Australian Anti-Spammer Wins Court Case 156
An anonymous reader writes "The Australian court system upheld the right of internet activists to campaign against junk email in a landmark decision today. Story from The Australian." Sounds like the spammers (T3 Direct, of Perth) were justly told off.
"lost income" (Score:5, Funny)
Apparently, as a result of Mr McNicol's actions, 153 penis enlargers and 23 fake degrees never managed to get sold. The bastard.
Re:"lost income" (Score:1)
Re:"lost income" (Score:2)
T3Direct's new seminar lineup... (Score:5, Funny)
2. "Sending Commercial Email for Fun and Disprofit" (Oct. 19th)
3. "Abusing Educational Institutions' APNIC Records" (Oct. 24th)
4. "How to be a TOTALLY ANNOYING SELF-RIGHTEOUS ASSHOLE SPAMMER" (Every day at 2PM)
Let's see people attend these T3Direct seminars
Re:T3Direct's new seminar lineup... (Score:1)
Attaboy!
I am not spews, as the rest of the world (with the assistance of nanae*) can verify.
But if I ever meet a spews admin I will give them all the (meagre) computing resources and beer I can afford.
The fight against spam will be won through education of ISP's, sysadmins and users and it will be won.
*usenet:news.admin.net-abuse.email
Fund-raising for anti-spam offensive (Score:5, Funny)
Seems he'll meet his funding targets, after being promised a substantial sum from a former government dignitary from Nigeria...
Re:Fund-raising for anti-spam offensive (Score:1)
And if that fails, he can always start emailing people at random...
Legal costs? (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, an important point is that the court found that the plaintiff did not show that contacting SPEWS was illegal. This is good news (in Australia at least), as if the case had hinged on whether he contacted a blacklister or not, it would have a chilling effect on free speech and also anti-spam efforts - you wouldn't even be allowed to tell a third party that you received some email that might, possibly, be spam.
Re:Legal costs? (Score:5, Interesting)
This wasn't a lawsuit in the American sence, but more like a "cease and decist" order.
It would be unlikely that the plaintiff would have had to pay costs.
In a defamation (sp?) action a few years ago, one of the lower courts held that there was an "Implied right of free speach" in the Australian constitution. I can't recall if this was upheld in the Supreme Court. (Free speach regarding complaints against a federal politician). I think that the arguments about reporting spam would fall under this category and there would be a right to report spam to a 3rd part.
I am not a Lawyer (don't it show!), I don't even play one of TV.
Re: The judgment available electronically (Score:2, Informative)
Joey's legal bill ran to a couple of tens of thousands USD and yes, the judge ordered those costs be paid by the plaintiff. Joey McNicol posted as such in news.admin.net-abuse.email last night.
The judgment can be found at http://t3-v-mcnicol.ilaw.com.au/judgment.pdf
Proletariat of the world, unite to kill spammers.
FREEDOM OF SPEECH (Score:1, Informative)
The situation would be different if someone falsely reported a person to be a spammer with te intention of damaging the "spammers" reputation or business that would be a tortious act.
Re:Legal costs? (Score:2)
It wasn't a lower court, it was the High Court. And it only protects political speech - reporting spam is not political.
Re:Legal costs? (Score:5, Informative)
In Australia, loser normally pays the legal bills of the winner. This is especially true when the suit is deemed by the judge to be a waste of the court's time.
Disclaimer: IANAL. Judges have the power to order the loser to pay legal bills, but aren't required to. They usually do unless the case is fairly close. Oh, and law firms that make up insane charges (in order to profit from this) get severely rapped over the knuckles.
Re:Legal costs? (Score:5, Informative)
- The decision was on summary judgment, which means that the court simply decided that the plaintiff's was unable to make his case.
- The plaintiffs case was that the defendant had contacted SPEWS and placed the plaintiff on the blacklist and that being placed on the blacklist had cost him economically.
- Being unable to prove that the defendant had in fact contacted SPEWS, the rest of the claim is moot.
- The decision on summary judgment is NOT binding in any way shape of form on any case that comes up in the future.
- The decision as to whether its illegal to place someone on a blacklist such as SPEWS was not decided. If the plaintiff was able to prove that the defendant HAD contacted SPEWS, then the claim might not have been dismissed on summary judgment. THEN it might have allowed the court to decide if it is illegal put someone on a blacklist.
- Australia is a 'common law' country. A judgement in an Australian jurisdiction such as Western Australia would only ever been seen as 'persuasive precedence' in any jurisdiction besides WA.
- Western Australia is one of 2 states in Australia who have a codified legal system. This means that the common law is generally superseded by specific coded laws.
The long and the short of the above points is that there was absolutely nothing in the decision which can have any impact on any other spammers activities anywhere in the world. For starters it was on summary judgement, so in a common-law state it wouldnt hold any precedence. It was in a codified state in which the decision was made, so even if it was decided on the facts, the decision would have no more than persuasive precedence anywhere else. Finally, because WA is codified, the persuasive precedence would hold less sway than precedence from another jurisdiction.
So the decision means squat.
Re:Legal costs? (Score:5, Informative)
IAAALS (I Am An Australian Law Student)...
Ditto
Australia is a 'common law' country. A judgement in an Australian jurisdiction such as Western Australia would only ever been seen as 'persuasive precedence' in any jurisdiction besides WA.
I would put a rider on that. Unlike the United States, the common law in Australia is unified: every state has the same common law. Every state in the US, on the other hand, has its own version of the common law as developed by that state's courts. This difference is a result of the expanded jurisdiction of the High Court of Australia as compared to the US Supreme Court. The High Court is a general court of appeal, having appellate jurisdiction over just about anything in addition to its original and appellate jurisdiction over constitutional and federal matters. The US Supreme Court only has jurisdiction over federal and constitutional matters, and only decides state cases as they conflict with some constitutional provision or principle. The creation of such an integrated judicature administering a single common law results in the courts of each state having a lot more respect for the judgments of courts in other states. However, this case wouldn't appear to establish any new rule or principle, so it can't be relied on as precedent for anything.
Western Australia is one of 2 states in Australia who have a codified legal system. This means that the common law is generally superseded by specific coded laws.
Really? I was aware that the criminal law of WA, as well as that of Queensland (my home state) and Tasmania, was codified, but that the rest of the common law has been either left intact or modified, not extinguished or supplanted, by statute.
Finally, although I haven't seen the judgment, I would also add that in Australia costs usually follow the event (i.e. whoever loses generally has to pay the other side's costs as well as their own legal bills), so it's likely the plaintiffs would have had costs awarded against them.
Re:Legal costs? (Score:5, Informative)
I just had a quick flick through the judgment [ilaw.com.au] as kindly linked to in Eggplant's post [slashdot.org]. The case was decided on common law grounds, the registrar considering the two torts of interference with business or trade interests (which isn't yet recognized in Australia) and interference with contractual relations. Defamation was knocked out by reference to a provision in the WA Criminal Code that bars accurate statements from being defamatory.
So the case was decided on the common law after all. That's a relief, if WA was entirely code-based, I should have known about it. Western Australia may have been nearly colonized by the French, but that doesn't mean it has to adopt their heathen legal system :-P.
Re:Legal costs? (Score:1)
Re:Legal costs? (Score:1)
SPEWS is just a list. (Score:5, Funny)
Just fire up your newsreader and...
Oh, look. New porn in the alt.binaries.pictures.erotica groups...
Never mind!
Re:SPEWS is just a list. (Score:4, Informative)
Shaun
Re:SPEWS is just a list. (Score:3, Interesting)
I've read NANAE threads where my fellow American Sysadmins have configured their mail servers to deny/bounce/devnull any e-mail with the
Oy...Aussie SPAM is almost as annoying as the crap we get from China and Russia!
Re:SPEWS is just a list. (Score:3, Funny)
Oy...Aussie SPAM is almost as annoying as the crap we get from China and Russia!
But at least its English
Re:SPEWS is just a list. (Score:1)
Re:SPEWS is just a list. (Score:1)
Cool, at least this ensures us poor .au's don't receive anything from such ivory tower morons.
Oi...Yank SELF-RIGHTEOUSNESS is just as annoying as the crap from anywhere else! Hmm, what is this "Post Anonymously" button for?Re:SPEWS is just a list. (Score:3, Informative)
http://t3-v-mcnicol.ilaw.com.au/ [ilaw.com.au]
And another:
http://t3-v-mcnicol.ilaw.com.au/ [ilaw.com.au]
Re:SPEWS is just a list. (Score:1)
The second one is much better than the first.
Re:SPEWS is just a list. (Score:1)
Here's a website for this case:
http://t3-v-mcnicol.ilaw.com.au/ [ilaw.com.au]
And another:
http://t3-v-mcnicol.ilaw.com.au/ [ilaw.com.au]
Hey! Are you trying to /. our poor server TWICE??
Unless you got to the two different sites via our mirrored DNS setup, but then messed up the links...
/me watches the MRTG output :)
Re:SPEWS is just a list. (Score:2)
What if it had been in America? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What if it had been in America? (Score:1, Insightful)
But every time I hear about how badly a videogame or feature film was edited down to appease their "dragonian" [sic - dorky reference to a
Eh, apples, oranges, I know, I know. I'm not really trying to troll, my point is just that there are tradeoffs everywhere you turn in life.
Re:What if it had been in America? (Score:1, Funny)
Dingo's are just too tough...
Re:What if it had been in America? (Score:1)
I hear that baby fed ones are relatively tender.
Re:What if it had been in America? (Score:2, Insightful)
As opposed to the US, where our constitution guarantees freedom, and congress just ignores it most of the time.
Re:What if it had been in America? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:What if it had been in America? (Score:5, Interesting)
Australia is vastly different to the USA. Our consitutution guarentees us almost no rights. No freedom of speech, or religion, or of the press. No right to keep and bear arms. No protection aginst unreasonable searches and siezures, or against self incrimination. We have no doctrine of "fair use" under copyright laws, meaning that taping a movie tonight to watch tomorrow is illegal, because our courts never decided we have the right to time-shift anything. We have our own version [law.gov.au] of the DMCA, with penalties of up to five years jail. Australia is a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live here. Oh wait, I do.
Re:What if it had been in America? (Score:5, Informative)
Wrong! It's actually protected by law [austlii.edu.au], and further extended by the 2000 amendment. Similar fair use clauses apply to other media. And see my other post: we do have freedom of religion guaranteed!
Re:What if it had been in America? (Score:4, Informative)
You're about half right and I'm about half wrong. I did pick a bad example (ie broadcast television), because that is protected for personal use (I goofed, my bad). However, I think you're confusing fair use with fair dealing. Fair use is stuff like time-shifting and space-shifting and applies in the USA. Fair dealing is what is defined in Division Three [law.gov.au] of the Australian Copyright Act, and is a much narrower definition.
As an example, in the USA if I own an audio CD and encode (rip) those tracks to MP3 files for my own personal use, this is "space-shifting" and is legal as a fair use. In Australia, this is not considered fair dealing, and is therefore illegal. The Australian Record Industry Association is on record as saying this is the case.
Re:What if it had been in America? (Score:5, Informative)
"Traditional freedoms need to be modified" (Score:1)
Senator NETTLE -- Mr President, I ask a supplementary question. I thank the minister for his answer and I am sure that he will be able to pursue that further. Could the minister assure the Senate that the government will not be using the horrendous events that happened on the weekend as an excuse to justify a further crackdown on civil liberties in Australia?
Senator HILL -- We certainly will not crack down on civil liberties, but we do believe that, in effectively responding to terrorism, there is sometimes a need for us all to accept that the extent of our traditional freedoms needs to be modified in these circumstances. That is why we have put legislation before this parliament which has that effect. We seek to do no more to modify those traditional liberties than is absolutely necessary to attack this terrorist threat, but if ever we need an example and illustration of how real this threat is we have had it in the last few days. We must do everything possible to effectively respond to it and to protect our people.
Re:What if it had been in America? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:What if it had been in America? (Score:1, Interesting)
not that i've yet found any other country that i'd like to live in, but every country has got its fucked-up parts
spend a week reading news from
but with the whole bali thing, i dont think there's gonna be much else on the news here - you may not have heard of it yet - i mean, i dont think any americans died in it.
Re:News coverage (OT) (Score:1)
It was the first item on ABC News last night.
IIRC, two Americans died or are presumed dead.
However, my guess is that it would have gotten short shrift if it weren't for our country's hysterical freedom-sapping anti-terrorism insanity that has occurred since 2001-09-11.
Even so, BBC World's coverage was more comprehensive than ABC's "World" News Tonight (or even PBS's News Hour), and it wouldn't surprise me if not much more is heard about this incident on American commercial television.
Re:What if it had been in America? (Score:1)
I'd say the majority of spam is from Pr0n sites and other single person buisnesses that the court would already look down on. You're odds arnt that bad really, considering the Fax.com lawsuit resulting[1] in them being liable for $5.38 Million in damages.
[1] after fact checking [google.com] this, I found that a judge ordered the FCC to stop persuing this, but it is still a good example IMO
Re:What if it had been in America? (Score:2)
Re:What if it had been in America? (Score:2, Insightful)
Cheers
I was at the hearing... (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's a juicy little tidbit: The company actually uses an application running on a Linux box to send out all that spam. It's called SpamIt, and uses MySQL as its backend.
(posting anonymously for obvious reasons)
Opensource often use to spam. (Score:1, Interesting)
Mixed blessing (Score:5, Insightful)
A greater victory would be if a judge ruled that spammers were a public nuisance with no legitimate business interests.
Future anti-spammers may still be faced with the prospect of legal action, if their is sufficient evidence to demonstrate their involvement in blocking spam.
Re:Mixed blessing (Score:2)
Re:Mixed blessing (Score:5, Informative)
Judges can't just make up judgements they like. They can only rule on cases brought before them. This is a good thing.
So why is it still a nice thing, for australians? Well it has been ruled that the none of the actions that where alleged where in fact illegal. This is even better then if he had found the accussed innocent. You can't be innocent or guilty of an action if that action is not illegal. Just as you will never have to defend youreselve in court for breathing with intent, no one in australia has to fear being found guilty of reporting a spammer since doing so is not a crime.
So while no ruling has been made on the legality of spam, this was not the case brought before the judge and so he could make a judgement upon it, he has ruled it legal to blacklist spammers. So from now on in australia, unless a higher court rules otherwise, it is 100% legal to report spam to 3rd party even if this results in eventuall damages to the spammer due to their spam being stopped.
Nice going australia. Lets hope it holds up in appeal courts.
Appeals? (Score:2)
Re:Appeals? (Score:1)
/.'ed, the page loads slower than old people fu.. (Score:2, Informative)
Anti-spammer wins court case
Caitlin Fitzsimmons
October 14, 2002
THE Australian court system upheld the right of internet activists to campaign against junk email in a landmark decision today.
The District Court of Western Australia dismissed the lawsuit by Perth-based direct marketing firm T3 Direct against anti-spam activist Joey McNicol, describing it as "speculative and based on propositions (the plaintiff) knew to be incorrect".
The Which Company, trading as T3 Direct, had sued Mr McNicol for allegedly getting the company black-listed on anti-spam website SPEWS.org
SPEWS - or the Spam Prevention Early Warning System - publishes a list of internet protocol (IP) addresses believed to be used for unsolicited bulk email or spam. Network administrators and internet service providers (ISPs) can refer to the SPEWS list to block traffic from the black-listed IP addresses on their networks.
T3 claimed the action cost at least $82,000 in lost income and the cost of repairing its computer systems. Mr McNicol denied contacting SPEWS and argued that nothing he did or was accused of doing was illegal and today the court granted Mr McNicol's application for summary judgment.
The court found that T3 offered neither proof that Mr McNicol had contacted SPEWS nor that doing so was illegal.
The court rejected T3's claim that such a complaint to SPEWS was "unfounded", noting that T3 had elsewhere admitted to sending unsolicited advertising emails.
Australian IT
Re:/.'ed, the page loads slower than old people fu (Score:1)
SPEWS (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:SPEWS (Score:2)
In short, there is no way anyone can contact SPEWS or reasonably claim to have contacted spews.
The only way to get on the SPEWS list is to:
1. Send spam to one of the many addresses used by SPEWS as spamtraps
2. Ignore complaints about spamming send from those addresses.
In short, only ISPs who persistently ignore spam get SPEWed. This is such a bloody useful indicator of email I don't want to read that I use it everywhere I can.
If you get an email rejected by an ISP who values SPEWS opinion, it's telling you that your ISP is a bad neighbour and values spammer dollars more than customer dollars.
dave
Re:SPEWS (Score:2)
The answer you're looking for is that it's an infalable system, but that's not the answer you'll get from me. This post ought to be "redundant", but somehow many people still don't know of the pitfalls.
The most common abuse is that the "opinion" is extended from the IP numbers of the spammers to a large block of IP numbers for the whole ISP that provided access to the spammer. The reasoning for this (usually) is that ISPs won't take adction against spammers unless there is some consequence for their inaction, and having all their customers on a blacklist has indeed been effective at coercing ISPs to ban spammers.
But the cost is that dozens, hundreds, or sometimes even thousands of innocent and unsuspecting domain names experience problems with a portion of their perfectly legitimate email. Many systems that implement the blacklists don't bounce messages with a meaningful explaination that an anti-spam blacklist was used to reject the message, and some don't even send a "mailer daemon" bounce at all. Even worse is that systems that implement the blacklists always allow their users to SEND to sites on the blacklist. The result is that legitimate businesses and orginazations can send a legitimate REPLY to a legitimate message they received, because the sender allowed an outgoing message, but rejected its reply.
The injustice grows exponentially when the decision to trust the blacklist is made by an ISP or large organization, and not the individual end user who won't receive messages due to it. The result is that perfectly legitimate communication between two "third parties" is disrupted, and neither party was involved in the exchange of "opinions".
So in theory, blacklists collecting and offering opinions sounds so good that nothing could go wrong. Three things can and regularily do go wrong:
In practice, the "opinions" are regularily expanded to intentionally cover large groups of spammer and non-spam customers alike at an ISP.
In practice, software implements the blocking badly so that blocked messages don't contain useful messages about the blocking, and in some cases packets are silently dropped. Many inaccurately blocked users don't truely discover the problem for some time, and when they do they are unable to get their legitimate business/organization off the blacklist (they're told to find another ISP... but where is safe?)
In practice, the decision to trust the opinions is made by an ISP or large organization, not the end user. Sometimes the end user is told they are using an "anti-spam solution" without any disclosure of the adverse effects on some legitimate messages.
Those are the things that can, and regularily do go wrong.
isn't this a bit like hit and miss censure-ship? (Score:4, Interesting)
i applaud efforts to keep kiddie porn (virtual too... though i realize that virtual porn technically is probly legal... but let us not open *that* can of worms today)
i think the library should carry banned books (like those heinous atrocities, Bridge to Terabitia and Hamlet and others [fatchucks.com]
and i think spammers should rot in that circle of hell that Cerberus pukes all over. (ok, my Dante is rusty, i can't remember which circle, or if i got the puker right.. someone help me here)
but something seems fishy here. the company sued that one guy cos he "black-listed" their firm. the article didn't go into much detail, but it sounds as if that one guy, Joey McNicol, has quite a bit of power. i mean, what if i am a competitor of some company and i can convince Joey McNicol that their IP needs to be banned. as long as Joey McNicol is a true-blue swell guy, there is no way that can happen, but what if he isn't? i am in no way saying we need SPEWS regulated, but i wonder what some rather yucky worst case scenario - long term possible problems could arise from its misuse.
-John
i applaud efforts to keep kiddie porn ILLEGAL!!!!! (Score:1)
Re:isn't this a bit like hit and miss censure-ship (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not aware of any vaguely popular blacklists that would add an IP/range on the strength of one random unknown person presenting what appeared to be a spam from that IP. That would obviously be ridiculous. Do you really think they would become as popular as they are if they were that stupid?
Either you have to be a known person with a known reputation, or you have to be one of many people presenting mutually corroborating evidence (some popular blacklists work on a voting or threshold system), or the blacklist operators have to have received the spam themselves.
Re:isn't this a bit like hit and miss censure-ship (Score:5, Interesting)
yea, i agree. but that australian news article didn't really go into detail of how SPEWS decides who stays and who gets banned. after a quick read of the the SPEWS faq [spews.org] it sounds like they have an automated system overseen by several admins. (news flash) and they only target known spammers and spammer friendly sites. and they stress that anyone who uses SPEWS does so willingly and knowing that some legitimate email could be bounced.
so i suppose in this case, i am sure it's probly a pretty benign system. however, like any banning list, there are people that must make the decisions what to ban and what not to ban. yea, overt spammers get banned, but what about the grey area? also, what about the ones who get banned for no reason? (SPEWS admits it happens and even has a full page [spews.org] dedicated to it.
what i was alluding to in my first post was that having any list like this is a form of censure-ship. though SPEWS says it is not:
from the faq:
Q10: Isn't SPEWS censorship?
A10: No, SPEWS is a list of areas of the Internet that some people do not wish to communicate with. Think of it as one group's Consumer Reports review of portions of the billions of Internet addresses. These are the ones SPEWS members have a poor opinion of. SPEWS is not anti-commerce and fully supports the USA's First Amendment and other nation's free speech protections. In fact, the USA's Supreme Court agrees with the SPEWS view. The creators of SPEWS are its main users and who it was designed for, if others decide to also use its data, they are exercising their own rights. No one is forced to use SPEWS.
no one is forced to abide to banned book lists [pabbis.com] either. in fact the caveat in the above faq answer closely mirrors the caveat in the pabbis banned book site at the link above that says essentially, that pabbis doesn't think books are bad, that is up to parents to decide. they just provide a list. SPEWS doesn't decide that they are bad, they just provide a list of spammers and companies do what they wish.
but like i said, upon further reading of the SPEWS site, i think they are probly a good thing in the end, but i still think that if used incorrectly (just like every single tool and technology ever created... yea, even sporks) it could become a bothersome hassle or even, in some wacko Brave New World scenario, a way to silence the voice of the people. we could have lists to ban IP's from known dissidant factions or unpopular opinions.
but those days are a few decades away still
-John
Re:isn't this a bit like hit and miss censure-ship (Score:2)
a farewell to arms?
of mice and men?
american heritage dictionary??
animal farm?
flowers for algernon?
WHERE'S WALDO?????
these are banned books? i find that hard to believe...
Re:isn't this a bit like hit and miss censure-ship (Score:2)
Well, maybe not. Go ask the American Library Association; according to that List of Lists, for some reason it's 87 on the list of "most challenged" books. One could argue that it's not much of a "book" if the objective is to stare at pictures and find somebody, but *shrug* maybe the daemonologie explanation is more satisfying...
Re:isn't this a bit like hit and miss censure-ship (Score:2)
Sure there is. MAPS lists and Paul Vixie. :-) Not to rag on Paul. He's a swell guy. But if he said to list them because they're spammers, I'd believe him without a doubt.
Re:isn't this a bit like hit and miss censure-ship (Score:3, Interesting)
I would say though, that censorship is usually a Bad Thing - it is just that a blacklisting organisation like SPEWS is not realing censoring - they simply provide a list of spammers to people who want to be able to avoid spam. No one is taking away T3's right to send email, or especially their right to say what they like in that email - but some people would like to be able to choose not to get it.
If a company was unfairly added to a blacklist, they are free to negotiate with the organisation concerned to get their addresses removed. In this case of T3, they are indeed spam merchants, so their chances are happily slim.
Re:isn't this a bit like hit and miss censure-ship (Score:1)
point taken, however, i wasn't referring to the US constitution and trying to apply it in a foreign land. that would be silly. i only mentioned that little bit to let everyone know that i wasn't some civil liberties crusader out trying to rid of the world of censoring and banning anything. I am not like that and didn't want my post to be taken that way. sorry if i wasn't clear.
as for the rest, yea, in this case T3 was probly guilty, especially since it came to my attention that i misread and Joey wasn't even part of SPEWS. oh, and i agree it's not censoring, but if enough people adopt the list, it is effectively the same as censoring... though a full censorship of those stupid emails would be nice.
regards, John
Re:isn't this a bit like hit and miss censure-ship (Score:4, Insightful)
First, Joey has no known relationship to SPEWS. T3 deliberately or accidentally confused them because SPEWS does not publish contact info while Joey was visibly complaining about them. SPEWS almost certainly blacklisted T3 on their own without being told by anyone - they monitor spamtrap addresses.
Could SPEWS abuse their power? Well, MAPS and ORBS both abused their power at one point by adding 'spite listings'. This led to the downfall of ORBS and contributed to the irrelevance of MAPS. SPEWS is under a microscope - every one of their listings can be challenged on nanae. On the very rare occasions where they're wrong, the listings are quickly changed. If SPEWS ever has a single known persistent listing that is not justified in the eyes of the anti-spam community, there will be substantial protest and a serious loss of confidence in SPEWS. So far there has never been any mystery - every listed address is linked in some obvious way to persistent mail abusers.
Re:isn't this a bit like hit and miss censure-ship (Score:2, Interesting)
point taken. also to the rest, i agree, if SPEWS begins to misbehave, it will lose power. i guess what sparked me to comment was my concern of lists of IP's being gathered and distributed in legit ways and the possibility of those lists being misused somehow. no i am not a government-hating paranoid nut
-John
Who is T3? (Score:1, Funny)
Dang it, I've got mail.
A defensive, not offensive move ... (Score:4, Insightful)
What is a much harder process is for the individual to bring a suit against a spammer. Various tort actions (based on trespass to chattel) have succeeded but the prohibitive cost for individuals to assemble and argue their case makes this course viable only for deep-pocketed ISPs (who tend to bear a disproportionate share of the cost of wasted bandwidth).
To solve the problem requires much more than legal maneouvers. Fundamentally the internet mail architecture has structural weaknesses and until schemes such as IM2000 (http://cr.yp.to/im2000.html) are implemented, spammers will always have an economic incentive in socialising the costs and privatising the benefits.
LL
Not exactly a win? (Score:5, Interesting)
So in theory nobody exactly won...for had the T3 posted and/or obtained the information that linked Mr McNicol to the blacklisting, the outcome may have been different. Though they have raised an interesting question as well, personally I'm interested why did T3 say that contacting spews would be illegal?
Re:Not exactly a win? (Score:1)
Speading truthful information about a company that shows them in a bad light is illegal.
Wait, no it's not.
Do I have to be afraid? (Score:5, Funny)
Oh well, if they try something, I sue them for trying to abuse my computer as open relay and win the case.
Haha... (Score:3, Funny)
The funniest part of it all... (Score:5, Interesting)
"15 Counsel for the plaintiff suggests that it would be unfair to end this action at this stage without giving the plaintiff the opportunity to further explore this case using the interlocutory processes now available to it in these proceedings.
16 I do not agree. The plaintiff has commenced an action which appears to me to be speculative and based on propositions which it knew to be incorrect (see my earlier discussion regarding unfounded). If not an abuse, the action is akin to one."
In other words, the Deputy Registrar feels that T3 and Mansfield's bringing this suit forward was as close to abuse as they could get without the action being prosecuted as being frivolous and without just cause! What a maroon!
I read NANAE regularly; this whole T3 Direct saga has been nothing but the highest entertainment to me. It's even better than watching circus clowns!
Rich
Why is this good? (Score:4, Interesting)
If it was your job to come up with a technological solution to SPAM, what would it be? Come on people, we don't have to sit around and wait for government action to "fix" this.
Maybe part of the solution could be a service where mail servers could freely send timestamp, IP address, and maybe checksum on the last 10 lines of incoming emails. If there is a high percentage of matches that are milliseconds apart, it's probably spam, and the service could send out "probable spam" warnings to the servers that sent the checksums. The servers could then act on the info as they please. The mail servers could delay delivery for maybe 7 minutes to see if they get a "probable spam" warning (remember, email was not designed to be an 'immediate delivery' service).
This was off the top of my head, and yes, I see numerous holes in it (legitimate mailing lists not withstanding), but this could be part of a solution in conjunction with other ideas.
So, what would you suggest?
Re:Why is this good? (Score:5, Interesting)
First, I'd set up some spamtrap addresses, at various ISPs throughout the world. I'd seed these addresses on web pages and USENET, but never use them to sign up for anything. Thus, there's guaranteed to be no truth to the claim 'you signed up for this'.
Anyone spamming these addresses gets traced and a complaint is sent to their ISP. If the same spammer sends again from the same ISP, another complaint is sent, and the spammer's own IP number is added to a published blacklist. Continued spamming leads to the blacklisting of larger and larger sections of IP address space, up to and including the entire ISP. The idea is to put pressure on the ISP to disconnect, rather than just move, the spammer.
Obviously this will piss many people off, so it would have to be done anonymously - no contact information, either for tip-offs or for complaints. I'd monitor news.admin.net-abuse.email, and if anyone posted a genuine error in my list, I'd fix it ASAP.
Oh, wait... someone already did that. Well, that's saved me a lot of time, then!
Re:Why is this good? (Score:4, Insightful)
And my, It has worked so well.
The problem with blacklisting:
1. It easily affects large numbers of innocent people
2. It requires active participation by everyone
3. It does not stop spam
I was hoping for some creative new ideas. Is everyone of the opinion that spam is not stoppable without legislation?
Re:Why is this good? (Score:1)
It may sound unfair, but given that spammers are despicable scum who deserve horrible, painful death, I don't see an easier or more effective means of dealing with ISPs who have the gall to support them.
Re:Why is this good? (Score:2)
It may sound unfair, but given that spammers are despicable scum who deserve horrible, painful death, I don't see an easier or more effective means of dealing with ISPs who have the gall to support them.
So because there is nothing "easier or more effective", that makes it ok to intentionally cause harm to innocent third parties??
I'm just trying to keep it straight in my mind who are the "despicable scam who deserve horrible, painful death".......... for causing large numbers of users to have a harder time with their email?
Re:Why is this good? (Score:2)
It is not the responsibility of my ISP to deal with another ISP's spammers. If the only way to stem the flood of garbage is in a method that keeps out some legitimate traffic, then that's what should be done. Innocents who are adversely affected should reconsider giving their money to an ISP that openly harbors criminals.
Re:Why is this good? (Score:2)
No, it's not like a pizza restaruant at all.
It's like the postal service. It's like UPS and FedEx.
It's a matter of sending something to someone with every reasonably expectation that it will in fact be delivered as it should be. And you've already paid (to your ISP, who has paid unstream networks), so why shouldn't your message get to where you are legitimately sending it?
You don't sit at your computer and somehow cause others to create messages and send them to you at your request. Email works nothing like calling for a pizza to be delivered. The web works like that, but not email. It's called e-MAIL because it's modeled after, yes that's right, normal postal MAIL.
It is in fact like the postal service refusing to deliver letters and packages to a whole neighborhood because of a few undesirables.
If the only way to stem the flood of garbage is in a method that keeps out some legitimate traffic, then that's what should be done.
- It is not the only way. Many other approaches exist. Other approachs generally do not harm third parties. And speaking in a larger social context about what "should be done", laws regulating spam are also an approach.
- Even if blacklists were the only way, interrupting service to innocent and unsuspecting third parties is not acceptable.
The whole reason spam is such a problem is that it hinders normal legitimate communication. Errant blacklisting has the same evil effect.Spam causes frustration with ugly messages, and blacklisting causes frustration for people whose legitimate emails bounce or go undelivered.
Both spam and blacklists disrupt legitimate email communication and both frustrate normal users.
residents of the neighbourhood who want service should understand the reason for the refusal and either work to remove their crackhouses/spammers or move somewhere else.
How the hell is anyone supposed to do this with ISPs? You can't easily tell in advance if an ISP is hosting any spammers, and even if you could, you can't know down the road if they will in a few months, a year, or in two years. Companies change owners and management.
Spammers trick ISPs all the time, and get booted after a short time. The blacklist maintainers (using that word lightly) are "trigger happy". They'll add a massive block of an ISP instantly. I was personally involved in a case a year ago where thousands of IPs (including mine) were blacklisted, and had been blacklisted for many months, all because a spammer operated from a single IP number for about 1 week. The ISP shut them down. The blacklist even had a note with the date that the ISP confirmed the spammer would be removed within 1 week. But did they remove the block. No. I had to send lots of emails and prove the spammer had moved on. I've had a couple other blacklist encounters where the "maintainer" was completely uncooperative and refused to remove the block (even though I could demonstrate that no spammer was currently operating in that network).
I find it absolutely amazing that anti-spam advocates, who are supposedly fighting to ensure the email is a viable communication medium free from excessive unwanted advertisting, are willing to intentionally disrupt service of others. The effect is to weaken the usefulness of email as a system.
Those who support the notion of blacklists do so only because they are ignorant of the harmful side effects, or they care nothing of implementing a system for the greater good of email in general... only so they can rid their own inboxes of ugly, distasteful messages, at the possible expense of some legitimate ones too.
Why not just throw the baby out with the bathwater too?
Re:Why is this good? (Score:2)
Re:Why is this good? (Score:2)
As are deliberate actions that waste ordinary users time and frustrate their efforts to send and receive legitimate email.
Spammers and Blacklisters alike cause ordinary users to have trouble with their email. They're both unproductively waste ordinary people's time.
Blacklists are arguably worse than spammers, with the exception of filling inboxes (rare with small spam, common with email worms using large attachments), spam only causes ordinary users to have to delete unwanted messages. Though fewer are effected by blacklists, the DISRUPTION OF SERVICE to ordinary users is much worse. Desirable messages are not delivered, which is far worse than having a desirable message amoung dozens of unwanted adverts.
Re:Why is this good? (Score:1)
The thing is, though, email is _not_ a government-mandated public service. It's a privilege you enjoy as a consequence of paying someone to maintain an email server, and for the bandwidth necessary to access it.
Now, if I'm running a mail server, it's _my_ server. My network - my rules; I am absolute dictator. I'll block what I like for whatever reasons I like, and the only people who can complain are my users, who pay for the service. Complaints from them might change my mind. Complaints from outsiders won't.
So if I feel that a particular network on the internet is so spam-ridden that it's not worth accepting mail from, I won't accept the mail. It's that simple.
In practice, of course, you can be more flexible than this; the ideal might be some web-based front-end to SpamAssassin, allowing the users themselves to set their own weightings to each blacklist and spam fingerprint, and their own threshold of spammishness above which mails will be dumped...
Re:Why is this good? (Score:1)
Blame the spammers and blame your ISP for supporting them. If it weren't for them, your ISP wouldn't be be listed. If your ISP kicks spammers off quickly (it should take no more than three days to terminate a spammer) and you find yourself blocked anyway, then you're probably dealing with a trigger happy ISP that is running their own filter, and SPEWS has nothing to do with it.
Spammers should be tortured and killed. Until that becomes legal, this is the best solution available.
Re:Why is this good? (Score:2)
I must take issue with this.
SPEWS isn't as slow to act as the now defunt RBL, but SPEWS does not automatically add an entry after a single spam.
SPEWS acts when a spammer is not kicked off of their ISP after a history of spamming. One spam run that was an admitted mistake might not make it to SPEWS but when it's a clear case of career spammers whose ISP isn't kicking them offline, their IP range is listed.
If, after a time, their connectivity still isn't cut, the
When a call went to Congress to regulate spam, Congress effectively said to let the internet regulate itself. SPEWS is the internet regulating itself. It's not always nice, and it may not seem fair, but spammers are a scummy lot who all deserve death and some ISPs, like Qwest and Verio have put greed over morals, ethics and the law. SPEWS is the answer.
If you're claiming to have had correspondence with the blacklist maintainers then you were not dealing with SPEWS. There is no way to contact SPEWS directly. The only way to get any correspondence is through posting on news.admin.net-abuse.email, and even then you will never receive a personal response because all SPEWS maintainers are anonymous so that there can be no SLAPP suits filed against them.
Back in the day of the RBL, the RBL could get legal threats and they would remove listings because fighting said challenges was costly. As a result, individual ISPs would take that remvoed RBL entry and add it to their own permanent filters, never to be removed until the heat death of the universe. SPEWS, because it cannot be sued, doesn't have that problem. It's actually a much better means of handling things because it is a central resource that cannot be smacked around with frivilous legal filings. With SPEWS there is a much lower chance that an ISP will find themselves permanently blocked by hundreds of individual blacklists because they let a spammer persist for too long.
I'm not ignorant of the collateral damage of blacklists. The lists were created specifically to cause collateral damage. The idea is that if you are paying for connectivity from an ISP that willingly supports criminals and criminal activity (again, Qwest, Verio, Cable and Wireless, Concentric, Hurricane Electric) and your service is blocked because some people have decided not to communicate with ISPs that openly tolerate illegal acts, your complaint is with your ISP and the spammer, because they are the ultimate cause of the blocakge. Bitch to your ISP, sue them for providing you with damaged goods (possibly knowing that said goods were damaged) or sue the spammers for the resulting loss of connectivity, but do not blame someone for not wanting to assocaite with criminals.
Re:Why is this good? (Score:2)
So... Introduce friction into email. A "default deny, whitelist accept" would work nicely. This is being done by IM programs such as ICQ, Ymessenger and AIM, and many people use these as much as email to stay in touch!
There's a project called ASK (Active Spam Killer) [paganini.net] that does this, as well. Basically, if somebody sends you an email, they get a bounce back requiring them to reply.
Spammers won't reply, friends will. Once friend has replied, all further email from him/her gets through unhindered.
It works perfect - 100% no spam, and no "false positives". But sometimes people don't understand that they just need to press "reply" and "send".
Laws won't fix spammers. Poorly applied bandaids like MAPS or RBL or SPEWS or whatever are very innefective, and do just as much to frustrate a valid provider as block SPAM to any noticable degree.
To fix email, you have to fix the POP/SMTP protocol itself to include authentication!
Re:Why is this good? - falacy in proposal (Score:1)
One day, however, I'm sure we will be in court over this because we have atourneys on retainer in 2 countries and that is a little more fire power than most spammers think is pointed at them.
Re:Why is this good? (Score:2)
Because spam is a social problem, not a technological one. It doesn't matter what technological 'solutions' you come up with, if someone wants to spam you, they are going to spam you.
To me all it this says is that nobody is serious enough about SPAM to come up with a smart solution.
Spammers lie and steal - are you suggesting that meatspace laws against fraud and theft are simply a failure to come up with a technological method of preventing them?
what would you suggest?
I would suggest making spam illegal.
At best, spam is theft of service. This needs to be recognized by legislators, and codified into law. Technological 'solutions' will meet with (at best) mediocre success.
Does litigation mean we've lost? (Score:3, Informative)
Similarly, in the past few years, at least in the States, we've begun to see legislation on a state-by-state basis. Mostly to no avail.
So if technology isn't working, and legislation isn't working then does this imply that us resorting litigation indicates we are beaten? Is taking these scum-buckets to court a last desperate attempt by those of us frustrated by this flood-o-crap we call spam?
Re:Does litigation mean we've lost? (Score:2)
And why the hell does the law fail to treat this exactly the way it treats a cracker who "wiggles around" some corporate firewall? (Yeah, yeah, rhetorical question....)
Re:Does litigation mean we've lost? (Score:2)
This shouldn't be surprising: Throughout ACLU vs Reno we were quite happy to assert that there was no technological approach to censorship which would work; If blocking porn as one class of Internet content is technologically impossible , I don't know why anyone would ever believe that blocking spam as another class of Internet content is even remotely feasible.
Blocking is blocking, and whether you're trying to blacklist spam or porn only depends on your politics, and I'm yet to see a technological representation of that.
- mark
So let's summarize... (Score:3, Insightful)
2) The court concluded that the Suing Spammer had not shown that reporting Spammer to SPEWS would have entitled Spammer to damages.
Now, for bonus points and to complete the in-session asskick of Suing Spammer,
3) The court notes that Suing Spammer has been sending unsolicited bulk e-mail, and so blacklisting Spammer on SPEWS was appropriate by whomever did it.
What a complete kickass! I just love it when people actually have common sense!
Joey McNichol and the Spammers at T3 Direct (Score:1)
But the spammer is going to appeal (Score:1)
Re:Which is better: (Score:2, Funny)
Re:3-step spam business plan: (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Send Spam
2. Profit
3. Attend Court
4. Hear "you naughty boy" lecture.
5. Pay small % of item no.2 in charges
6. Rinse
7. Repeat
Re:3-step spam business plan: (Score:3, Funny)
1:"Shall we pay for advertising?"
2:"Fsck no! Just click this big button here marked 'Spam'."
1:" . . . . "
2:"It's free."
1:"Hot damn!"