On 04/05/04 13:35 -0700, Hallam-Baker, Phillip wrote:
<snip>
The point about 'collateral damage' is not that it serves any
strategic purpose, it does not, all it does is to feed the egos
of the people who engage in it. It fails in the spam context
for the same reason that it failled in the military context.
Collateral damage forces parties who are natural allies to treat
you as the enemy.
Collateral damage is a bad choice of terms. DNSBLs are *passive*
systems. Choosing to block mail from any system based on a random
criterion is the choice of the administrator of the blocking system.
Paul Vixie used the term, and he used it in the context of using
the MAPS blacklist to coerce others into complying with his idea
of acceptable use policies - ideas that go far beyond what is
currently considered spam.
Rather than trying to stop the spammer, people using the escalated
blocks are trying to stop the spam supporting ISP from sending them
email. Rather than allowing the ISP to keep the spammers money as well
as that of the legitimate users, the people using escalated
listings are
forcing a choice of what customers the ISP wishes to keep.
That is an aggressive action, not a passive one.
In international law a blockade is sufficient cause for war.
There is a utility in certain very narrowly tailored blacklists.
But they should never attempt to list any address for any other
reason than it is a source of spam.
What happens when the ISP in question refuses to remove the spammer(s)
and you keep getting hit by their traffic?
If I know the IP address of the spammer and I am successfully blocking
their messages why should I care?
Think of it as a trade embargo, and it makes a lot more sense.
Again, trade embargos are the cause of a large number of wars. The
Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was retaliation for a blockade.
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