From: Keith Moore <moore(_at_)cs(_dot_)utk(_dot_)edu>
...
It's never clear to me what Keith Moore means by "RBL" when he repeats
that claim. Those three letters are a registered service mark for a
product that historically has been run so conservatively that claims
that should not be used to reject mail sound silly.
Yes, "RBL" did indeed reject valid mail,
I never heard of any examples of mail considered valid by its targets
that was rejected as the result of RBL listings. There was plenty of
screaming and whining by advertisers would be about their supposed
free speech rights.
Could you point to significant amounts of real mail, as opposed to
theoretical examples, that might reasonably have consider legitimate
by its targets but that was rejected as the result of a MAPS RBL
listing? Note that the validity of mail is determined not its senders
but by its targets.
because it misled site
administrators into thinking that mailers that failed its test were
inherently able to be exploited into relaying significant amounts of
spam. So sites that trusted RBL's misrepresentation blocked valid mail
from sites that rate-limited relayed mail (including the site I ran at
one time) even when that rate-limiting was an effective spam block.
That makes no sense to me. It sounds like a confounding of other
blacklists with MAPS's RBL. The RBL is (was?) based on spam received
instead of open relays inferred by probing. Or perhaps it is a statement
that you were "misled ... into thinking" that some "mailer" failed
some test. Or is it at statement that bulk mail you sent was rejected
by its targets?
In any case, what standing do you have to comment on what mail is
rejected by other peoples SMTP servers? I think that as long as
those using blacklists get what they ask for, no outsiders have any
business commenting, and particularly not would be senders of
unsolicited bulk mail.
I really have no sympathy for net vigilanties who insist on trying to
enforce their own narrow-minded definitions for how the net should work,
and who disrupt others' service in the process.
Do you have any idea how ironic that statement is? Can you imagine
that the saying "their network; their rules" might apply to all of us?
I happen to agree with some of your statements about NAT, but I hope
I'm sane enough to not act on them, because "trying to enforce [that]
narrow-minded [definition] for how the net should work [would] disrupt
others' service in the process."
By the way, do you also agree with the other individual who repeated
the familiar (in spammy circles) kooky wishful thinking that running
a DNS blacklist somehow violates U.S. Federal law?
Vernon Schryver vjs(_at_)rhyolite(_dot_)com