WebTV.Net: Censorship Central?

Mon Nov 23 20:09:06 UTC 1998

Hi Bob,

I don't think that anyone's listening to your agenda-based drivel.

First., it should be made clear that this is not a first amendmant issue. 
This is not censorship. There is no mandate that anyone carry anyone's 
traffic into their network, especially traffic that is *stealing resources* 
from the receiving network.

Also, most of us out there have great respect for the judgement and 
restraint of the RBL team, and in general we see the RBL as a Good Thing. 
And the ones of us that do actually use it *really* think it's a Good Thing.

Maybe this is a thread you can best take to a forum like com-priv for 
followups?

At 2:19 PM -0500 11/23/98, Bob Allisat wrote:
>  <http://fcn.net/no>
>
>  Microsoft's Web TV Network, with hundreds of thousands of subscribers,
>  uses the real-time black hole list censorship software. Very disturbing
>  since it niether tells it's clients their mail and WWW is being censored
>  nor offers them the choice as to whether or not to allow this censorship.
>  Outside their lame anti-spam statement there is no indication of any
>  censorship anywhere else <http://www.webtv.net/antispam/>.
>
>  Perhaps the people using WebTV would appreciate knowing the fact that
>  Web TV censors their access. Or, even better, maybe Web TV could offer
>  them the choice as to whether their black list is off or on (default
>  to off). I'd be royally pissed off if I used WebTV and found out every-
>  thing I did was behind some one fellow's idea of right and wrong. Shame
>  on Web TV Networks! More info at:
>
>  <http://fcn.net/no>
>
> Paul Vixie writes:
> <http://maps.vix.com/rbl/webtv.html>
>> If you received an error while trying to send mail to WebTV,
>> please click here.
> * (next page)
>> Having problems sending to WebTV?
>>
>> Although WebTVÊ(webtv.net) uses the RBL, they also have their own
>> list of IP addresses they reject mail from. Just because they
>> reject mail from a site does not mean that site is on the
>> MAPSÊRBL.
>>
>> You can check to see whether your IPÊaddress is on the RBL by
>> checking <URL:http://maps.vix.com/cgi-bin/lookup> ; enter your
>> IPÊaddress in the form.
>>
>> If you do not know what your IPÊaddress is, please contact your
>> system administrator or ISP. Complaining to us about WebTV's
>> actions is, unfortunately, largely useless, as we have no control
>> over how they (or anyone else) runs their systems.
>>
>> Please contact WebTVÊfor information on why your address block is
>> on their list, and how to get it removed.
>
>  Bob Allisat
>
>  Free Community Network _ bob at fcn.net . http://fcn.net
>  http://fcn.net/allisat _ http://fcn.net/draft