Stealth Blocking

Mitch Halmu mitch at netside.net
Wed May 23 14:33:11 UTC 2001



On Wed, 23 May 2001, John Payne wrote:

> Umm... yes.  You run an open, abused mail relay, got listed in RSS and
> whine about it rather than fix it.

I have posted two URLs, one was to a slashdot article describing a stealth 
assault on Macromedia. So as to clarify the provenance of the URL 
previously given by others in full context. Don't see your comments 
there. Why? Perhaps the ACLU and those other do-good  organizations 
command more respect than an ISP? But they're talking about the same 
thing!

The latter was to explain our position. Let's make several things clear. 
First, what is the difference between an open relay and a free email 
account somewhere? None, absolutely none. You could subscribe as Michael 
Mouse today, and the emperor of China tomorrow. Yet such service, with no 
credit card or implant chip to validate your true identity, giving away 
free resources to the world, is perfectly legit in your judgement.

NetSide maintains its own access control list. If a particular ip or ip
range didn't abuse our servers, we feel no need to lock them out. And 
certainly not because you say so. Not to mention that all instances of 
abuse can be traced from logs to someone's ip, and there is a venue of
complaint with the abuser's provider. We have a valid reason for doing 
so: locking our servers would prevent our customers from roaming, and we 
would also lose a good part of our non-local client base, some of them
subscribed since 1995, who couldn't make full use of their accounts
anymore.

Second, open relays were the norm until Paul Vixie decided you should do
otherwise. And in many cases, he convinced thy by brute force that his 
way is the right way is the only way. But it wasn't the legal way. Most 
providers bent over and silently took the punishment. We won't. Do I seem 
to whine here?

Third, the new 'rule' MAPS just came up with now is that you must keep your 
server open to their 'testing', or they'll blackhole you. See for yourself:
http://www.dotcomeon.com/nph-rss-remove-blocking.html
That is the reason given for blocking us the second time around. No new 
'evidence', just open wide for inspection and say ahhh...

> Could you be more clueless? 

That's just about what I was going to ask you. This is not about the 
merits of some technological implementation over another. It is about
basic rights and freedoms shamelessly trampled upon by those that can
thump their chests the loudest and have Daddy Warbucks bankroll their
operation. Say you fall out of grace with the 'in' crowd tomorrow, could 
it be your turn?

> If you want to whine some more, news.admin.net-abuse.email is over there ->
> and spam-l is that way <-

And you, John Payne, are here. And clearly on the side of the network
operator that's deliberately destroying the connectivity of other networks.
This problem won't just go away, as much as you want it swept under the
rug.

--Mitch
NetSide





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