while i'm on the subject of filtering, here's today's list of spammers

Thu Feb 20 05:06:51 UTC 1997

On Wed, 19 Feb 1997, Paul A Vixie wrote:

> The people who have signed up to receive my blackhole feed in real time all
> pretty much trust me to restrict my additions to things which violate the
> cooperative economics underlying the 'net.  I take it that you weren't at the
> San Francisco NANOG so you didn't get to hear my talk on this subject.

I trust you as well, Paul.  You've been doing this for too long to be some
crazy conspiracist with a hidden agenda.  I don't doubt that every one of
these sites deserves this treatment.  But you are presuming to exert
control over a public resource.  I don't care if you pay for it, you
provide it to the public for public consumption and IMO you should not
practice this sort of thing.  If you don't like this, no one's making you
personally provide for the root server - let someone else do it.

Regardless, let people decide for themselves who they want and don't want
to talk to.  Circulating a list of known spammers is one thing - it's
still up to me to block them.  Assuming you have the right to block
someone for me is something I'm opposed to, in principle at least.  The
temptation to block someone for "other" reasons (political, for instance)
is just too much; if it's not you, then someone else will do it.

> I will not have network resources I pay for, used to spam me, or to spam
> others.  I have the right of use and/or disposal of my own property.  People
> who spam are committing "theft of service" and my Ip reachability matrix is
> better off without such people in it.

What you pay for is your business.  I could care less if you block
everything.  What you provide to the public is something else entirely.

> No, it isn't.  You have guests and other users.  If you have IP customers,
> then they have guests and other online users.  By accepting spam you allow
> your resources (which you offer for cooperative reasons) to be used in a
> noncooperative way.  If you have downstream customers you are subjecting
> them to the same abuse.

We offer our customers Internet access, and when they complain about
spammers we do something about it.  However, what we do affects only our
network and our customers.  It does not affect the world as a whole?

> Removing people from the cooperative portion of the Internet works fine.

They'll come on from somewhere else.  You can't block everyone, and
someone will always be willing to make a buck providing access to these
people.

> I won't stop until it's socially unacceptable.  When 800 phone sex people
> move offshore I block entire Pacific islands until they lose even those
> connections.

Again, you can't block everyone.  Why you feel it necessary to impose your
social mores on the net as a whole is beyond me.

shag

Judd Bourgeois          PGP key ID 0xEDC21CA1
shagboy at world.std.com   25DDE4AF C5AFEF51 6905DC77 360F0387
To all my friends - It's not the end
The earth has not swallowed me yet - 311, "Freak Out"