh well, perhaps an anthropologist just can't use a calculator...
-Timo
We still have the problem of blank media levies in Finland. The current levy is 0.25 (euro-)cents per minute for data CD-R(W)'s and 0.19 cents per minute for (computer-writeable) DVD-R(W)'s. Per CD/DVD, the levy is about 20 cents (little more in USD cents).
However, not everybody has to pay the levy: if a company makes a written statement that it won't record copyright-royalty-due material on CD's, the company can then buy levy-free CD's. However, the option is only available to companies, not to private individuals.
Well... at least here in Finland (which is scarily close to Sweden), people do that (import CD's for their own use). The catch is that if you import more than 20 (or so) at a time, you have to pay the levy. People have tried this, and the CD's got stuck in the customs and were released only after the levies were paid.Actually, an acquitance of mine met the bit^H^H^Hlady in charge of the levy department of Teosto (our local RIAA-equivalent). When this acquitance of mine suggested what is said in the quote above to the Teosto boss she just about blew her fuse... according to her, the levies are used to support domestic artists (most of whom suck big time).
The point is that while most people who do copy music copy music composed & performed by foreign artists, the levies do not go to those foreign artists. Basically that means that the system is grossly unfair for anybody but our domestic artists.
Be happy if the fee is levied only on removable media. Here they're thinking of levying that levy on ALL medias to which you can record music, up to and including computer hard disks. I really do hope that the proposed act does not pass in the parliament.