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?

What is it with these people?

[Anonymous Coward]

MAPS is voluntary, and if you don't like it, switch. If your ISP is screwing you over with it, switch! And if you're too stupid to know that you're being blocked, then you likely deserve to be, anyhow.

As for the 'intended' consequences of MAPS -- I was one of the ones hoping that the 'unintended victims' would bring pressure to bear on the hosts to kick the spammers or the spammer software corporations off -- too bad none seem to be doing so. :(

Contrived Example

[ffatTony]

Imagine trying to connect to a crisis assistance site after a devastating earthquake, only to find its among a vast IP group being blocked by RBL

Do people really use the internet for such a purpose? I would think a cellphone would be the best means to contact help after a major accident.

Blind Blocking, Anyone?

[phraktyl]

At last the RBL is available [mail-abuse.org] to search through.

I looked all over the SafeSurf web site and didn't see their block list anywhere.

Stop trying to legislate a safer world

[canadian_right]

I wish everyone would stop trying to get the government to play the role of global babysitter.

If you don't want your kids to see things you don't like on the internet then SUPERVISE your kids. Educate your kids. Teach your kids to respect themselves. Trust your children to use their own good judgement when they are old enough. (If you don't trust your kids you screwed up as a parent) BUT don't try to legislate away a problem that is only a problem for the lazy, apathetic, and those willing to force their narrow views on everyone.

Most people can't just "deal with it"

[mcg1969]

I'd say the vast, vast majority of people (90 percent or more) have no idea what MAPS is, how it works, or that it does work. So the option to "fight back" really isn't available for most, because most people don't know that there is an enemy.

Unfortunately the end user will often simply not be able to access a particular web site, and when that happens simply assume that it's the fault of the web site.

I'm not sure that it is possible or practical to educate the masses about this stuff. That's where I think that a good Internet watchdog organization or activist group can do a real service.

Libertarian Parent

[rossz]

As a libertarian, I believe censorship is wrong. As a parent, I believe censorship is sometimes necessary. I do not, however, advocate government sponsered censurship. I am my daughter's censure. When she surfs the web, I sit with her. When she does a google search, sometimes I will not let her click on one of the resultant links. On several occassions I've had her leave the room so I can check out a site first.

There is one case where I think the government should come down hard, fast, and without mercy. I want to hurt those scumbags who use urls that are common variations of sites kids might go to, but are really porn sites, e.g. whitehouse.com and disny.com.

Finally, I can justify shutting down spammers even though I am a libertarian. I pay for my internet access. The spammers do not. Your freedom stops at my front door. You can go to a park and spout your beliefs all you want. You can not demand entry into my home using the argument of "free speech". If you insist on forcing entry, I'll introduce you to another one of my rights. My right to own a gun.

WTF?

[Velex]

Ok, isn't SafeSurf among the guys responsible for not letting me do research on breast cancer, transsexualism, gay rights, the second amendment, and drug abuse, among other things not suited for the children? Here are a few points:

1. SafeSurf is easily guilty of the same things it accuses MAPS of, namely censorship.
2. Most of SafeSurf's argument is dependant on the children, and this should set off a red flag.
3. SafeSurf's basically saying that it's their liberty to participate in denying liberty to others.
4. SafeSurf accuses MAPS of being "blinded by the smell of spammer's blood," not seeming "to care how many innocent Web sites they trounce in the process." Couldn't the same easily be said about SafeSurf's obsession over filtering anything they this is unsuitable for the children?
5. "Censorship is a broad brush that drips paint on the pure, as well as the tainted." Listen to your own words, SafeSurf.
6. Overall, the strength of the rhetoric compared to the severity of the problem here and the difficulty that MAPS would have avoiding the problem tends to indicate to me that SafeSurf really has no case, and they know it.
7. SafeSurf seems too concerned about the children for me to really take them seriously

Re:What am I missing?

[baptiste]

Huh? They've agreed to provide me with a service, for a fee I'm paying. It's their duty to fulfill the contract. Companies have to obey the law, just like people do.

Right and are you 100% sure that contract forbids them from doing this? Are you sure it doesn't have a clause stating they can do just about anything or that the contract terms can change at any time? Most do.

Re:What am I missing?

[seebs]

Could you name this large block of IP space that is listed on MAPS, but which is not, in fact, hosting well-known spammers? I seem to have missed the actual facts substantiating your claims. Perhaps there aren't any?

Go look at the documentation for a listing. It'll be there, and by the time netblocks are listed, it'll be pretty impressive.

Re:What am I missing?

[crucini]

Your post presents an incomplete picture. The reason why spam-support IP addresses are listed is that spam is frequently sent either from throwaway accounts or via open relays. Thus, there is no originating IP to blacklist. But the spammers frequently depend on driving traffic to a web site. The most effective way to fight these spammers is to block access to their web sites. ISPs who deliberately harbor such web sites are outcasts. They are intentionally choosing to pollute the internet with unwanted garbage, with the consequence that other networks may refuse to carry their traffic. And when a spam ISP evades an IP address listing by moving the offending site to a different address, MAPS natually tends to list the whole block.

I wish that in answering someone's request for factual information you would include the appropriate context. Seen in that context, MAPS's actions appear more reasonable.

Re:What am I missing?

[Todd Knarr]

Actually, Jaime, sites are put onto the RBL for three reasons:

1. Spam originates from them and they have failed to do anything about it despite repeated complaints over the course of months.
2. They host web sites belonging to proven spammers.
3. They sell programs and materials whose only purpose is to enable spammers to spam.

Those criteria are well-known by anyone who knows about MAPS at all. And yes, this blacklisting catches anyone associated with the spammers or the ISPs who support them in these ways. That's the point: to force those ISPs to choose between the spammers and the non-spammers. Complaints from the rest of us about the spammers don't have any effect because it doesn't hurt the ISP to ignore them. We aren't their customers, after all. It's only when their customers begin to complain and take their business elsewhere that the ISPs do anything.

It's the Internet equivalent of going into a shoe shop and telling the owner "I don't like Nike's child-labor practices. So, not only am I not going to buy Nike shoes, I'm not going to do business with you, at all, as long as you continue to carry Nike shoes on your shelves. And neither is half the rest of the area.". If you just stopped buying Nike shoes but kept patronizing him, he'd have no reason to stop carrying Nikes. He still gets your money for other brands, plus money from people buying Nike. But when he's got to choose between carrying Nike and losing half his customers, it's a slightly different story. And that's what every single one of us who want our ISPs using the MAPS RBL are doing to the ISPs who continue to host spammers.

Re:IP-less virtual hosting victim?

[Angst Badger]

There's not much MAPS could have done to prevent this from happening, assuming an RBL listing was necessary. It looks like their ISP is using IP-less virtual hosting, relying upon the browser-provided Host: header to determine where the user is sent.

What, you mean like the vast majority of small ISPs and their webhosting customers do because A) it can be expensive or impossible to acquire scads of IP addresses from your upstream provider, B) the HTTP 1.1 standard explicitly encourages this, and C) the current IPv4 address space is running increasingly short of free addresses and IPv6 has been coming Real Soon Now for eons?

Why should innocent parties have to go hunting for new ISPs because the vigilantes who run MAPS can't be bothered to worry about collateral damage? Unless the legal tradition has vastly changed in the last ten minutes, that's negligence on their part, and yes, they can and should be sued for it.

Please don't think I have any sympathy for either censorware or spam, but I have even less for a self-appointed judicial and enforcement agency with no legal authority and no accountability to the electorate. I might feel differently if they actually did a good job, but MAPS has a long, long history of heavy-handed tactics, incompetence, and a refusal to deal fairly with those site admins who DO fix open relays and ban customers who spam. We need actual laws to regulate spam, not arrogant nerds who neither know what they're doing nor do it in good faith.

Re:How do I mod the article up?

[WNight]

On the off chance you're not joking and really don't know...

There's a hackerish "funny" that goes like C|N>K which stands for "Coke piped through the Nose and redirected onto the Keyboard".

I'm assuming that's what the parent poster meant. Laughing while drinking and spraying it onto the keyboard.