Dutch ISP Files Police Complaint Against Spamhaus 218
judgecorp writes "Dutch ISP A2B has filed police complaints against anti-spam project Spamhaus, calling its CEO 'nuts' and accusing him of blackmail. Spamhaus added all A2B's addresses to a spam blacklist, when A2B did not obey the letter of its demands in blocking a spammer."
Re:Incorrect summary (Score:5, Insightful)
If spamhaus starts blacklisting entities that do not spam, people will stop trusting and using spamhaus. Police or no, Spamhaus is harming itself when it oversteps its natural bounds.
Re:It's all about the Opinion (Score:5, Insightful)
Right, except that many people just configure their mail servers to take that opinion as gospel, and spamhaus certainly makes it easy to do so and encourages it.
So legally, you are indeed right. However, the end result is that their opinion carries a lot of weight, mostly because many many people just blindly apply it.
So, in effect, they become judge jury and executioner, in that, once their opnion is that you have transgressed, you will instantly be blackballed all over the internet. They have become little more than a bully, which is too bad because, I mostly like them and mostly agree that this is the right way to operate.
Of course.... I JUST posted my experience with them (or I should say, the experience that I came back from vacation to find one of my co-admins had):
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2474882&cid=37703752 [slashdot.org]
Re:It's all about the Opinion (Score:4, Insightful)
the end result is that [Spamhaus'] opinion carries a lot of weight, mostly because many many people just blindly apply it.
Mostly because Spamhaus rarely lists address ranges that aren't involved in spamming and network abuse, and even more rarely for long. Spamhaus EARNED its reputation for cautious listing at the same time others like SORBS earned reputations for over-zealousness.
That's why I'm surprised to see Slashdot folks taking these accusations seriously without any posted evidence. When Spamhaus lists an IP block, they document it publicly including their reasons. Sometimes it's because an organization has been caught moving spammers around inside their IP block. Sometimes there are other reasons. Usually they're pretty good reasons.
Where's the copy of that posting?
I know back when I ran an ISP, Spamhaus was the one I -didn't- have problems with.