anti-spam vs network abuse

Fri Feb 28 20:52:44 UTC 2003

On Fri, 28 Feb 2003, Gary E. Miller wrote:

> On Fri, 28 Feb 2003, Paul Vixie wrote:
>
> > However, they scanned every address in every netblock I own, looking
> > for SMTP servers.  That was abuse, that was illegal in California,
>
> Could you please provide a citation  from the CA law for this?  Better
> yet, do you have any case law?

More importantly, could somebody provide some sort of moral basis for this
law? (I'm not sure if Paul feels the way he wrote, or if there was a bit
of tongue-in-cheeck...I suspect and hope the latter.)

Why is probing networks wrong?

I would agree exploiting vulnerabilities discovered from probing networks
is wrong. But I don't agree that probing is inherently wrong.

People probe networks for great reasons. Likewise, people have the ability
to prevent other people from probing their networks.

Should we outlaw a potentially beneficial practice due to its abuse by
criminals?

Andy

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Andy Dills                              301-682-9972
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