From: John Glube
Sent: Tuesday, August 17, 2004 1:27 AM
From: Seth Goodman
Sent: August 16, 2004 7:18 AM
From: John Glube
Sent: Monday, August 16, 2004 1:55 AM
Seth,
<snip>
At least one NGO has been set up which can facilitate this
process:
International Council for Internet Communications
http://www.isipp.com/icic-news.php
This appears to be a sender organization.
You may want to check the list of names of those involved
on the Committee. To categorize the group of individuals as
having a pre-conceived bias in favour of senders or
receivers would be a mistake.
"The road to hell is paved with good intentions."
the following is from http://www.isipp.com/iadb.php
C. FEES ASSOCIATED WITH LISTING IN IADB
Individuals: $5.00 per month
Newsletter Publishers: $10.00 per month
Non-Bulk Corporate Mailers: $50.00 per month
Bulk Corporate Mailers
(Sends their own bulk mail) $100.00 per month
Email Marketing and Campaign Providers,
(Sends email on behalf of customers)
fewer than 30 customers:
$200.00 per month
Email Marketing and Campaign Providers,
(Sends email on behalf of customers)
30 or more customers:
$300.00 per month
Non-Refundable Application Fee for
Non-Vouched Listing:
Includes all background, reference, and other checks
$500.00
Follow the money. I'm sorry, John, the fee structure belies any good
intentions any of the board members may have had. This is yet another
sender-pays scheme. Since it's financed by senders, it is not
trustworthy. Follow the money.
Compare that to the fees that some of the best reputation services
charge:
SpamHaus: $0
SpamCop: $0
DSBL: $0
Reynolds: $0
SORBS: $0
These lists all cost money to set up and operate, yet they don't try to
ransom senders (or recipients) for the right to "a good email
reputation". Want to know why? All of them started as volunteer
efforts on behalf of recipients. Several of them have transitioned to a
business model, but they still earn their revenues from large recipient
services and thus will put their interests above those of spammers. The
bulk emailers out there are probably already crying, "but they charge a
de-listing fee and I never even sent out any spam". As to the latter,
let's just ignore that BS or laugh at it. They didn't get listed for
sending a birthday card to their grandmother. Despite what the DMA
would have you believe, blacklist maintainers are not anti-capitalist
zealots on a rampage to destroy legitimate, profit-making businesses.
Why on earth would they bother? Most of them are not businesses and the
volunteers have full-time day jobs. Going after spammers is certainly
not going to hurt capitalism. They _are_ on a rampage to stop spamming,
and if you are a spammer, they will make you hurt. If a spammer
complains, it's best to just ignore it, like they ignore it when we
complain of their abuse. The only objection I have to the de-listing
fee that some lists charge is that it isn't high enough to deter future
malicious activity.
While it is natural that some people view the spam crisis as a business
opportunity, which it certainly is, unfortunately some people would like
to make purchase of their services a _requirement_ for reliable email
delivery, much as owning an MS operating system is a requirement to
interoperate with a large number of other businesses. That is a
manipulation that we simply cannot allow to happen. We are not lemmings
and we do not have to support any company that attempts to "carpetbag"
in this manner. This reputation system model suits the needs of bulk
senders far better than anyone else. I hope the SPF community soundly
rejects this cynical business concept.
SPF is open-source and free. It works for businesses large and small as
well as individuals without charging senders any fee. Any reputation
system that breaks that model deserves to be ignored by the responsible
email community.
--
Seth Goodman