Pot Calls Kettle Censor

In the red corner, SafeSurf is the original wacky band of labelling nuts. If you've posted anything to the net without labelling it, they think you need to be sued good and hard, and if it was inappropriate for an 8-year-old you need to go to jail. In the blue corner, MAPS continues to unashamedly blacklist websites for just sharing a network with sites that "support" spam. The fun began when MAPS blacklisted SafeSurf, ensuring millions of TeleGlobe customers were silently kept off the SafeSurf site. The victim has posted a beautiful, pained whine about "stealth censorship" which includes some really awesome metaphors. It's an epic battle of ideologies. Who will win? I say... the audience.

Here's an actual quote from SafeSurf's legislative proposal, I just love this:

"Negligence [failure to label] in the absence of damages may be a civil violation of the rights of the receivers of that data, but it shall not be a criminal offense unless the data is deemed to be harmful to minors. ... Publishers may be sued in civil court by any parent who feels their children were harmed by the data negligently published. The parents shall be given presumption in all cases and do not have to prove that the content actually produced harm to their child..."

Note: since SafeSurf's press release, their site has been taken off the RBL. But for some reason TeleGlobe is still blocking them (click "trace", type "safesurf.com", and wait several minutes for the blocked pings to time out inside TeleGlobe's network). I thought this was supposed to be the realtime blackhole list. Anyway, TeleGlobe is the same ISP that promises it will not "review, censor, or edit the material that is accessible through Teleglobe's network," and adds:

Q. Does Teleglobe support blocking access to ISPs and their non-spamming customers as a method of curtailing spam?

A. No. Teleglobe believes that advocates seeking to punish unwitting collateral ISPs and users who may be tenuously linked to a spam source are acting against the best interests of the Internet community as a whole.

TeleGlobe is one of the few backbones or major ISPs that still uses the RBL to censor websites, since I think AboveNet quit doing it. Anyone know of any others?

Re:Quit your whining and use the marketplace

[jamie]

"...why doesn't SafeSurf simply take their business elsewhere? Quit using TeleGlobe's service..."

You missed the point. TeleGlobe is a backbone provider, they deliver the primary or in many cases the only internet access for millions of users (mostly in Europe I believe).

SafeSurf has nothing to do with TeleGlobe, does not pay them, isn't a customer of theirs, they just have a website that TeleGlobe censors. There's no "business" to take elsewhere.

Re:What am I missing?

[jamie]

" I thought MAPs was used to block spam via DNS queries to their blacklist. SafeSurf makes it sound like their web site is being blocked? It makes no sense!"

Nope, it doesn't make sense. There are a lot of readers who, like you, are confused about this whenever we post a MAPS story.

MAPS's blacklist is ostensibly a list of IPs from which spam originates. But more and more, it is a list of websites and Class C's from which no spam comes, but which are either considered "spam-friendly" or are owned by companies which are considered "spam-friendly."

These IPs are put on the list because MAPS knows that there are still ISPs like TeleGlobe which will censor whatever MAPS tells them to censor. TeleGlobe uses the RBL to block not just mail being sent on port 25, but all traffic. And TeleGlobe is a backbone so this has a huge effect. Essentially this means MAPS can point at any website they want and wipe it off the internet for millions of people. And the purpose of putting SafeSurf (and other websites) on the RBL was to get them censored so that MAPS could throw its weight around to further its goals.

Sounds like you agree with those goals -- but I'm hoping, like me, you disagree with the means used to achieve them.

"Remember folks - internet service is provided to you by a provider that sets the rules - don't like it? Go elsewhere or if no alternative exists, deal with it."

Millions of people are having their internet access censored, by a backbone provider which promises that it does not censor. Many of them have no options for alternative providers, so their only recourse is, as you say, to "deal with it."

Important info - spammers in safesurf netblock

[Seth Finkelstein]

Without getting into the whole spam issue, here's some relevant info:

safesurf.com is IP address 63.107.146.25 There were a bunch of spammish sites at OTHER places in the 63.107.146.* netblock. And MAPS will blacklist every single address within a netblock when it "escalates" their dispute.

See this long list of spammish sites once in the 63.107.146.* netblock (June 22 2001) [google.com]

Note many if not all of these sites have changed address by now.

Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org) [sethf.com]

Yet another Jamie Doesn't Like MAPS story

[Anonymous Coward]

Jamie doesn't like MAPS.

It's because a website he's associated with (peacefire.org) got put onto the RBL. The circumstances around it are vague, but it would appear that peacefire was *deliberately* placed onto a netblock already RBL'd because of spammer infestation, just to make a point.

Personally, MAPS is too weak, spews.org is much more effective, since they don't pretend to try to educate spam-friendly ISP's, they just blackhole them until they whine. Hopefully teleglobe will start to use spews, just so Jamie have have another aploplectic fit over someone remembering that the internet is made up of PRIVATE networks, and they can block anyone they bloody well please.

Completely disingenuous

[Anonymous Coward]

MAPS doesn't blacklist sites for sharing a network with spammers; they blacklist networks that have a spam problem.

MAPS lists networks that are not the source of actual spam. Then MAPS supporters say those networks ``have a spam problem.'' Sorry, I think that jamie is dead on the mark here.

The ``little guy'' isn't the issue. The sleazy nature of MAPS is. Some people like to speak out against censorship whenever they see it. An alien concept to MAPS supporters, I guess.