Affects of the balkanization of mail blacklisting

Sat Aug 11 19:28:39 UTC 2001

--On Saturday, August 11, 2001 11:24 AM -0700 Roy <garlic at garlic.com> 
wrote:

>
>
> It would have been nice if we could all agreed on a DUL database that
> would be distributed free to anyone to use.
>

Naturally, I have a different perspective. ;)

MAPS has developed, maintained and published these lists for a number 
of years, on our nickel.  The "nickel" to date is to the tune of 
several million dollars in operational and legal expenses.  That's cash 
folks, not donated equipment, not donated bandwidth, not volunteer 
efforts. Cold, hard, CASH.  It didn't come from corporate donations, it 
didn't come from subscriptions.  99% of it  came out of Dave's and 
Paul's pockets.

MAPS as a corporation must have revenue to operate.  We tried to 
produce that revenue with a paid service called the RBL+.  We tried to 
produce that revenue with our outsourced abuse services.  The people 
that could most afford to use those services chose to continue to use 
the free queries (at the rate of 10s of millions of queries a day for 
some ISPs) rather than paying their own way.  That had to stop.  The 
only way to stop it was to restrict access all access to the zones.

You folks are certainly free to start your own lists, or,  you could 
encourage your employers to financially support the organization that 
has been financially carrying them for all this time.

The fees are based on cost, not profit.  MAPS remains a not-for-profit 
corporation.  For most mid-sized networks, the cost to them is $0.05 
per user per year .  For the small outfits, its less than my annual 
Starbuck's expenses ;)

-- 
Margie Arbon
MAPS, LLC