And now the latest information (which can be independentaly verified) indicates that Media3 has knowingly and willfully used Peacefire as a pawn in their war against MAPS; that is, in an attempt to get sympathy for poor, beleagured Media3, who are only trying to make a profit by hosting spammers and spamware sellers (and of course, by doing so, are stealing from those of us who actually *pay* for our Internet bandwidth), Joe Hayes plonked Peacefire right squarely in the middle of an RBLed IP space, knowing full well that Bennett Haselton would run screamign to the media (like, for example, Jamie McCarthy) about how brutal MAPS and AboveNet are! How DARE they attempt to prevent Media3 customers from committing theft and trespass, and from crashing mail servers outside of Media3 netspace!
Well, Haselton and McCarthy's knees jerked exactly like Hayes hoped they would. Between the two of them, Peacefire's reputation among non-spamming people has gone into the toilet - but I'd bet Joe Hayes is really happy with them both!
Mr. Hayes has at last responded with a fairly lengthy explanation as to
why Peacefire was moved to 209.211.253* in August. Without going into
great detail, much of it is actually quite plausible, including the
addition of a new improved server within that space shortly before new
websites began being run on it.
Mr. Hayes, however, ruined his explanation at the end, by making an
outlandish claim, which is quite provably false.
He said that from June to November 2000, only mail originating from
209.211.253* was being blocked by the RBL, & that websites in that IP
space were not blocked until November.
This of course does not fit the typical practices of MAPS. Usually, as
was the case with Cybercreek for example, it was the spamware sites
themselves which were blocked from the beginning, not necessarily mail
directly associated with those domains, & often not even that. Then too,
it is quite obvious from the RBL evidenced file that 209.211.253* was
blocked in its entirety from June 2, 2000 onward. My understanding is
that (depending on how certain ISPs chose to use the input, of course), if
an entire C-block is listed, then everything within that IP range can be
blocked. There is not necessarily any distinguishing between
mail-servers, websites, etc. within that IP range. Certainly certain ISPs
can chose to block only mail, not http access, but the entire range can
also be blocked.
Contemporary evidence that websites within 209.211.253* were indeed being
blocked by early July at the latest may be found here:
In the first article in the thread one can see Steve Linford confirming
that the sites were unavailable behind the RBL, & at least one other
poster within the same thread added further confirmation that this was
so. The traceroute provided proves the inaccessability of the C-block.
Other articles were posted in the same month which further verify that
indeed the RBL was blocking websites in that IP range, not just email. As
I pointed out to Mr. Hayes in my reply, such articles would obviously not
have been posted had the RBL only been blocking mail.
The RBL evidence file for 209.211.253* confirms that Mr. Hayes was told
over the phone that the entire C-block would be added to the RBL by June 1
if the SAMCO sites were not removed. Nothing is said there that Mr. Hayes
was told that only email would be blocked, & in any case it is obvious
that no such guarantee could have been made, as many ISPs would simply
chose to block the entire range, http & all.
Much of Mr. Hayes' explanation for the moving of Peacefire seems quite
valid, but I am extremely disappointed that he would make a claim that
would be so easily proven wrong. And unfortunately it is this particular
aspect that lies at the heart of this issue: did Mr. Hayes know, before
Peacefire was moved to 209.211.253*, that Peacefire the website would be
blocked from the moment it entered that C-block?
There is no possible way he could not have known.
Witnesses to this most recent exchange include, as previously, Mr. Hayes,
Mr. Linford, Mr. Finkelstein, Mr. Haselton, & a new addition, Jamie of
Slashdot. In my reply sent to all these men, I advised Mr. Hayes to come
clean, especially with Mr. Haselton, & admit that he did know
www.peacefire.org would be blocked by the RBL before it was moved to
209.211.253* in August, & explain why he neglected to inform Mr. Haselton
of the fact until November.
Message-ID: spicy_crust-2505012218280001@hunt-pri7-a20.tx ucom.net
Subject: Joe Hayes of Media3 refuses to deny that Peacefire is a pawn
Date: Fri, 25 May 2001 22:18:27 -0500
Posted by Rob Mitchell
Let's look first at the history of how I got involved in this.
On 1-20-01, one Seth Finkelstein, a self-proclaimed "Peacefire member"
(whatever this means), began a thread in this newsgroup titled,
"Peacefire, MAPS, accusations spinning out of control." This was in the
month following the media story in which it was noted that "innocent
sites" on Media3 were being blocked by the RBL, because they happened to
be placed in the same Class C block as certain Samco spamware sites. It
soon emerged (from Bennett Haselton himself of Peacefire) that Peacefire
had been moved from its previous IP address & put into this C-block in
August 2000. It was quickly noted also that this C-Block had been in the
RBL already for 2 months by this time. Mr. Finkelstein raised several
issues, but what most interested me is the point raised by numerous
regulars as to exactly why Media3 chose to move Peacefire into this
particular C-block at this particular time. In response to this point,
Mr. Finkelstein several times stated that it would be more appropriate to
question Joe Hayes of Media3 about this issue, rather than attacking Mr.
Haselton. I reproduce below all of Mr. Finkelstein's statements to this
effect in this thread, as well as his statements that he was a "Peacefire
member," & had "worked with" Mr. Haselton (the veracity or lack of which I
assume Mr. Haselton himself can confirm), up to the point of my entry into
the thread.
The entire thread may be seen by anyone with standard Internet access at
this URL:
Mr. Finkelstein began the thread with this article, in which he (among
many other things) said:
"This is all spinning out of control. Let me state my affiliations and
biases up-front. I'm a Peacefire member, and a Peacefire Honorary
Teenager. I've worked with Bennett Haselton, and think extremely highly
of him. But I'm speaking for myself and only myself, Bennett didn't ask
me or induce me to write this in any form. I didn't discuss it with him.
This message is informed by my general background, but he had nothing to
do with it."
1-21-01:
Message 15:
"Me, I think Joe Hayes of Media3 has a lot of explaining to do. Remember,
I'm not Bennett, I'm not Peacefire's PR officer. I'm just a person who
knows them both writing on my own to try to do something about a situation
I see as spinning out of control."
Message 22:
"The person to badger is Joe Hayes of Media3, not Bennett Haselton of
Peacefire. Don't expect Peacefire to go after Media3. Go after Joe Hayes
for a what-did-you-know-and-when-did-you-know-it."
Message 33:
"I went over this as error#3. Hayes != Haselton. My opinion is that
*Hayes* should be getting the grilling, not Haselton."
Message 54:
"I don't think Peacefire is being Media3's sockpuppets. However, I think
the best thing to do is to put *Joe Hayes* on the hot-spot. The more
Bennett Haselton gets attacked, the worse this'll be."
Message 60:
"I don't have the ability to grill him and make it *stick*. I can *try*
to get people who do have that ability to go after Hayes instead of
Haselton. But perhaps I'm wasting my time, in that people would rather
flame me instead of grilling Hayes."
Message 70:
"I'm not obscure. I *like* Bennett. I respect him tremendously. I've
worked with him. I'm a Peacefire member, and honored by it. I think this
whole situation is spinning WAY out of control, and I was moved to try to
do something about it."
1-22-01:
Message 199:
"I keep pointing out, I'm not in a position to grill Joe Hayes. I'm not
on the right lists, I don't have the expertise to argue with him about
hosting. I suspect there are people in this newsgroup who can do so. But
it seems it's easier to berate me on and on for not having an answer that
I cannot have."
Message 207:
"First, as to messages on my screen, it's got to be literally 6 to 1. And
as I just wrote, *I* *don't* *know* the answers to any hosting questions,
and I can't get them in any reasonable way, and I believe some people on
this group could do a much better job than I could...I am not in position
to have complete facts. I don't think anyone is, with the possible
exception of Joe Hayes on the hosting issue."
In response to this very article, I wrote in Message 247:
"Then why are you still here? Give their addys to me & I'll give it a try."
Thus what I saw was a "Peacefire member," apparently putting out a call
for help in this newsgroup for someone who had the "expertise" to "grill"
Mr. Hayes about the reasons he chose to move Peacefire to a C-block which
was already in the RBL, to do exactly this. And common sense suggested to
me that if one Peacefire member felt this way, undoubtably others did
too. Mr. Finkelstein just happened to be the only "Peacefire member"
posting in this newsgroup at that time. I thought that I might possibly
posess something at least approaching the "expertise" being asked for, as
I have a few times, armed with extensive documentation, "grilled" certain
entities, occasionally with visible results (Maxim, Ibill, & Altopia come
immediately to mind).
As I recall, very shortly after I posted Message 247, Mr. Finkelstein
himself emailed me, & gave me 2 addresses for Mr. Hayes. Thus I was
indeed "asked" to be a liason with Mr. Hayes; I was asked by a member of
Peacefire. I find it fascinating that Mr. Haselton himself, in a recent
article on 5-24-01, made this statement which I made in my first email to
Mr. Hayes on 1-23-01 out to be something which would probably cause Mr.
Hayes to be "pissed off," & to be merely calculated by me to be "something
someone would say just to get a faster response," when in fact it was one
of his members, someone who had supposedly "worked with" him on issues
which he felt important, who had requested me to contact Mr. Hayes. Also
Mr. Haselton has seemed not to notice that I was in fact complying with
one of his members' request that pressure to resolve this issue be put on
Mr. Hayes, not on Mr. Haselton, & that one of my objectives was obviously
to determine Mr. Haselton's innocence regarding the accusations that he &
Mr. Hayes "conspired" to move Peacefire to an RBL'd C-block for the
purpose of giving MAPS bad publicity.
Little thanks, it seems, do I get from Mr. Haselton for my attempt to
clear his name.
In preparation for my first email to Mr. Hayes, I investigated the Media3
netblock in which Peacefire had been moved, 209.211.248.0 -
209.211.255.255. Of the 8 Class C blocks within this netspace I could
find only 1 that was in the RBL, 209.211.253*, the block which contained
Peacefire. My suspicions were immediately aroused, & I began to wonder
why Peacefire had been moved into the 1 block out of these 8 which was
blackholed. I started to check at random various individual IP addresses
within the 7 blocks which were not blackholed, found a number of them
which contained websites, but also a number of them which contained no
websites, proving beyond all possible doubt that there were plenty of IP
addresses on which Peacefire could have been placed which were not
blackholed.
All this I noted in the email which I sent to the 2 addresses Mr.
Finkelstein gave me, on the day following my offer to contact Mr. Hayes in
Message 247, the complete text of which I posted publicly here a few days
ago. I also made note of the fact that Media3 also owned 206.67.48.0 -
206.67.63.255, which amounts to 16 other C-blocks.
In his response, Mr. Hayes said that he would be happy to answer my
questions, but pleaded constraints of time & many other responsibilities
in asking me to be patient in understanding any delay in his future
replies. He also said, however, that some of the facts I presented were
"inaccurate," & that I apparently had a "slanted" disposition (this text
also has been posted publicly here, along with full headers proving that
the email was not "forged" or some other such nonsense). He did not,
however, answer any of the questions I raised in my email. In my reply of
the same day (which I have not yet posted although several people have now
seen it, including Mr. Haselton himself who has posted parts of it here),
I asked what was "inaccurate" about my statements. Did not Media3 own
these blocks? Was it not true that only a small minority of them were in
the RBL? And in response to the "slanted" inuendo, I stated that I had
been asked to initiate this correspondence (which was indeed true), & made
it clear to him that many people believed that Media3 had purposefully
moved Peacefire to an RBL'd C-block, even though it had a far greater
number of C-blocks which were not blackholed, for the purpose of causing
MAPS embarrassing press. I also made it plain that I was quite prepared
to listen with an open mind to any alternate explanation Mr. Hayes chose
to give me, but I warned him that a failure to offer such an explanation
might reasonably be interpreted as an indication that no such explanation
existed.
Mr. Hayes did not take me up on this offer, as no further response ever
arrived. Out of respect for him, I did not email him further at that
time.
Much more recently, with Mr. Haselton once again going on & on about this
matter, I decided that I would attempt one more time to resolve this
business once & for all. This time I purposefully cc'd my email to Mr.
Hayes to Mr. Haselton himself, & to Steve Linford & Spamjamr, so that I
would ensure objectivity by having 2 witnesses on each side of this
issue. I presented my 2 January emails again, & made the point that out
of Media3's netspace which I have so far discovered, 63.74.120.0 -
63.74.123.255, 206.67.48.0 - 206.67.63.255, & 209.211.248.0 -
209.211.255.255, which amounts to a total of 28 Class C blocks, I have
only been able to find 3 entire C-blocks which have ever been in the RBL,
206.67.53*, 206.67.55*, & 209.211.253*, & only a portion of a 4th,
206.67.58*. Thus this meant that something around 24 C-blocks had been
available to which to move Peacefire which were not blackholed, yet Media3
chose to move the site to 1 of only 4 which was blackholed. I asked Mr.
Hayes once again to provide an explanation as to why this was done.
Twenty-four hours later no response had yet been received from him, which
I noted in another email to the same 4 recipients on 5-24-01.
To this Mr. Hayes did indeed respond, but even though on 1-23-01 he had
begun his email with, "I would be happy to answer what I can for you,"
this time his reply was far different in tone. In this email, in which he
addressed to Mr. Haselton, but which according to the header was sent only
to me, although he may very well have bcc'd it to others, he said:
"Bennett,
Would you mind forwarding my previous yo last email to him. I really don't
have time to deal with this idiot."
My reply to this was considerably less polite than my previous emails had
been, although in none of this correspondence had I ever even once lapsed
into vulgarity. Without going into detail, I made it plain that I will
never email Mr. Hayes again, unless circumstances change.
I will be happy to reproduce this entire correspondence publicly, full
headers intact, should Mr. Haselton or Mr. Hayes challenge the accuracy of
my summary in the slightest, & Steve Linford & Spamjamr will be able to
verify that I am producing exactly what I sent, without the slightest
alteration.
Here are the facts, which are currently to my knowledge undisputable.
Media3 owns at least 28 Class C blocks, & only about 4 have at any time
been blackholed by MAPS. The MAPS evidence file, when one does a lookup
on Peacefire's IP address, shows that the file was created early in June
2000. Mr. Haselton has said in numerous public statemtents (horrendously
easy to find on Google), that Peacefire was not moved into the RBL'd
netblock until 2 months later, in August. Mr. Haselton has also made
numerous statements in Usenet, & also in some articles to Spam-L which
were quoted by other posters, that there were various reasons why
Peacefire's IP address had to be changed in August. However, I have
searched in vain for even a single article in which he has offered any
explanation whatsoever as to why the decision was made to make this change
into a blackholed C-block, when a far greater number of C-blocks were
available which were not blackholed, nor has he ever reproduced any
communication from Joe Hayes explaining why this was done. Nor have I
been able to find a single example of anyone else producing such a
communication, though I have found several articles in which others said
they had tried to get this answer from Mr. Hayes, & had been met with
silence; some of these can be seen in the January thread I have cited
above.
If any of this is in error, I would be more than happy to be corrected by
anyone presenting solid documentation to the contrary.
Thus even though a member of Peacefire specifically asked me to attempt to
clarify this issue, & repeatedly voiced the concern that Mr. Hayes had an
obligation to answer this question truthfully & without equivocation, &
even though I attempted to convince Mr. Hayes to do this very thing in
January & again this month, he has so far refused to offer any explanation
whatsoever. And surprisingly Mr. Haselton, instead of supporting my
efforts to find out the truth (which one would think he would be intensely
interested in), & thus potentially clear him of any claims that he himself
had "conspired" with Mr. Hayes to embarrass MAPS (which is an accusation I
have never made, or even purposefully implied), excused Mr. Hayes' lack of
response thusly:
"Do ISP managers have *nothing* else to do other than answer letters?"
I was quite willing to give Media3 the benefit of the doubt & listen with
a open mind to any explanation as to why Peacefire was moved of all
places, to an RBL'd block, when a much larger amount of unblocked Media3
netspace was available. However, with Mr. Hayes' rudeness toward me, &
his refusal to offer even the most meager alternate explanation, I am now
leaning toward the opinion that Media3 purposefully used Peacefire as a
pawn in order to undermine the credibility of the RBL. This opinion is
powerfully supported by a preponderance of evidence, as I have
demonstrated here; the evidence supporting any alternative explanation is
nonexistent, as the only entity which could provide such evidence, Media3,
absolutely refuses to challenge this opinion in the slightest.
And I am guaranteed the right to express this opinion by our Constitution,
without the slightest fear of reprisal. Media3 certainly cannot
successfully "sue" me, since I can easily prove that I gave Mr. Hayes
repeated chances to present to me evidence which demonstrated this opinion
to be false, & that he failed over a period of 4 months to contradict this
opinion.
"Jamie" has published here what is essentially a paraphrased press release from Bennett Haselton, head of Peacefire.org - and Haselton has openly admitted that his Web site was moved inot the middle of the RBLed IP space *months* after that space was RBLed.
So it is obvious that (1) Peacefire is now openly operating to provide public relations for spammers, and (2) Jamie McCarthy is providing "news" articles to/. as a service to Peacefire - for which he is compensated in same way (being listed as a senior member, perhaps - publicity hounds are usually happy with that sort of payment).
I strongly suspect this comment will be moderated out of existence here, but it will appear in public news fora elsewhere.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, Haselton and McCarthy's knees jerked exactly like Hayes hoped they would. Between the two of them, Peacefire's reputation among non-spamming people has gone into the toilet - but I'd bet Joe Hayes is really happy with them both!
From: sorbus_rowan@my-deja.com (Rob Mitchell)
Newsgroups: news.admin.net-abuse.email
Subject: Media3/Peacefire developments
Date: Tue, 29 May 2001 20:40:07 -0500
Message-ID: sorbus_rowan-2905012040070001@hunt-pri1-a21.t xucom.net
Mr. Hayes has at last responded with a fairly lengthy explanation as to why Peacefire was moved to 209.211.253* in August. Without going into great detail, much of it is actually quite plausible, including the addition of a new improved server within that space shortly before new websites began being run on it.
Mr. Hayes, however, ruined his explanation at the end, by making an outlandish claim, which is quite provably false.
He said that from June to November 2000, only mail originating from 209.211.253* was being blocked by the RBL, & that websites in that IP space were not blocked until November.
This of course does not fit the typical practices of MAPS. Usually, as was the case with Cybercreek for example, it was the spamware sites themselves which were blocked from the beginning, not necessarily mail directly associated with those domains, & often not even that. Then too, it is quite obvious from the RBL evidenced file that 209.211.253* was blocked in its entirety from June 2, 2000 onward. My understanding is that (depending on how certain ISPs chose to use the input, of course), if an entire C-block is listed, then everything within that IP range can be blocked. There is not necessarily any distinguishing between mail-servers, websites, etc. within that IP range. Certainly certain ISPs can chose to block only mail, not http access, but the entire range can also be blocked.
Contemporary evidence that websites within 209.211.253* were indeed being blocked by early July at the latest may be found here:
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&safe=off &ic=1&th=6061bc8accbab793
In the first article in the thread one can see Steve Linford confirming that the sites were unavailable behind the RBL, & at least one other poster within the same thread added further confirmation that this was so. The traceroute provided proves the inaccessability of the C-block. Other articles were posted in the same month which further verify that indeed the RBL was blocking websites in that IP range, not just email. As I pointed out to Mr. Hayes in my reply, such articles would obviously not have been posted had the RBL only been blocking mail.
The RBL evidence file for 209.211.253* confirms that Mr. Hayes was told over the phone that the entire C-block would be added to the RBL by June 1 if the SAMCO sites were not removed. Nothing is said there that Mr. Hayes was told that only email would be blocked, & in any case it is obvious that no such guarantee could have been made, as many ISPs would simply chose to block the entire range, http & all.
Much of Mr. Hayes' explanation for the moving of Peacefire seems quite valid, but I am extremely disappointed that he would make a claim that would be so easily proven wrong. And unfortunately it is this particular aspect that lies at the heart of this issue: did Mr. Hayes know, before Peacefire was moved to 209.211.253*, that Peacefire the website would be blocked from the moment it entered that C-block?
There is no possible way he could not have known.
Witnesses to this most recent exchange include, as previously, Mr. Hayes, Mr. Linford, Mr. Finkelstein, Mr. Haselton, & a new addition, Jamie of Slashdot. In my reply sent to all these men, I advised Mr. Hayes to come clean, especially with Mr. Haselton, & admit that he did know www.peacefire.org would be blocked by the RBL before it was moved to 209.211.253* in August, & explain why he neglected to inform Mr. Haselton of the fact until November.
Rob
Taken from news.admin.net-abuse.email
Message-ID: spicy_crust-2505012218280001@hunt-pri7-a20.tx ucom.net
Subject: Joe Hayes of Media3 refuses to deny that Peacefire is a pawn
Date: Fri, 25 May 2001 22:18:27 -0500
Posted by Rob Mitchell
Let's look first at the history of how I got involved in this.
On 1-20-01, one Seth Finkelstein, a self-proclaimed "Peacefire member" (whatever this means), began a thread in this newsgroup titled, "Peacefire, MAPS, accusations spinning out of control." This was in the month following the media story in which it was noted that "innocent sites" on Media3 were being blocked by the RBL, because they happened to be placed in the same Class C block as certain Samco spamware sites. It soon emerged (from Bennett Haselton himself of Peacefire) that Peacefire had been moved from its previous IP address & put into this C-block in August 2000. It was quickly noted also that this C-Block had been in the RBL already for 2 months by this time. Mr. Finkelstein raised several issues, but what most interested me is the point raised by numerous regulars as to exactly why Media3 chose to move Peacefire into this particular C-block at this particular time. In response to this point, Mr. Finkelstein several times stated that it would be more appropriate to question Joe Hayes of Media3 about this issue, rather than attacking Mr. Haselton. I reproduce below all of Mr. Finkelstein's statements to this effect in this thread, as well as his statements that he was a "Peacefire member," & had "worked with" Mr. Haselton (the veracity or lack of which I assume Mr. Haselton himself can confirm), up to the point of my entry into the thread.
The entire thread may be seen by anyone with standard Internet access at this URL:
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&safe=off &ic=1&th=f891c74647a47099
1-20-01:
Mr. Finkelstein began the thread with this article, in which he (among many other things) said:
"This is all spinning out of control. Let me state my affiliations and biases up-front. I'm a Peacefire member, and a Peacefire Honorary Teenager. I've worked with Bennett Haselton, and think extremely highly of him. But I'm speaking for myself and only myself, Bennett didn't ask me or induce me to write this in any form. I didn't discuss it with him. This message is informed by my general background, but he had nothing to do with it."
1-21-01:
Message 15:
"Me, I think Joe Hayes of Media3 has a lot of explaining to do. Remember, I'm not Bennett, I'm not Peacefire's PR officer. I'm just a person who knows them both writing on my own to try to do something about a situation I see as spinning out of control."
Message 22:
"The person to badger is Joe Hayes of Media3, not Bennett Haselton of Peacefire. Don't expect Peacefire to go after Media3. Go after Joe Hayes for a what-did-you-know-and-when-did-you-know-it."
Message 33:
"I went over this as error#3. Hayes != Haselton. My opinion is that *Hayes* should be getting the grilling, not Haselton."
Message 54:
"I don't think Peacefire is being Media3's sockpuppets. However, I think the best thing to do is to put *Joe Hayes* on the hot-spot. The more Bennett Haselton gets attacked, the worse this'll be."
Message 60:
"I don't have the ability to grill him and make it *stick*. I can *try* to get people who do have that ability to go after Hayes instead of Haselton. But perhaps I'm wasting my time, in that people would rather flame me instead of grilling Hayes."
Message 70:
"I'm not obscure. I *like* Bennett. I respect him tremendously. I've worked with him. I'm a Peacefire member, and honored by it. I think this whole situation is spinning WAY out of control, and I was moved to try to do something about it."
1-22-01:
Message 199:
"I keep pointing out, I'm not in a position to grill Joe Hayes. I'm not on the right lists, I don't have the expertise to argue with him about hosting. I suspect there are people in this newsgroup who can do so. But it seems it's easier to berate me on and on for not having an answer that I cannot have."
Message 207:
"First, as to messages on my screen, it's got to be literally 6 to 1. And as I just wrote, *I* *don't* *know* the answers to any hosting questions, and I can't get them in any reasonable way, and I believe some people on this group could do a much better job than I could...I am not in position to have complete facts. I don't think anyone is, with the possible exception of Joe Hayes on the hosting issue."
In response to this very article, I wrote in Message 247:
"Then why are you still here? Give their addys to me & I'll give it a try."
Thus what I saw was a "Peacefire member," apparently putting out a call for help in this newsgroup for someone who had the "expertise" to "grill" Mr. Hayes about the reasons he chose to move Peacefire to a C-block which was already in the RBL, to do exactly this. And common sense suggested to me that if one Peacefire member felt this way, undoubtably others did too. Mr. Finkelstein just happened to be the only "Peacefire member" posting in this newsgroup at that time. I thought that I might possibly posess something at least approaching the "expertise" being asked for, as I have a few times, armed with extensive documentation, "grilled" certain entities, occasionally with visible results (Maxim, Ibill, & Altopia come immediately to mind).
As I recall, very shortly after I posted Message 247, Mr. Finkelstein himself emailed me, & gave me 2 addresses for Mr. Hayes. Thus I was indeed "asked" to be a liason with Mr. Hayes; I was asked by a member of Peacefire. I find it fascinating that Mr. Haselton himself, in a recent article on 5-24-01, made this statement which I made in my first email to Mr. Hayes on 1-23-01 out to be something which would probably cause Mr. Hayes to be "pissed off," & to be merely calculated by me to be "something someone would say just to get a faster response," when in fact it was one of his members, someone who had supposedly "worked with" him on issues which he felt important, who had requested me to contact Mr. Hayes. Also Mr. Haselton has seemed not to notice that I was in fact complying with one of his members' request that pressure to resolve this issue be put on Mr. Hayes, not on Mr. Haselton, & that one of my objectives was obviously to determine Mr. Haselton's innocence regarding the accusations that he & Mr. Hayes "conspired" to move Peacefire to an RBL'd C-block for the purpose of giving MAPS bad publicity.
Little thanks, it seems, do I get from Mr. Haselton for my attempt to clear his name.
In preparation for my first email to Mr. Hayes, I investigated the Media3 netblock in which Peacefire had been moved, 209.211.248.0 - 209.211.255.255. Of the 8 Class C blocks within this netspace I could find only 1 that was in the RBL, 209.211.253*, the block which contained Peacefire. My suspicions were immediately aroused, & I began to wonder why Peacefire had been moved into the 1 block out of these 8 which was blackholed. I started to check at random various individual IP addresses within the 7 blocks which were not blackholed, found a number of them which contained websites, but also a number of them which contained no websites, proving beyond all possible doubt that there were plenty of IP addresses on which Peacefire could have been placed which were not blackholed.
All this I noted in the email which I sent to the 2 addresses Mr. Finkelstein gave me, on the day following my offer to contact Mr. Hayes in Message 247, the complete text of which I posted publicly here a few days ago. I also made note of the fact that Media3 also owned 206.67.48.0 - 206.67.63.255, which amounts to 16 other C-blocks.
In his response, Mr. Hayes said that he would be happy to answer my questions, but pleaded constraints of time & many other responsibilities in asking me to be patient in understanding any delay in his future replies. He also said, however, that some of the facts I presented were "inaccurate," & that I apparently had a "slanted" disposition (this text also has been posted publicly here, along with full headers proving that the email was not "forged" or some other such nonsense). He did not, however, answer any of the questions I raised in my email. In my reply of the same day (which I have not yet posted although several people have now seen it, including Mr. Haselton himself who has posted parts of it here), I asked what was "inaccurate" about my statements. Did not Media3 own these blocks? Was it not true that only a small minority of them were in the RBL? And in response to the "slanted" inuendo, I stated that I had been asked to initiate this correspondence (which was indeed true), & made it clear to him that many people believed that Media3 had purposefully moved Peacefire to an RBL'd C-block, even though it had a far greater number of C-blocks which were not blackholed, for the purpose of causing MAPS embarrassing press. I also made it plain that I was quite prepared to listen with an open mind to any alternate explanation Mr. Hayes chose to give me, but I warned him that a failure to offer such an explanation might reasonably be interpreted as an indication that no such explanation existed.
Mr. Hayes did not take me up on this offer, as no further response ever arrived. Out of respect for him, I did not email him further at that time.
Much more recently, with Mr. Haselton once again going on & on about this matter, I decided that I would attempt one more time to resolve this business once & for all. This time I purposefully cc'd my email to Mr. Hayes to Mr. Haselton himself, & to Steve Linford & Spamjamr, so that I would ensure objectivity by having 2 witnesses on each side of this issue. I presented my 2 January emails again, & made the point that out of Media3's netspace which I have so far discovered, 63.74.120.0 - 63.74.123.255, 206.67.48.0 - 206.67.63.255, & 209.211.248.0 - 209.211.255.255, which amounts to a total of 28 Class C blocks, I have only been able to find 3 entire C-blocks which have ever been in the RBL, 206.67.53*, 206.67.55*, & 209.211.253*, & only a portion of a 4th, 206.67.58*. Thus this meant that something around 24 C-blocks had been available to which to move Peacefire which were not blackholed, yet Media3 chose to move the site to 1 of only 4 which was blackholed. I asked Mr. Hayes once again to provide an explanation as to why this was done. Twenty-four hours later no response had yet been received from him, which I noted in another email to the same 4 recipients on 5-24-01.
To this Mr. Hayes did indeed respond, but even though on 1-23-01 he had begun his email with, "I would be happy to answer what I can for you," this time his reply was far different in tone. In this email, in which he addressed to Mr. Haselton, but which according to the header was sent only to me, although he may very well have bcc'd it to others, he said:
"Bennett,
Would you mind forwarding my previous yo last email to him. I really don't have time to deal with this idiot."
My reply to this was considerably less polite than my previous emails had been, although in none of this correspondence had I ever even once lapsed into vulgarity. Without going into detail, I made it plain that I will never email Mr. Hayes again, unless circumstances change.
I will be happy to reproduce this entire correspondence publicly, full headers intact, should Mr. Haselton or Mr. Hayes challenge the accuracy of my summary in the slightest, & Steve Linford & Spamjamr will be able to verify that I am producing exactly what I sent, without the slightest alteration.
Here are the facts, which are currently to my knowledge undisputable. Media3 owns at least 28 Class C blocks, & only about 4 have at any time been blackholed by MAPS. The MAPS evidence file, when one does a lookup on Peacefire's IP address, shows that the file was created early in June 2000. Mr. Haselton has said in numerous public statemtents (horrendously easy to find on Google), that Peacefire was not moved into the RBL'd netblock until 2 months later, in August. Mr. Haselton has also made numerous statements in Usenet, & also in some articles to Spam-L which were quoted by other posters, that there were various reasons why Peacefire's IP address had to be changed in August. However, I have searched in vain for even a single article in which he has offered any explanation whatsoever as to why the decision was made to make this change into a blackholed C-block, when a far greater number of C-blocks were available which were not blackholed, nor has he ever reproduced any communication from Joe Hayes explaining why this was done. Nor have I been able to find a single example of anyone else producing such a communication, though I have found several articles in which others said they had tried to get this answer from Mr. Hayes, & had been met with silence; some of these can be seen in the January thread I have cited above.
If any of this is in error, I would be more than happy to be corrected by anyone presenting solid documentation to the contrary.
Thus even though a member of Peacefire specifically asked me to attempt to clarify this issue, & repeatedly voiced the concern that Mr. Hayes had an obligation to answer this question truthfully & without equivocation, & even though I attempted to convince Mr. Hayes to do this very thing in January & again this month, he has so far refused to offer any explanation whatsoever. And surprisingly Mr. Haselton, instead of supporting my efforts to find out the truth (which one would think he would be intensely interested in), & thus potentially clear him of any claims that he himself had "conspired" with Mr. Hayes to embarrass MAPS (which is an accusation I have never made, or even purposefully implied), excused Mr. Hayes' lack of response thusly:
"Do ISP managers have *nothing* else to do other than answer letters?"
I was quite willing to give Media3 the benefit of the doubt & listen with a open mind to any explanation as to why Peacefire was moved of all places, to an RBL'd block, when a much larger amount of unblocked Media3 netspace was available. However, with Mr. Hayes' rudeness toward me, & his refusal to offer even the most meager alternate explanation, I am now leaning toward the opinion that Media3 purposefully used Peacefire as a pawn in order to undermine the credibility of the RBL. This opinion is powerfully supported by a preponderance of evidence, as I have demonstrated here; the evidence supporting any alternative explanation is nonexistent, as the only entity which could provide such evidence, Media3, absolutely refuses to challenge this opinion in the slightest.
And I am guaranteed the right to express this opinion by our Constitution, without the slightest fear of reprisal. Media3 certainly cannot successfully "sue" me, since I can easily prove that I gave Mr. Hayes repeated chances to present to me evidence which demonstrated this opinion to be false, & that he failed over a period of 4 months to contradict this opinion.
Rob
"Jamie" has published here what is essentially a paraphrased press release from Bennett Haselton, head of Peacefire.org - and Haselton has openly admitted that his Web site was moved inot the middle of the RBLed IP space *months* after that space was RBLed. So it is obvious that (1) Peacefire is now openly operating to provide public relations for spammers, and (2) Jamie McCarthy is providing "news" articles to /. as a service to Peacefire - for which he is compensated in same way (being listed as a senior member, perhaps - publicity hounds are usually happy with that sort of payment).
I strongly suspect this comment will be moderated out of existence here, but it will appear in public news fora elsewhere.