[IP] more on more on ICANN ordered by Illinois court to suspend spamhaus.org
Begin forwarded message:
From: Dave Crocker <dcrocker@xxxxxxxx>
Date: October 11, 2006 11:56:43 AM EDT
To: David Farber <dave@xxxxxxxxxx>, ip@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Cc: "Prof. Jonathan I. Ezor" <jezor@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [IP] more on ICANN ordered by Illinois court to suspend
spamhaus.org
David Farber wrote:
From: "Prof. Jonathan I. Ezor" <jezor@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
I'm writing an article on this very subject which I will presenting
in Denmark in December (http://www.iblt.eu), so I've been following
this case with some interest. I'm not surprised by the ruling,
nor by Spamhaus' recalcitrance--I have seen first hand how Spamhaus
will threaten to block list an entire hosting company in order to
get the host to shut down a Web site Spamhaus has decided is a
spammer, and also received caustic e-mail from Spamhaus when I
wrote on behalf of a wrongly blocklisted client.
Improper inclusion in filters and block lists is becoming a huge
problem for legitimate communicators...
Dave,
What is most unfortunate about Prof. Ezor's note is that he correctly
identifies a significant concern but incorrectly asserts that Spamhaus
is guilty of it.
Those of us signing this response are active in anti-spam efforts. None
of us has direct or indirect involvement with any aspect of Spamhaus
operation, although some of us use one or more of the Spamhaus published
lists and are quite familiar with its operation. We feel that Prof.
Ezor's note warrants a community response, rather than merely getting
one from Spamhaus.
The world of spam and anti-spam engenders confusion and emotion, exactly
as one might expect from something involving open communication and
abuses of it. That is why it is so important to distinguish between
participants who operate responsibly and those who do not.
It is certainly true that some anti-spam lists are operated in a
cavalier manner, even serving as outlets for personal vendettas.
Spamhaus is not one of these. Spamhaus has a well-earned reputation in
the industry for acting responsibly, effectively and fairly.
Its criteria for being listed are clear and reasonable. Its mechanisms
for remedying being listed also are reasonable. (See
<http://www.spamhaus.org/>.) Not perfect, but reasonable. Indeed there
is a very strong consensus among the anti-spam community that Spamhaus
provides an essential infrastructure capability, needed for sustaining a
viable Internet mail service.
It is estimated that use of Spamhaus lists provides an extremely
efficient and inexpensive pre-filter of incoming mail, that detects
perhaps 75% of received spam. The remainder must be subjected to
computationally-costly and error-prone heuristic analysis. Remove the
benefits of having Spamhaus lists, and hosts receiving mail will
quadruple their processing overhead, along with significantly increasing
the number of false positives -- legitimatemail that is incorrectly
refused delivery.
It is worth considering Prof. Ezor's complaint in light of this
background. He characterizes Spamhaus as acting with threats and caustic
language, and of wholesale blockage of neighboring IP addresses that
have committed no offense.
We did some research on Prof. Ezor's case. Spamhaus blocked exactly one
host IP Address. Not a set, as he claims. The host in question had
been the source of spam for some weeks, prior to being added to a
Spamhaus list.
Here is the entire text of the response that Spamhaus sent, after
receiving Prof. Ezor's claim that his client was improperly listed:
------------------------------------------------------------
From: linford@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: Urgent Letter Regarding Improper SBL Listing
Date: 2 June 2004 09:37:27 GMT+02:00
To: jonathan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Hello,
When your client ceases employing spamming as a marketing method, your
client will be removed from our database, until then your client will
remain listed, it really is that simple. Legal threats serve only to
inform us that rather than stop the spamming, the entity hopes to
attempt to scare us into allowing him to continue with the spamming.
National Collector's Mint engaged the services of not just one, but
two extremely well known professional spammers listed in our Register
of Known Spam Operations (ROKSO) database: Magnum Enterprises and John
Grandinetti ("britmilla.com") to market their products. Spamhaus lists
not only sources of spam, but also resources of those who directly
profit by it.
If National Collector's Mint doesn't like the reputation it is making
for itself of being a purveyor of spam, and the consequences of
spamming (being listed in the SBL), may I suggest you direct your
legal effort at those responsible for your clients situation: the
professional spammers your client is hiring and whomever in your
client's organization hired them to spam for your client.
Regards,
Steve Linford
The Spamhaus Project
http://www.spamhaus.org
------------------------------------------------------------
Even from the perspective of someone attempting to improve their
negotiating leverage, we do not see any reasonable way to characterize
Spamhaus' note as containing threats or caustic language.
What we do see is that Prof. Ezor's note makes it that much more
difficult to conduct reasoned public discussion of this very difficult
topic.
At the least, we hope that his upcoming presentation in Denmark is
written with more care, accuracy and balance than his note to the IP
list.
Sincerely,
Dave Crocker
Principal
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net
Neil Schwartzman
Chair
on behalf of the Board of Directors
CAUCE Canada: The Canadian Coalition Against
Unsolicited Commercial Email
http://cauce.ca/node/1
James Lick
Chair, on behalf of APCAUCE
APCAUCE
wiki.apcauce.org
Scott Hazen Mueller
Chairman and Founder, on behalf of the Board
CAUCE (US)
www.cauce.org
Director and Founder
International Coalition Against Unsolicited
Commercial E-mail (iCAUCE)
www.international.cauce.org
Rick Wesson
CEO
Support Intelligence, LLC
support-intelligence.com
CEO
Alice's Registry, Inc.
ar.com
Justin Mason
PMC Member
Apache SpamAssassin project
spamassassin.apache.org
Justin Greene
President/CEO
The Spamex Disposable Email Address Service
www.spamex.com
Larry E. Smith
Owner/Partner
Electronic Communication Systems
www.ecsis.net
J. William Campbell, Jr.
Manager
Celestial Software, LLC
www.celestial.com
Huey Callison
Software designer and anti-spam activist
huey.callison@xxxxxxxxx
Bob O'Brien
Software Craftsman
whitelist.com
Matt Sergeant
Co-Author
Draft DNSBL Best Practices (IETF ASRG)
Member of the Board
CAUCE Canada
Chris Lewis
Anti-spam infrastructure architect
Nortel
Senior Technical Advisor
MAAWG
Michael "der Mouse" Parker
Vice-Chair and Secretary to the Board
The Canadian Coalition Against
Unsolicited Commercial Email
http://www.cauce.ca/
Peter Seebach
President
Plethora Internet
http://www.plethora.net/
Mickey Chandler
President/CEO
Whizardries, Inc.
www.whizardries.com
Paul Myers
Publisher
TalkBiz News
www.talkbiznews.com
John Glube
Owner
Glube's - Business Services
www.trusted-email-sender.com
Victor Duchovni
Postfix developer
http://www.postfix.org
Suresh Ramasubramanian
Coordinator
APCAUCE
wiki.apcauce.org
Manager, Antispam Operations,
Outblaze Ltd
http://www.hserus.net
Gadi Evron
Security Evangelist
Beyond Security
Daniel Senie
President/Founder
Amaranth Networks Inc.
amaranth.net
Michael A. Atkinson
Email Security Consultant
mike.atkinson@xxxxxxxxx
John Levine
Member (North America)
ICANN At Large Advisory Committee
Edward Falk
The Spam Diaries
thespamdiaries.blogspot.com
Don M. Blumenthal
Former Internet Lab Director
US Federal Trade Commission
Gerard Alan Latham
walcots@xxxxxxxxx
Steven Champeon
CTO
hesketh.com/inc.
Founder
enemieslist.com
Clifton Royston
Antispam software developer
President
I and I Computing
www.iandicomputing.com
John Fitch
Professor of Software Engineering
University of Bath, UK
people.bath.ac.uk/masjpf
Director
Codemist Ltd
www.codemist.co.uk
Peter Salanki
Network Architect
Bahnhof AB
www.bahnhof.net
Jonas Birgersson
CEO Labs2 Group
www.labs2.com
Amar Andersson
Senior Network Engineer
TeliaSonera AB
www.teliasonera.com
Joe Greco
sol.net Network Services
http://www.sol.net
Kelsey Cummings
System Architect
Sonic.net, Inc.
corp.sonic.net
Mark Mallett
President
MV Communications, Inc.
www.mv.com
Russell Nelson
President
Crynwr Software
webmaster@xxxxxxxxx
Gerard Alan Latham
Moderator
sci.archaeology.moderated
Patrick W. Gilmore
Network Architect
patrick@xxxxxxxxx
Sean Eric Fagan
Former MAPS employee
sef@xxxxxxxxxxx
Robert H. Braver
Owner
oklahoma-isp.net
www.oklahoma-isp.net
Rik van Riel
Linux kernel developer
http://surriel.com/
Mike Paulsen
Concerned end-user
mike.paulsen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Ray Everett-Church, Esq.
Principal
PrivacyClue LLC
www.privacyclue.com
Co-Author
Fighting Spam for Dummies
Nick Nicholas
In the Nick of Time IT Consulting
nicknicholas.net
Tony Finch
Email systems specialist
University of Cambridge
dotat.at
David Wright
ISP Development Services, UK
www.dww.org.uk
Richard Welty
Owner,
Averill Park Networking
www.averillpark.net
Webmaster
Spamvertized
www.spamvertized.org/
Jake Richter
Managing Director
NetTech, N.V.
nettech.an
Matthew Vernhout
Concerned end-user
www.vernhout.net
--
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net
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