Broken domain statistics...

Mon Feb 16 21:13:40 UTC 1998

Sorry, I can't resist this.  I think this isn't relevant to nanog, either,
so lets drop this now.  One shot each.

(cross-posted to upd-discuss, please do not reply to wrong lists!)

At 10:33 AM -0500 2/13/98, Dave Rand wrote:
>[In the message entitled "Re: Broken domain statistics..." on Feb 13,
>2:24, Jon Lewis writes:]
>>
>> That brings up another question.  What can/should be done with such
>> "tainted" IP space?  Who in their right mind would want space previously
>> used by Cyberpromo?  It's almost as if they destroyed the IP space they
>> used.

More evidence of poorly thoughtout and badly planned activities?  No, say
it ain't so!

Who is "they" that destroyed the space? (rhetorical question, but it seems
the anti-spammers made the rules the wrecked the space. Dare I say "shoot
oneself in the foot"?  How about "Cut off one's nose to spite one's face"?
Nah.)

>It's an interesting question.  I had the first dealing with it a couple
>of days ago.  A site called me, and wanted off the RBL.  Turned out it
>was one of the sites that hosted a nameserver for a few days for Cyberpromo.
>After the standard set of questions, I removed them - but I know that
>they are going to have a whole heap of trouble with the thousands of other
>sites that were blocking Cyberpromo.

They hosted DNS for someone else and their IP space was blocked? And people
don't see that as illegal?  I think that's a tad extreme.  That seems
almost like racketeering, in addition to wiretapping...

BTW, I did followup the wiretapping discussion with an attorney who is
advising clients not to worry about wiretapping.  He is basing his "case"
on the idea that IP blocking is a "pen register", which is essentially a
record of a transaction, that may include recording information.  However,
the pen register information may only be used for explicitly listed
purposes.  A pen register is meant to be a passive device or record which
means it can't be a part of an active routing decision.  One cannot use the
information in a pen register for political purposes.  This seems a pretty
flimsy rationalization, though it also appears that no major NSP's do any
blocking.

Notably, for those who made adamant claims to the contrary,  he did
acknowledge that the wiretapping statutues could apply to NSP's and their
employees for more clear cases of accessing information.

I plan to ask some US attorneys to clarify or explain their interpretation
of "pen register".  If they strongly disagree, I'll let you all know.

>Without a central registry, unblocking "bad" addresses is going to be a
>huge job.

Chuckle.  I wonder who pays for all that work.

		--Dean

P.S. Just in case people have forgotten: I want to change the postal laws
to apply to electronic communication. This doesn't completely ban spam, but
bans a number of pernicious activities which technically aren't illegal if
a postal address isn't involved, requires that spamers not send email to
people who don't want it, and bans sexual solictations to addresses that
don't want it, have children, etc.  It has the advantage of being a)
reasonable b) guaranteed constitional c) inexpensive to implement.

These other "solutions" are just poorly thoughtout lunacy, which will have
side effects that are worse than the original problem.

P.P.S  This just in:

>Janet Kornblum recently had a story in News.com which mentions PGP's
>recent decision to drop adverstising blocking software.  Reportedly, PGP
>was threatened with lawsuits from Internet companies, which claimed the
>software was illegal, under US copyright laws.  Her story is at:
>
>http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,19156,00.html
>
>I was contacted by a non-profit group which wants to develop an ad
>blocking version of Netscape, once NS releases the source code of the
>browser.  They want to know if this is legal or now, however.

How odd. I was just thinking that the Compuserve vs Cyberpromo cases
(trademark infringement) could be used against spam blockers.  Ironically,
it seems that the Compuserve vs Cyberpromo cases lay the legal ground work
for this.

Vix, you ready?  If I were you, I'd encrypt and copyright your feed, and
try to sue anyone who decrypted it.  Of course, if I were you, I'd quit the
feed and work on getting my postal law changes passed.... ;-)

P.P.P.S. Here's something that I find spam is useful for: Home THC test
kits @ 3.00 each. ;-)

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           Plain Aviation, Inc                  dean at av8.com
           LAN/WAN/UNIX/NT/TCPIP          http://www.av8.com
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