From: John Glube
Sent: Tuesday, August 17, 2004 6:43 PM
Seth,
You and I have some fundamental disagreements on the bona
fides of people.
Just follow the money. The rest is a bunch of hot air and excuses.
Money rarely lies, people often do.
I simply point out SpamCop, is owned by IronPort. IronPort
also owns Bonded Sender. This is a sender paid scheme.
SpamCop is the block list behind Bonded Sender.
Julian's credibility was severely damaged by his sale of SpamCop, which
was widely discussed at the time of sale. So far he has done very well,
but only time will tell. Since IronPort makes boxes that are very
popular with bulk mailers, his position is potentially compromising. I
wish him the very best for all he has contributed. Eventually, he will
likely end up in a situation where he either has to do something very
unethical or quit. Either way, we loose. Hopefully, IronPort will be a
good "patron" and that time will be far in the future.
Another example of a similar situation is Robert Zimmerman, the creator
of PGP. His fledgling company was bought by McAfee Associates, which
was a powerhouse marketing outfit with horribly engineered, barely
functioning products. They promised him an independent hand in product
development and pledged to keep a fully featured PGP in the public
domain. A year or so later, Zimmerman quit, then McAfee liquidated the
product line and nearly killed PGP in the process. Were it not for a
dedicated group of individuals who developed a creative way to get the
source code past the severe U.S. export restrictions of the day so it
could be worked on by the international open source community, we
probably would not have PGP at all today. I could care less whether
McAfee turned a profit or a loss on the transaction, but I do care a
great deal that we all nearly lost a technology as important as PGP.
Spamhaus another block list is behind .Mail a sender pay
proposal for accreditation now before ICANN.
So presumably all the folks who are involved in these
proposals are in the pay of senders.
Habeas is a sender paid scheme. Presumably that is just
another ploy to get people's money.
More spam is sent with Habeas headers than ham. It doesn't work as
intended, but you are free to give them your money if you want to.
If your going to slap around ISIPP, and the people involved
with that organization, because it is sender paid, then
best slap around SpamCop, SpamHaus and all the support
SpamHaus has put together for its .Mail proposal.
To the extent that SpamHaus gets involved with a sender-financed
operation, they compromise their reputation as a spam-tracking service.
It's their choice.
Absolutely no difference.
Based on your criteria, SpamCop has already sold out and
Spamhaus is about to sell out.
You imply that I am a "carpet bagger." Thanks bud.
I mean really, lovely rhetoric, but it solves little.
Why? Meng postulated on a proposal. I put forward an
avenue.
Is that what this flame is all about? Meng proposed an idea. Meng
proposes lots of ideas, most of them good. Like most prolific thinkers,
some of the ideas work out, some don't. I could be wrong, but I
wouldn't bet my money on this one. I don't perceive the list beating a
path to your door for this service, so I suspect I'm not the only
skeptic here.
Your response? You essentially said the FTC would not do
anything with reported violations and you accuse the NGO I
suggested of being in the pay of senders, so it won't work.
The FTC is not putting forth any credible enforcement effort. Their
prosecution record is proof. The NGO you pointed to is in the pay of
senders. Their schedule of fees tells the story. Those are facts.
Has anyone bothered to pick up the phone and get in touch
with the FTC and see if an arrangement could be worked out?
Naw. That might put rest to the theory that the FTC are
simply a bunch of fatheads who are useless.
Like numerous other U.S. citizens, I have tried very hard to work with
the FTC, FCC and my State government through my Congressman and Senators
for years with no effect. These agencies have little or no will to
prosecute spammers, despite lots of PR to the contrary. The FTC are far
from a bunch of useless fatheads. I never implied that and you would do
well to limit that kind of language to describing your own government.
We can speculate forever about the reasons for the enforcement failure,
but the lack of arrests is the bottom line. They have had years to act,
millions of complaints, hundreds of millions of spam samples sent to
their site on their request and virtually no visible legal activity.
Here in the U.S., we arrest drug users, car thieves and purse snatchers
by the hundreds of thousands. We have had to invest billions of dollars
over the last ten years to build new jails to hold all those convicted,
and often have to let them go before their scheduled release dates due
to lack of space. During this entire period, where several million
convictions for small crimes were accomplished, the total number of
spammers prosecuted was in the neighborhood of one hundred. Do you
still contend that the U.S. Federal government is interested in
prosecuting spammers? If so, I've got a bridge I'd like you to look at.
As to the NGO, even though all the board members of the NGO
have their own jobs and are all unpaid volunteers, because
they are associated with an organization which you perceive
to be in the pay of senders this taints them.
Yes, taking money from someone implies a relationship. I didn't invent
that concept. Though I'm no lawyer, I believe there are a lot of laws
are based on that idea. You are shooting the messenger.
But, hey let's not let the facts get in the way of
perception.
Like the man said, you can't please all of the folks all of
the time.
Besides, if you don't wish to access these or any other
service you are entirely free to do so.
If I simply thought that a service wasn't worth buying, I wouldn't waste
my time posting. There is an important issue for the community on the
table. The issue is whether we intend to allow reputation services that
are paid for by senders to become a virtual necessity to get mail
reliably delivered. That would be an extremely bad thing to happen to
email, unless you are a bulk mailer with deep pockets. This is
something that we should fight strenuously.
--
Seth Goodman