In message <v04003a1eb2d797bd1778@[195.40.150.140]>,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>And Mr Guilmette replied (edited for brevity):
>
>>Nor do the MAPS RBL folks EVER put anyone onto the RBL without trying, re-
>>peatedly if necessary, to contact them ...
>>
>>The truth, in the case of Netnames.Com, seems to be that Mr. Pope was, either
>>knowingly or unknowingly, hosting one or more so-called ``spammer drop box''
>>E-mail accounts, and he was (apparently) refusing to take any action to
>>prevent the relevant spammer from making an illicit profit via that E-mail
>>drop-box ...
>
>Well, maybe I was hosting a 'spammer drop-box'. I certainly wouldn't know
>about it.
No. And you apparently made no effort to know. In short, you're not too
particular about _where_ exactly your company's revenue comes from, correct?
>I certainly wasn't contacted by anyone about it.
Wwll, I'm quite sure that *someone* at your place _was_ contacted about it.
Maybe it wasn't you personally. Perhaps it was <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
or else <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> or else <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> or
else one of the Internic, UKNIC, or RIPE registered contact addresses for
either one or more of these domains or else for your IP address block,
specifically, one or more of:
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Have you checked with all of the people to whom E-mail for _these_ addresses
is routed to find out if any of _them_ were contacted?
If your employees are failing to bring important matters to your attention,
that is hardly the fault of the MAPS RBL team.
And of course, if you have your postmaster address(es) aliased to /dev/null,
_that_ isn't really the fault of the MAPS RBL team either, now is it?
>I don't really
>see that it is a concern of anyone else what email is sent to my clients.
Classic spammer speak. ``We don't see anything wrong with making a profit
from hosting people who are actively engaged in destroying any usefulness
the Internet once had as a _bidirectional_ interpersonal communications
medium!''
>Note, it's not the outgoing mail that we're talking about, but a _return
>address_.
Call it was it was... A spammer drop-box where the spammer hoped to actually
make the profits necessary to support his/her continued spamming.
>Nothing illegal was occuring...
What a coincidence! All of the spammers seem to say that too.
Mr. Pope, this _may_ have eluded your understanding, but there _are_ a few
things in this world that are perfectly legal but nonethless unethical.
Or perhaps you _did_ understand that, but I gather that ethics is not high
on your agenda of business priorities... only avoiding arrest.
>... and one mans spam is another mans morning reading.
Yet another remarkable coincidence! All of the spammers say _that_ too!
``This isn't spam!'' ``This is an exciting new opportunity!'' ``Now you
too can make $500,000 a month selling beautiful hand-crafted Elvis flatware!''
Morning reading? Uh huh. Right.
This is just the kind of thing that makes me _lose_ my corn flakes... all
over the breakfast table.
> Do you try to stop the USP posting to Direct Mail users?
You bet your ass I do.
But that isn't even relevant to spam (aka `bulk unsolicited junk E-mail')
because in THAT CASE at least the suckers who try to send me _that_ crap
are paying for the privlege of doing so... and I am paying NOTHING to re-
ceive it. But in the case of junk *E-mail*, the spammers are using *my
enqipment* and also *my bandwith* that *I* bought and paid for to do *their*
advertising... and they are NOT reimbursing me for my costs in this case.
This is why many people have labeled spammers as theives.... because in point
of fact they are. And when _you_ aid and abet their activities, you become
an accomplice. Perhaps we can't get you put in jail for that (which is
rather a pity) but we _can_ and _should_ shun both you _and_ your packets...
at least until you take responsibility for _your_ role in this ongoing
theft of bandwith (and other resources) from untold hundreds of thousands
of people.
>>(b) he and his company were,
>>apparently, making a profit, indirectly, from the spammer and his/her
>>spamming in this case, specifically via the fees that they were charging
>>the spammer for hosting the relevant drop-box account.
>
>I find this quite amusing coming from someone whose business relies on the
>existence of so called Spammers. So who is making a profit from the
>Spammers?
You are, it would seem.
I have some commercial anti-spam software that I have been meaning to ship
for some time, but that hae been delayed while I have been working on other
*completely free* anti-spam weapons, in particulat the IMRSS project (see
http://www.imrss.org) and also the DSSL project (http://www.imrss.org/dssl/)
which is already up and running and providing *FREE* spam protection to
quite a lot of people.
>So why is this little advert on the end of every email you send
>out, Mr Guilmette:
>
>>-- Ron Guilmette, Roseville, California ---------- E-Scrub Technologies, Inc.
>>-- Deadbolt(tm) Personal E-Mail Filter demo: http://www.e-scrub.com/deadbolt/
>>-- Wpoison (web harvester poisoning) - demo: http://www.e-scrub.com/wpoison/
See above. My standard signature line points people at the URL for my
commercial software *and* also at the home page of my WPOISON program...
which is yet another COMPLETELY FREE anti-spam tool that I give away to
people FOR NOTHING. (It isn't even shareware or nagware or trialware.
It is just plain free for the taking and dozens of sites are already using
it to innoculate their web sites against spammer address harvesters.)
But why am I even sitting here justifing _my_ extensive anti-spam efforts?
That is irrelevant. The topic, you may recall, was _you_ and your apparent
lack of ethics in hosting spammer drop boxes.
>>In short, Mr. Pope doth protest too much. It now appears that his state-
>>ment that ``Someone used one of our client addresses as a _return_ address
>>on a piece of spam'' may not in fact have conveyed a complete picture of
>>what really happened.
>
>It is absolutely correct.
Oh pleeezzzzz! Let's not play these little games of semantics Mr. Pope.
It is completely clear that someone sent out spam with a Netnames return
address on it.
Now, do you or do you not have any solid evidence to believe that whoever
sent out the spam in question was anyone OTHER THAN the exact same person
who had rented a return address drop-box account from you? Do you even
have any _vague_ or _unsubstantiated_ reason to believe that?
I don't believe for one second that you do, because your OTHER statements
on this topic make it abundantly clear that you wouldn't give a damn even
if that were indeed the case. You just don't care. You believe that it
is your God-given right to host spammer drop-boxes, and the public interest
(and the future of the net) be damned.
>>>I felt we had no choice but to accept. However, I generally find
>>>fundamentalism of any stripe to be unpleasant, and I don't see that I
>>>should be forced to accept the arbitary standards of any private individual.
>>
>>Translation: I'm not happy that there is someone out there who is going to
>>act to prevent _me_ from getting _my_ piece of the spamming pie too.
>
>I have nothing to do with Spamming.
Correct. And fences have nothing to do with theft either.
>You, on the other hand, have a company that earns money from it.
See above. The truth be told, I have been so busy trying to eradicate this
pestilence from the net that I have *not* made so much as one thin dime from
it to date.
But again, let's not change the subject. The subject, as you may recall,
was you, your company, your apparent lack of ethics, and the events which
caused you to be listed on the MAPS RBL... a listing which is appearing more
and more well-justified the more you elaborate on your ``it isn't illegal''
approach to business ethics.
>Basically, Mr Guilmette, you are the sort of plonker that gives the
>Internet a bad name.
One of us certainly is. We disagree about which one of us that is.
>I have over thirty thousand happy customers...
And how many of those are spammers?
>I have been working with the Internet commercially for ten years. I have been
>there and done that.
Yes, you have obviously been around long enough to learn the ropes, _and_
how to make a profit from spamming without actually doing any of it yourself.
If this is the point you were trying to make, consider it made.
>Vixie's RBL is an attempt to impose arbitary standards on the Internet by
>force and it should be resisted.
The standards which the RBL promulgates are NOT by any stretch of the imagi-
nation ``arbitrary''. They are in fact the SHARED and COMMON *minimal*
standards of good conduct and behavior on the net that are shared by all
of the companies, organizations, and individuals who subscribe to it.
You however, for reasons that are clear and obvious, would greatly perfer
the standards of conduct on the net to be basically ``anything a businessman
like me can get away with''.
Well, sorry Mr. Pope. But some of us, at least, expect a little bit more,
in particular, just a little bit of care and concern for the Internet as
a whole, and for its future as a viable communications medium (rather than
its alternative future, i.e. as one vast sleezy billboard of interest to
no one).
-- Ron Guilmette, Roseville, California ---------- E-Scrub Technologies, Inc.
-- Deadbolt(tm) Personal E-Mail Filter demo: http://www.e-scrub.com/deadbolt/
-- Wpoison (web harvester poisoning) - demo: http://www.e-scrub.com/wpoison/
"Ping can be used offensively, and it's shipped with every windows CD"
-- Steve Atkins
