Re: Lobby mail.com
Nathan J. Mehl writes: I'm afraid that the message sent by the abuse staff at Mail.Com to Mr. Bell was somewhat unclear. Um, no, it was *completely* unclear. The first two sentences were factual. From there it turned into utter drivel. Blocking him was perfectly reasonable, and as you've noted, you've unblocked him, apologized, and taken steps to ensure that it doesn't happen again. On the other hand, sending him and this mailing list on a wild goose chase, tracking down the rumor *you* generated with your falsehood about failing relay tests, was completely unacceptable. You really owe Justin and maybe us a second, different, apology. I suggest that this is what it should have said (feel free to rip off this verbiage and nounage): On Thu Jul 15, we received a high volume of traffic from 206.246.140.165 (iq-ss5.iquest.net). Specifically, we got 472 messages in an hour. We're afraid that that much traffic might have been a spam attack, so we blocked you for a period of time. You might want to check http://maps.vix.com/tsi/new-rlytest.cgi?ADDR=iq-ss5.iquest.net to see if your machine is an open relay. If it is, you're going to continue tripping our high-volume trigger, because the spammers aren't going to go away. If it's not an open relay and you have good reason to send that much mail, please contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] and we can set you up in our whitelist. -- -russ nelson [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://russnelson.com Crynwr sells support for free software | PGPok | Government schools are so 521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315 268 1925 voice | bad that any rank amateur Potsdam, NY 13676-3213 | +1 315 268 9201 FAX | can outdo them. Homeschool!
Re: Lobby mail.com
On Thu, 2 Sep 1999, Nathan J. Mehl wrote: (...) Spammers can change their names, change their addresses, alter the length and content of their mail, forge their headers, hide behind proxies, register their assets in the Carribean, get sex changes and crouch down behind shubberies, but there is one fingerprint they can never, ever change: in order to have a prayer of making a profit, they have to send out a lot of mail, really quickly. If I see a host that I do not recognize appear out of the blue and start pumping hundreds or thousands of messages an hour into my mail server, the odds are pretty on that it's a spammer. If it's not, I'm not averse to apologizing later on. (...) Is Nathan trying to explain that qmail sends mail so fast that it can't be natural ? ;-)
Re: Lobby mail.com
Actually I'm subscribed to [EMAIL PROTECTED] to gain some wisdom around qmail and it's solution. I think the subject "Re: Lobby mail.com" and it's legal issues is some kind of boring now. (Time to stop or move to another list for legal issues?) What I really would like, is someone telling me how to make qmail check the RCPT TO: against the actual users on my machine. (PLEASE.. ;) --- IDG New Media Einar Bordewich System Manager Phone: +47 2205 3034 E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: Lobby mail.com
YES! Please move this flame war off line! Thanks. Einar Bordewich wrote: Actually I'm subscribed to [EMAIL PROTECTED] to gain some wisdom around qmail and it's solution. I think the subject "Re: Lobby mail.com" and it's legal issues is some kind of boring now. (Time to stop or move to another list for legal issues?) What I really would like, is someone telling me how to make qmail check the RCPT TO: against the actual users on my machine. (PLEASE.. ;) --- IDG New Media Einar Bordewich System Manager Phone: +47 2205 3034 E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- -- +---+ + Thomas M. Sasala, Electrical Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED] + + MRJ Technology Solutionshttp://www.mrj.com + + 10461 White Granite Drive, Suite 102(W)(703)277-1714 + + Oakton, VA 22124 (F)(703)277-1702 + +---+
Re: Lobby mail.com
Cris Daniluk writes: This may sound rude, but it's not intended to be--what country do you live in? I think you're either under a different set of laws, or have a fundamental misunderstanding of them. My understanding of laws comes from established precedents - AOL versus Cyberpromo, and Prodigy versus Cyberpromo, which states that system administrators have a fundamental right to block any source of mail that they see fit. Even though AOL does not have explicit clauses in their TOS/AUP giving them the right to block mail, the judge has ruled that they have an implied right to do so, based upon the fact that this is private property, and existing principles applicable to private property are in force. Your claims are very inaccurate. VERY inaccurate. The only reason I bring this to the list is that there may be other people in the same situation as mail.com out there and I think they may be reading everything that comes through here as fact. It is illegal for them to block out legitimate email from customers when they agree to provide the mail to customers. No, it's not illegal for them to do anything just because you think it's illegal. It is only illegal if it violates an existing law, which is what "illegal" means. Until you came come up with a statute which prohibits what mail.com did, you're just engaging in wishful thinking. You have also completely ignored my pointer to mail.com's Terms Of Service/Acceptable Usage Policy which clearly gives mail.com to arbitrarily block incoming mail. Your blather about them agreeing to this and that is just that, blather, since they did not agree to anything you think that they agreed to, and, in fact, they agreed to just the opposite. They can make you sign contracts that say this is not so, but those contracts can have their legality tried in court. All ISPs and Courts will not void existing contracts just because you think they should. The only way contracts can be voided would be if they violate an existing law. You're welcome to cite a statute that prohibits private property owners from configuring their equipment in whatever way they see fit. [ more gruborisms deleted ] -- Sam
Re: Lobby mail.com
Cris Daniluk writes: There are no current court cases. There is, however, strong legal basis. I sell content to a customer which I deliver via email. You cut my route to my customer who has an email account with you. That prevents us from fulfilling our end of the deal between us and our customer. If it is within my legal right to cut the route, which it is, since the route lies on my private property, using private equipment that I paid for, than that's just too bad. I am under no legal obligations to conduct my business in a way that does not conflict with yours. They paid us money, we didn't deliver. Frankly, I do not care for your contractual obligations with your customer. It is none of my concern. Until several key provisions of the Bill of Rights are voided, I have every legal right to configure my equipment in whatever way I see fit, unless it is a violation of existing law to do so. Whatever impact it has on your business does not interest me very much. If you put yourself in a situation where you depend on other entities that have no legal obligations to you in order for you to conduct your business, you have nobody but yourself to blame for your poor business choices. If you will all remember, Network Solutions' lawyers were in a similar situation when they were threatened with a blacklist for their high volume of spam. They made this very same argument. That never saw a court room, but then again they aren't blacklisted are they? They weren't blacklisted because they took steps to stop spamming. The real question is, "are you a lawyer?" If you're not, then you really have no business speaking about the law in any forum. Are you? Is Sam? Are any of us? No. Good, so stop inventing laws that do not exist. and no, Sam, legal fees would not be awarded. If you'll do your homework, legal fees are rarely awarded except in exceptionally erroneous claims. My A legal claim based on laws that do not exist would probably qualify as "exceptionally erroneous". -- Sam
Re: Lobby mail.com
Einar Bordewich writes: Actually I'm subscribed to [EMAIL PROTECTED] to gain some wisdom around qmail and it's solution. I think the subject "Re: Lobby mail.com" and it's legal issues is some kind of boring now. (Time to stop or move to another list for legal issues?) What I really would like, is someone telling me how to make qmail check the RCPT TO: against the actual users on my machine. (PLEASE.. ;) It takes about 50 lines of C code to do so. I know, because I've done it. It's not easy. Unless you're comfortable with hacking the guts of qmail-smtpd.c, forget about this ever happening. -- Sam
Re: Lobby mail.com
A better question: how can anybody NOT? If you want to run a mail SERVICE then you need to provide the ability to send and recieve mail to/from anyone anywhere. Sure, if you can catch a spammer then block it. But by your OWN ADMISSION flitering the bad guy rarely works. They just change who/how they sent it and you are back at square one. (See below) Spammers can change their names, change their addresses, alter the length and content of their mail, forge their headers, hide behind proxies, register their assets in the Carribean, get sex changes and crouch down behind shubberies, but there is one fingerprint they can never, ever change: in order to have a prayer of making a profit, they have to send out a lot of mail, really quickly. I have a priets with a cc'ed list of church information... he is a spammer? If I see a host that I do not recognize appear out of the blue and start pumping hundreds or thousands of messages an hour into my mail server, the odds are pretty on that it's a spammer. If it's not, I'm not averse to apologizing later on. Basically we have learned that mail.com dosen't know what it is doing. And that you make be on that same path. If you want to stop spammers, take them to court. Filtering e-mail just pisses the rest of us off. If you are serious about protecting your network resources then ACTUALLY FIND THE SPAMMER, and sue them. It's actually pretty easy. They usually give you the address or phone number you can use to get in contact with them.
Re: Lobby mail.com
In the immortal words of Fabrice Scemama ([EMAIL PROTECTED]): Is Nathan trying to explain that qmail sends mail so fast that it can't be natural ? ;-) Heh, there is an element of that. Parallelizing MTAs such as qmail and Postfix present a challenge when doing frequency analysis. However, I would tend to think that this is the analyzer's problem, not qmail's. -n [EMAIL PROTECTED] I have seen the future of the net, and it's a pimply 14-year old boy shouting "ADD ME TO THE LIST11!!!" Forever. http://www.blank.org/memory/
Re: Lobby mail.com
Reading that mail.com thread, I must consider that lots of honnest mail admins get annoyed, and that I still receive a huge number of spams every day. Sometimes, when you put too many security devices in your home, you get more annoyed than possible burglars -- and finally get burgled anyway. The whole mail.com purpose seems paranoid and more and less stupid to me. Just my 2 pence. On Wed, 1 Sep 1999, Russell Nelson wrote: David Harris writes: Test number seven on the http://maps.vix.com/tsi/new-rlytest.cgi (which you cite as your reason for blocking this mail server) is fatally flawed. So are tests 6, 10, 12, 16, and 17. All of them presume a certain interpretation of the local part of the address -- an interpretation which only sendmail is likely to make. -- -russ nelson [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://russnelson.com Crynwr sells support for free software | PGPok | Government schools are so 521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315 268 1925 voice | bad that any rank amateur Potsdam, NY 13676-3213 | +1 315 268 9201 FAX | can outdo them. Homeschool!
Re: Lobby mail.com
On Thu, 2 Sep 1999, Fabrice Scemama wrote: Reading that mail.com thread, I must consider that lots of honnest mail admins get annoyed, and that I still receive a huge number of spams every day. Sometimes, when you put too many security devices in your home, you get more annoyed than possible burglars -- and finally get burgled anyway. The whole mail.com purpose seems paranoid and more and less stupid to me. Just my 2 pence. Unfortunately as far as I see, mail.com is blocking the site not because it is an open relay, but de facto because they have a lot of users who are subscribed to the mailing lists maintained on the blocked site and they received too many messages, and they just cite the test as a justification of their action. And this can even be interpreted to a form of censorship, if we want to be ridiculous. Robert Varga
Re: Lobby mail.com
Oy. Guess I get to delurk now. Hi, my name is Nathan J. Mehl. I run qmail on my home system, blank.org. I also happen to be the Senior Systems Administrator for Mail.Com. Let me state this for the record: MAIL.COM DOES NOT, NEVER HAS, AND NEVER WILL BLACKLIST SERVERS BASED ON THE http://maps.vix.com/tsi/new-rlytest.cgi SCRIPT. I'm afraid that the message sent by the abuse staff at Mail.Com to Mr. Bell was somewhat unclear. iq-ss5.iquest.net was blocked because we received an unexpectedly high volume of mail from it. Period. The speculation that it was an open relay was just that, speculation, and we provided the pointer to the vix.com relay tester as a courtesy to Mr. Bell. Here is the crux of the matter: we would have blacklisted the server even if it had "passed" the TSI Relay Test. Allow me to offer my apologies to Mr. Bell for the inconvenience suffered. And please don't flood our abuse desk with requests to stop something we never did; they're busy enough as it is. :) -n [EMAIL PROTECTED] SENDING JUNK EMAIL TO MY ADDRESS CONSTITUTES YOUR LEGALLY-BINDING ACCEPTANCE OF MY OFFER TO REMOVE BOTH OF YOUR NIPPLES WITH AN ORBITAL SANDER. (--Andy Ihnatko) http://www.blank.org/memory/
Re: Lobby mail.com
Hi Nathan, Thanks for the response. I have received one mail from Mail.com and that was the one claiming my machine may be an open relay, and of course it isn't, that was a few days ago now. I have not heard back from several messages sent since, and I need this machine unblacklisted ASAP as the many different domains that mail.com et al use are too numerous to keep track of and route through other machines, and many of our subscribers are being dropped from the lists through no fault of their own. WHat can I do to get this resolved? Thanks, Justin Bell On Thu, Sep 02, 1999 at 04:16:07PM -0400, Nathan J. Mehl wrote: # # Oy. Guess I get to delurk now. # # Hi, my name is Nathan J. Mehl. I run qmail on my home system, # blank.org. # # I also happen to be the Senior Systems Administrator for Mail.Com. # # Let me state this for the record: # # MAIL.COM DOES NOT, NEVER HAS, AND NEVER WILL BLACKLIST SERVERS BASED # ON THE http://maps.vix.com/tsi/new-rlytest.cgi SCRIPT. # # I'm afraid that the message sent by the abuse staff at Mail.Com to Mr. # Bell was somewhat unclear. iq-ss5.iquest.net was blocked because we # received an unexpectedly high volume of mail from it. Period. The # speculation that it was an open relay was just that, speculation, and # we provided the pointer to the vix.com relay tester as a courtesy to # Mr. Bell. # # Here is the crux of the matter: we would have blacklisted the server # even if it had "passed" the TSI Relay Test. # # Allow me to offer my apologies to Mr. Bell for the inconvenience # suffered. And please don't flood our abuse desk with requests to stop # something we never did; they're busy enough as it is. :) # # -n # # [EMAIL PROTECTED] # SENDING JUNK EMAIL TO MY ADDRESS CONSTITUTES YOUR LEGALLY-BINDING ACCEPTANCE # OF MY OFFER TO REMOVE BOTH OF YOUR NIPPLES WITH AN ORBITAL SANDER. # (--Andy Ihnatko) # http://www.blank.org/memory/ -- /- [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- [EMAIL PROTECTED] -\ |Justin Bell NIC:JB3084| Time and rules are changing. | |Pearson| Attention span is quickening.| |Developer | Welcome to the Information Age. | \ http://www.superlibrary.com/people/justin/ --/
RE: Lobby mail.com
How on earth can you block based on volume? Our company sends out alerts to subscribers daily. This is very high volume and only sent to those who explicitly request it. That most certainly is not spam. The very nature of what you do lends itself to receiving high mail counts that are completely legitimate. Not to start yet another flame war or anything, but I could deal with the fact that the relay tests were misleading people into this. This, on the other hand, is outrageous. If I was in the shoes of Mr Bell, I would be more offended now than in the first place. If his mail was in fact legitimate, which I think he said it was, I think you are making some actions which could have potential legal ramifications should he chose to take that route. If it is in fact spam, by your own admissions, you didn't check to see, you blindly blacklisted it. If I was in his shoes, I can say unequivocably that you would be receiving a call from my lawyer. I suggest you seriously reevaluate this policy and focus on filtering spam, not mail. I would rather delete 500 spam email messages than lose a SINGLE valid email. By filtering out good mail, you make YOU the problem, not spam. Keep that in mind. Be a service, not a detriment. -Original Message- From: Nathan J. Mehl [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, September 02, 1999 9:16 PM To: David Harris; Justin Bell; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Lobby mail.com Oy. Guess I get to delurk now. Hi, my name is Nathan J. Mehl. I run qmail on my home system, blank.org. I also happen to be the Senior Systems Administrator for Mail.Com. Let me state this for the record: MAIL.COM DOES NOT, NEVER HAS, AND NEVER WILL BLACKLIST SERVERS BASED ON THE http://maps.vix.com/tsi/new-rlytest.cgi SCRIPT. I'm afraid that the message sent by the abuse staff at Mail.Com to Mr. Bell was somewhat unclear. iq-ss5.iquest.net was blocked because we received an unexpectedly high volume of mail from it. Period. The speculation that it was an open relay was just that, speculation, and we provided the pointer to the vix.com relay tester as a courtesy to Mr. Bell. Here is the crux of the matter: we would have blacklisted the server even if it had "passed" the TSI Relay Test. Allow me to offer my apologies to Mr. Bell for the inconvenience suffered. And please don't flood our abuse desk with requests to stop something we never did; they're busy enough as it is. :) -n m [EMAIL PROTECTED] SENDING JUNK EMAIL TO MY ADDRESS CONSTITUTES YOUR LEGALLY-BINDING ACCEPTANCE OF MY OFFER TO REMOVE BOTH OF YOUR NIPPLES WITH AN ORBITAL SANDER. (--Andy Ihnatko) http://www.blank.org/memory/
RE: Lobby mail.com
Nathan J. Mehl [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] wrote: [snip] Hi, my name is Nathan J. Mehl. I run qmail on my home system, blank.org. I also happen to be the Senior Systems Administrator for Mail.Com. Let me state this for the record: MAIL.COM DOES NOT, NEVER HAS, AND NEVER WILL BLACKLIST SERVERS BASED ON THE http://maps.vix.com/tsi/new-rlytest.cgi SCRIPT. I'm afraid that the message sent by the abuse staff at Mail.Com to Mr. Bell was somewhat unclear. iq-ss5.iquest.net was blocked because we received an unexpectedly high volume of mail from it. Period. The speculation that it was an open relay was just that, speculation, and we provided the pointer to the vix.com relay tester as a courtesy to Mr. Bell. Here is the crux of the matter: we would have blacklisted the server even if it had "passed" the TSI Relay Test. [snip] I've been hearing that one the list for the past day or two, and I have come to believe it. However, I only really believed it _after_ I wrote the original e-mail to your help desk which I posted to the list. But the reason I have not spoken up and retracted my complaint is this: _The fact that your blacklisting was not based on any kind of relay test scares me even more._ What happens when an ISP sets up a mail server with tends of thousands of legitimate mail users sending you legitimate mail? What about a list-serv handing out gobs of e-mail specifically requested by your users? Do you black list them too? I don't care particularly _how_ you came to blacklist a legitimate server... but the blacklisting of legitimate servers is what poses a threat to the Internet mail system and what offends people. You sound like you got a large negative reaction to blacklisting the server based on the TSI relay test (which we all thought you did). However, don't just discount this negative reaction. If it had been apparent from the beginning that you blacklisted the server solely on the mail volume, I expect that the reaction would have been just as large. A legitimate mail server got blacklisted. Complaint still stands. - David Harris Principal Engineer, DRH Internet Services bcc: "mail.com corporate address" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Lobby mail.com
# MAIL.COM DOES NOT, NEVER HAS, AND NEVER WILL BLACKLIST SERVERS BASED # ON THE http://maps.vix.com/tsi/new-rlytest.cgi SCRIPT. # # I'm afraid that the message sent by the abuse staff at Mail.Com to Mr. # Bell was somewhat unclear. iq-ss5.iquest.net was blocked because we # received an unexpectedly high volume of mail from it. Period. The # speculation that it was an open relay was just that, speculation, and # we provided the pointer to the vix.com relay tester as a courtesy to # Mr. Bell. # # Here is the crux of the matter: we would have blacklisted the server # even if it had "passed" the TSI Relay Test. # # Well, that clears up one issue, but raises another. In the nature of # things, mail.com is likely to get lots of mail from certain servers -- # those hosting mailing lists, those belonging to other big email # providers. My server, for example, hosts one fairly large monthly # newsletter that has over 1000 subscribers at hotmail.com. (Only # something like 12 at mail.com, or I'd be using you for the example). # So, each month when that goes out, hotmail.com will receive a big # batch of emails from me. If that list had 1000 subscribers at # mail.com, would you have blacklisted me? Yes, they probably would have, of the mail.com etc. domains that they host, one of our three daily large volume lists has the following breakdown: List Total: 46633 iname.com 100 .iname.com 100 altavista.net 12 cheerful.com 20 cybergal.com 7 email.com 64 financier.com 1 iname.com 100 indiamail.com 1 innocent.com 3 mail.com4352 mail.org 5 mindless.com 16 nightly.com 1 null.net 2 rocketship.com 1 scotlandmail.com 1 seductive.com 1 techie.com 2 unforgettable.com 5 usa.com 59 writeme.com 35 All these people requested to be on this list. So, because your customers want to receive these emails you find it necessary to block us? -- /- [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- [EMAIL PROTECTED] -\ |Justin Bell NIC:JB3084| Time and rules are changing. | |Pearson| Attention span is quickening.| |Developer | Welcome to the Information Age. | \ http://www.superlibrary.com/people/justin/ --/
Re: Lobby mail.com
I am, as of now, speaking for nobody but my own fine self. If you have any questions about Mail.Com's policies, regarding spam or anything else, please direct them to the appropriate addresses at Mail.Com. Also, at this point this is really not even slightly qmail-related, so here's my offer: those of you with something to say who feel you have to say it in public, say it now. I won't answer any more questions on the list after tonight. You can mail me privately if you like, but you takes your chances just like everybody else if you do. In the immortal words of Daniluk, Cris ([EMAIL PROTECTED]): How on earth can you block based on volume? A better question: how can anybody NOT? Spammers can change their names, change their addresses, alter the length and content of their mail, forge their headers, hide behind proxies, register their assets in the Carribean, get sex changes and crouch down behind shubberies, but there is one fingerprint they can never, ever change: in order to have a prayer of making a profit, they have to send out a lot of mail, really quickly. If I see a host that I do not recognize appear out of the blue and start pumping hundreds or thousands of messages an hour into my mail server, the odds are pretty on that it's a spammer. If it's not, I'm not averse to apologizing later on. I would rather delete 500 spam email messages than lose a SINGLE valid email. That's a very noble goal, and it works fine if you've only got a single mail server and a handful of users. You'll find that it doesn't scale very well once you hit the dozens-of-servers and millions-of-users mark. There comes a point (and it comes pretty damn quickly, believe me) where you have to balance mildly inconveniencing a few of your customers against royally pissing off a lot of them by letting the spammers swamp your system to the point where it's of no use to anybody. No, it's not pretty, but of such compromises is the real world made. -n [EMAIL PROTECTED] Calling Motif a GUI is like calling a pile of bricks an apartment building. http://www.blank.org/memory/
Re: Lobby mail.com
[Again, speaking for nobody but my own cranky self here.] In the immortal words of David Dyer-Bennet ([EMAIL PROTECTED]): So, welcome to the qmail list. Were you hoping for a nice, quiet, lurk? Oh well :-) . Hey, I managed to go about six months up until this point. :) Well, that clears up one issue, but raises another. In the nature of things, mail.com is likely to get lots of mail from certain servers -- those hosting mailing lists, those belonging to other big email providers. [...] This is so completely nonsensical that it must not be, really, what mail.com is doing. Of course, since we're all idiots who were born yesterday, that possibility never occurred to us. Who'd've thought that people who use our email service might subscribe to mailing lists? :-) Suffice it to say that yes, we take measures to prevent false positives when blacklisting servers. Obviously they didn't work in this case; hence my apology. The usual reviews and post-mortems will of course take place to try to make certain it doesn't happen again. -n [EMAIL PROTECTED] five claws each rear paw seven claws on the front paws a cat named Haiku (--Mark Amidon) http://www.blank.org/memory/
Re: Lobby mail.com
[Speaking, as before, only for my own irritable self.] In the immortal words of David Harris ([EMAIL PROTECTED]): But the reason I have not spoken up and retracted my complaint is this: _The fact that your blacklisting was not based on any kind of relay test scares me even more._ I have a small news flash here: not all spam comes from open relays. What happens when an ISP sets up a mail server with tends of thousands of legitimate mail users sending you legitimate mail? What about a list-serv handing out gobs of e-mail specifically requested by your users? Do you black list them too? See my other note on that subject. A legitimate mail server got blacklisted. Complaint still stands. The server is out of the blacklist, the affected party has been apologized to, and I guess your complaint is noted. -n [EMAIL PROTECTED] Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first woman she meets and then teams up with three complete stangers to kill again. (-- TV listing for the movie, The Wizard of Oz, in the Marin Paper.) http://www.blank.org/memory/
RE: Lobby mail.com
On Thu, 2 Sep 1999, Ben Kosse wrote: IOW, you're forgetting mail.com sells their servers and bandwidth. It's only private if you don't make money on it. Heh, by that definition, Mail.com, Critical Path, and all the other email outsourcing companies are private. Not a good definition, though. Mail.com can write their contracts however they want; I suspect they include provisions which cover their spam filtering and not being held liable for any damages from filtering errors that inadvertently prevent legitimate mail from getting through. Jim Lippard [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.discord.org/ Unsolicited bulk email charge: $500/message. Don't send me any. PGP Fingerprint: 0C1F FE18 D311 1792 5EA8 43C8 7AD2 B485 DE75 841C
RE: Lobby mail.com
On Thu, 2 Sep 1999, Ben Kosse wrote: Heh, by that definition, Mail.com, Critical Path, and all the other email outsourcing companies are private. Not a good definition, though. Let me rephrase the "make money" part. It's only private if you don't receive goods or services in exchange for use of your services. Bleh, if I knew there were lawyers on this list. Nah, I'm not a lawyer, I've just had to deal with them a lot. Mail.com can write their contracts however they want; I suspect they include provisions which cover their spam filtering and not being held liable for any damages from filtering errors that inadvertently prevent legitimate mail from getting through. Possibly, but unless they're covered by article 2B, they probably have no protection from that. Check out http://www.ljextra.com/internet/UCC2Bintro.html, specifically: ---begin quote--- The second question every asks about Article 2B is, "Will my existing contracts be valid?" This vital question is answered by Section 2B-107(b), which provides: "Except as expressly provided in this article or in Article 1, the effect of any provision of this article, including allocation of risk or imposition of a burden, may be varied by agreement of the parties". This means that you may contract out of virtually any restriction, right, or obligation in the statute. Of course, there is a short list of obligations that may not be varied by contract, but they are common sense exclusions: " ---end quote--- The exclusions are listed on the web page. I don't think any would apply here--UCC 2B won't have any effect on a pre-existing contract that contains such a limitation on liability. Jim Lippard [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.discord.org/ Unsolicited bulk email charge: $500/message. Don't send me any. PGP Fingerprint: 0C1F FE18 D311 1792 5EA8 43C8 7AD2 B485 DE75 841C
Re: Lobby mail.com
In the immortal words of Ben Kosse ([EMAIL PROTECTED]): It's only private if you don't make money on it. Some statements are just so stunning that they should be framed on their own. Really, I have no response to this, except to gaze at it in sheer awe. -n p.s. http://www.mail.com/mailcom/serviceagreement.html [EMAIL PROTECTED] My motorcycle/ stands forlorn on Hurlbut Street. The fucker won't start. (--me) http://www.blank.org/memory/
RE: Lobby mail.com
This may sound rude, but it's not intended to be--what country do you live in? I think you're either under a different set of laws, or have a fundamental misunderstanding of them. Your claims are very inaccurate. VERY inaccurate. The only reason I bring this to the list is that there may be other people in the same situation as mail.com out there and I think they may be reading everything that comes through here as fact. It is illegal for them to block out legitimate email from customers when they agree to provide the mail to customers. They can make you sign contracts that say this is not so, but those contracts can have their legality tried in court. All ISPs and similar services have these contractual agreements that basically disclaim everything they do and quite frankly, out of personal experience, I can say they don't last a second in court. If mail.com accidentally blocked out this and fixed it later that's one thing, but if it was intentional--which in this case it could be construed as, since they made no effort on their part to verify the validity of the mail, they are directly liable. Moreover, the customer and/or the sender would be within their legal rights to sue. The customer lost his mail and that was bad, but the sender potentially lost money as well (in the case of premium content subscriptions such as WSJ.com or others). Customers pay for this service and therefore blocking out a large and significant chunk of users impedes on their profits. In this instance I think all is well between Mail.com and the offender, but I think that they, as well as anyone in similar situations, need to be aware that this is in fact dangerous. Exercise discretion. For your own sakes. -Original Message- From: Sam [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, September 02, 1999 9:19 PM Cc: Qmail (E-mail) Subject: Re: Lobby mail.com Ben Kosse writes: No matter how dumb or not dumb mail.com's action was, they had every legal right to do what they did. It's their servers, their private property, and their bandwidth. Which, if you would note, are used by people who enter into a contractual arrangement by which they either pay mail.com (iname.com users with a POP account, for example) directly or access their e-mail via a web interface where they agree to view ads in exchange for, ahem, receiving e-mail. I In that case, it's those individuals, and not their system administrator, who have a cause of action to take against mail.com. They might have a legitimate issue, however it is their issue only, and nobody else's. don't know what type of list the guy is running, but if, for example, it was a high importance list and the customers of said list lost money or similar because of mail.com's actions (or the list maintainer lost money because of mail.com's non-researched actions), then either the customers and/or himself have a very decent case. The customers may in fact do, I never said that they don't. However, unless they appointed the admin to be their official spokesman, and explicitly delegated to him the authority to take action on their behalf, it's none of the admin's business. -- Sam
Re: Lobby mail.com
I can understand customers suing for not having their mail delivered. However, I can't see where you make the mental leap to the sender being able to sue. If you are really serious about these claims, then please cite resources and court decisions that support them. The real question is, "are you a lawyer?" If you're not, then you really have no business speaking about the law in any forum. By the way, I noticed that you responded to Sam's message, but you failed to respond to Jim Lippard's posts which had a much more specific objection to your viewpoint, with a relevant quoted source. Is there a reason for this? --Adam On Fri, Sep 03, 1999 at 01:13:33AM -0400, Cris Daniluk wrote: This may sound rude, but it's not intended to be--what country do you live in? I think you're either under a different set of laws, or have a fundamental misunderstanding of them. Your claims are very inaccurate. VERY inaccurate. The only reason I bring this to the list is that there may be other people in the same situation as mail.com out there and I think they may be reading everything that comes through here as fact. It is illegal for them to block out legitimate email from customers when they agree to provide the mail to customers. They can make you sign contracts that say this is not so, but those contracts can have their legality tried in court. All ISPs and similar services have these contractual agreements that basically disclaim everything they do and quite frankly, out of personal experience, I can say they don't last a second in court. If mail.com accidentally blocked out this and fixed it later that's one thing, but if it was intentional--which in this case it could be construed as, since they made no effort on their part to verify the validity of the mail, they are directly liable. Moreover, the customer and/or the sender would be within their legal rights to sue. The customer lost his mail and that was bad, but the sender potentially lost money as well (in the case of premium content subscriptions such as WSJ.com or others). Customers pay for this service and therefore blocking out a large and significant chunk of users impedes on their profits. In this instance I think all is well between Mail.com and the offender, but I think that they, as well as anyone in similar situations, need to be aware that this is in fact dangerous. Exercise discretion. For your own sakes. -Original Message- From: Sam [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, September 02, 1999 9:19 PM Cc: Qmail (E-mail) Subject: Re: Lobby mail.com Ben Kosse writes: No matter how dumb or not dumb mail.com's action was, they had every legal right to do what they did. It's their servers, their private property, and their bandwidth. Which, if you would note, are used by people who enter into a contractual arrangement by which they either pay mail.com (iname.com users with a POP account, for example) directly or access their e-mail via a web interface where they agree to view ads in exchange for, ahem, receiving e-mail. I In that case, it's those individuals, and not their system administrator, who have a cause of action to take against mail.com. They might have a legitimate issue, however it is their issue only, and nobody else's. don't know what type of list the guy is running, but if, for example, it was a high importance list and the customers of said list lost money or similar because of mail.com's actions (or the list maintainer lost money because of mail.com's non-researched actions), then either the customers and/or himself have a very decent case. The customers may in fact do, I never said that they don't. However, unless they appointed the admin to be their official spokesman, and explicitly delegated to him the authority to take action on their behalf, it's none of the admin's business. -- Sam
Re: Lobby mail.com
On Thu, Sep 02, 1999 at 04:16:07PM -0400, Nathan J. Mehl wrote: Oy. Guess I get to delurk now. Hi, my name is Nathan J. Mehl. I run qmail on my home system, blank.org. I also happen to be the Senior Systems Administrator for Mail.Com. Let me state this for the record: MAIL.COM DOES NOT, NEVER HAS, AND NEVER WILL BLACKLIST SERVERS BASED ON THE http://maps.vix.com/tsi/new-rlytest.cgi SCRIPT. I'm afraid that the message sent by the abuse staff at Mail.Com to Mr. Bell was somewhat unclear. Uh, Nathan, I'm sure that might be your policy, but you should take another look at the message sent: - If you check http://maps.vix.com/tsi/new-rlytest.cgi?ADDR=iq-ss5.iquest.net you will see that this machine is an open relay. We therefore blocked it. - Not only does that indicate that the block was based on the relay test, but it says so very clearly. :) -- John White johnjohn at triceratops.com PGP Public Key: http://www.triceratops.com/john/public-key.pgp
RE: Lobby mail.com
-Original Message- From: Adam D . McKenna [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Friday, September 03, 1999 2:06 AM To: Cris Daniluk Cc: Sam; Qmail (E-mail) Subject: Re: Lobby mail.com I can understand customers suing for not having their mail delivered. However, I can't see where you make the mental leap to the sender being able to sue. If you are really serious about these claims, then please cite resources and court decisions that support them. There are no current court cases. There is, however, strong legal basis. I sell content to a customer which I deliver via email. You cut my route to my customer who has an email account with you. That prevents us from fulfilling our end of the deal between us and our customer. They paid us money, we didn't deliver. If you will all remember, Network Solutions' lawyers were in a similar situation when they were threatened with a blacklist for their high volume of spam. They made this very same argument. That never saw a court room, but then again they aren't blacklisted are they? The real question is, "are you a lawyer?" If you're not, then you really have no business speaking about the law in any forum. Are you? Is Sam? Are any of us? No. My point is that. I do have legal background in this subject area though, as it is intimately involved with my job. By the way, I noticed that you responded to Sam's message, but you failed to respond to Jim Lippard's posts which had a much more specific objection to your viewpoint, with a relevant quoted source. Is there a reason for this? Mr. Lippards points are completely irrelevant. He's citing a bill that doesn't exist. Moreover, if it would suit the fancy of those of you who are legal evangalists, I can bring in a list of court cases in which actual statutes were cited, where entire sections of user agreements like what we're discussing were thrown out as unreasonable. I don't have any desire to sift through legal cases to prove a point, so I'd prefer you look it up yourself if you don't believe me. --Adam This could (and I think has) evolved into a needless flamewar. Whether you think that it is illegal or not, it is STILL a reasonable substantiation to fight in court and it would be a long and expensive battle for both parties and no, Sam, legal fees would not be awarded. If you'll do your homework, legal fees are rarely awarded except in exceptionally erroneous claims. My question is this: Why would you want to go through all this for filtering out one more possible spam sender? And as far as I'm concerned, mail.com or whomever it may be could win a court case by a landslide, but you won't win any customers that way.
Re: Lobby mail.com
On Fri, Sep 03, 1999 at 02:33:01AM -0400, Cris Daniluk wrote: There are no current court cases. There is, however, strong legal basis. I sell content to a customer which I deliver via email. You cut my route to my customer who has an email account with you. That prevents us from fulfilling our end of the deal between us and our customer. They paid us money, we didn't deliver. If you will all remember, Network Solutions' lawyers were in a similar situation when they were threatened with a blacklist for their high volume of spam. They made this very same argument. That never saw a court room, but then again they aren't blacklisted are they? The real question is, "are you a lawyer?" If you're not, then you really have no business speaking about the law in any forum. Are you? Is Sam? Are any of us? No. My point is that. I do have legal background in this subject area though, as it is intimately involved with my job. I'm not speaking about the law. I'm just asking you to qualify your own statements. I normally refrain from such discussions unless I'm making claims that I've researched and am ready to stand behind. By the way, I noticed that you responded to Sam's message, but you failed to respond to Jim Lippard's posts which had a much more specific objection to your viewpoint, with a relevant quoted source. Is there a reason for this? Mr. Lippards points are completely irrelevant. He's citing a bill that doesn't exist. Moreover, if it would suit the fancy of those of you who are legal evangalists, I can bring in a list of court cases in which actual statutes were cited, where entire sections of user agreements like what we're discussing were thrown out as unreasonable. I don't have any desire to sift through legal cases to prove a point, so I'd prefer you look it up yourself if you don't believe me. In general, it is desirable for someone who is arguing a point to cite relevant sources, and not argue based (apparently) solely upon his own opinion. This is even more desirable in discussions where the people involved are uninformed, and/or do not trust the other side to give accurate information. In any event, my opinion is that anyone who tries to sue an ISP for refusing to accept mail from them will fail miserably. --Adam
Re: Lobby mail.com
David Harris writes: On Thu Jul 15, we received a high volume of traffic from 206.246.140.165 (iq-ss5.iquest.net). Specifically, we got 472 messages in an hour. If you check http://maps.vix.com/tsi/new-rlytest.cgi?ADDR=iq-ss5.iquest.net you will see that this machine is an open relay. We therefore blocked it. If you secure this machine, we will be glad to unblock it. Apparently, even though they say this, they don't mean it. From subsequent communications with Mail.com, I have been told that they selected iquest.net strictly on the basis of a high volume of email. In addition, to be helpful, they run rlytest on the host, and tell the administrator if it fails. Since I believe in individual action, not politics, I'm going to write my own relay tester which actually attempts to relay the mail, and reports on whether the relay succeeded or not. This'll take a few days, though, because I'm off to Hershey, PA on a 4-H Teen Council trip with my daughter this evening. -- -russ nelson [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://russnelson.com Crynwr sells support for free software | PGPok | Government schools are so 521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315 268 1925 voice | bad that any rank amateur Potsdam, NY 13676-3213 | +1 315 268 9201 FAX | can outdo them. Homeschool!
Re: Lobby mail.com
David Harris writes: Test number seven on the http://maps.vix.com/tsi/new-rlytest.cgi (which you cite as your reason for blocking this mail server) is fatally flawed. So are tests 6, 10, 12, 16, and 17. All of them presume a certain interpretation of the local part of the address -- an interpretation which only sendmail is likely to make. -- -russ nelson [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://russnelson.com Crynwr sells support for free software | PGPok | Government schools are so 521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315 268 1925 voice | bad that any rank amateur Potsdam, NY 13676-3213 | +1 315 268 9201 FAX | can outdo them. Homeschool!
