Motion for a new POST NSF AUP

Sun Oct 15 21:11:18 UTC 1995

   From: Tim Bass <bass at linux.silkroad.com>
   Date: Sun, 15 Oct 1995 10:54:40 -0400 (EDT)

   A couple of interesting points have developed as a result of the latest
   'spam event'.  The first one is debatable, but I would like to comment,
   that my mailbox received 'one spam message' (which I deleted in a few
   milliseconds) that generated hundereds of 'anti-spam messages'.  Causal
   to the 'spam' I would like to refer to the anti-spam messages as
   'son-of-spam' :-)  

   Second, it is somewhat clear that as long as we have 'spam' we will have
   a causal event 'son-of-spam' .  Neither 'spam' nor 'son-of-spam' are welcome
   e-mail in most in-boxes, and I assume by the responses, many people find 
   'son-of-spam' just as annoying as 'spam'.  Given that both sides of the
   coin are correct (in their own perception space) as we have seen, 
   I would like to put this on the table to the network:

I disagree, strongly.  I think anti-spam messages, sent to the
postmasters of the respective ISP's that provide service to the
spammers, is perfectly acceptable.  Otherwise, there is no cost to the
ISP's for providing service to the spammers.  

As a matter of course, whenever I receive a spam, I will generally send
a complaint to postmaster at the originating site, or perhaps to the
ISP, if I can determine it.  In fact, I'm thinking about automating this
procedure, to decrease the amount of time that it takes for me to send
the complaint.  If everyone who receives a spam sends one (1) complaint
to the ISP, the ISP would quickly get the idea that spammers are not to
be desired on the Internet.

Other people have talked about enforcement; as near as I can tell, this
is the only kind of enforcement on the Internet that will really work.
Any AUP that discourages people from using this type of enforcement
mechanism, is in my opinion, a step in the wrong direction.  (And this
doesn't even take into account the first amendment arguments about
people being able to complaint to ISP's about spammers which the ISP's
are responsible for.)

If the argument is that people shouldn't be sending son-of-spam messages
to the mailing lists, that I can agree with whole-heartedly.  But I do
believe that ISP's that host C&S-style spammers deserve to have their
mail hosts overloaded with individual complaints.  One complaint per
individual receiving a spam should be plenty to cause an ISP to become
overloaded.  :-)

							- Ted

P.S.  Perhaps ISP's should consider writing into their customer's
contracts some legal language saying that if the ISP receives too many
complaints, that the customer is liable for the cost of processing the
complaints caused by that customer --- the ISP can decide to waive the
fee if the complaints are caused by some mail forgery or other
legitimate misunderstanding.