From: ietf(_at_)flatsurface(_dot_)com (Mike S)
...
Instead of paying the extra cost to hire an ISP that cares
enough to not have spamming customers, people complain about the evils
of blacklists.
...
I can't do so because my IP address is on a blacklist. I have
cable modem, but the world thinks I'm a dial-up. For that reason
alone, having nothing whatsoever to do with spam, I'm forced to
give up privacy and control of my communications.
Mr. Sauve could rent an IP address that is not on dial-up or dynamic
blacklists and run his systems there. A remote co-lo or hosting service
would cost more than the $30/month or whatever slum rate he is paying
for cable modem service. Or he could convince his correspondents to
whitelist his IP address or stop using the relevant blacklists. Either
he has not tried that, his correspondents also pay slum rates for slum
service, or they don't want enough to hear from him to increase their
spam loads.
Perhaps I should ask if Mr. Sauve is violating the terms of service
of his ISP. What does Charter say about "servers"? Did Charter
give Mr. Sauve's IP address to the blacklists that bother him?
Or perhaps he has already rented an IP address that is not dynamic.
But if he has done that, where is his complaint? Is it just
Interveloce/GO International's rates?
"Anti-spam" initiatives that are based on such blacklists are
quite simply the failed results of irrational, fascist thought.
In that he is calling his correspondents irrational fascists, because
it is they who have chosen to reject his mail.
Never mind that facism has something to do with "centralized autocratic
government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social
regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition" and that seems
like the opposite of the anarchy of blacklists.
Also ignore the fact that a taxi or pizza delivery service refusing
to go to dangerous parts of town is no more irrational than refusing
mail from the IP address neighborhoods that are major sources of spam.
Any individual is unlikely to be a spammer or mugger, but the statistical
risk/reward ratio is too high. By all accounts, the odds that the the
next SYN to your port 25 from a "dynamic" IP address involve spam are
very high.
Regardless of your exact definition of spam, all reasonable ones
I've heard have one thing in common - it's based on CONTENT, not
IP address. Blacklists couldn't care less about content
That's nonsense. Blacklists do care about content in a statistical
sense. If blacklists don't care about content, then neither do so
called Bayseian filters. I've often said that lists like the DUL bug
me, but not because they are useless. Lists like the DUL catch a
lot of spam and little legitimate mail.
- legitimate
email or spam, out it goes, to the detriment of communications,
which is the Internet's raison d'etre. I take that back, it used
to be that way. Now the Internet is meant to make big corporations
lots of money.
I've been around for a few years (TIP-25 (DOCB) in 1972), but I don't
recall that Communication in the sense Mr. Sauve means was ever the
Internet's raison d'etre. 15 years ago, would be communalists were
bemoaning the commercialization of the net and interference with
capital-C-Communication, by which they meant they deserved free
bandwidth. Their successors complain about the free ride they never
got. Back in Mr. Sauve's golden era, his perfect unfiltered IP bandwdith
was either not available to small or commercial outfits like Alientech
LLC or it would have cost 2000% more (>$5000/year) for 10% as many
bits/sec (56K).
Blacklists also, quite clearly, don't work to eliminate spam.
No honest person who actually looks at spam agrees with that.
Good blacklists (e.g. CRL) are better than 70% effective with
false negative rates that large, very conservative corportations
can tolerate.
Vernon Schryver vjs(_at_)rhyolite(_dot_)com