Sorbs.net

Mon Mar 28 14:55:18 UTC 2005

On Sun, Mar 27, 2005 at 05:57:13PM -0500, Dean Anderson wrote:
> >Look, if I want to publish a blocklist of all domains with the
> >string "er" in them and all IP addresses ending in .7, that would be
> >a silly thing to do: but after all, it's just a list.  
> 
> There are consequences, of course, to doing irresponsible things, and to
> misleading your subscribers, and to blocking email that your subscribers
> didn't authorize you to block.

Well, you know, as much as a pain as everyone seems to think SORBS is,
this approach to the thing has a certain baby/bathwater feel to me,
Dean: it seems to make running a blacklist *at all* A Bad Thing...
which, my perception is, is *not* the sense of the Net.

As for "didn't authorize you to block", two thoughts come to mind:
first, the person with the last clear chance in a mail blacklisting
situation is the mail admin in question, is it not?  If you're running
blacklists, and you're concerned about what they block, I should think
it would be up to you to back-check the judgement of the BL operator by
doing end-to-end testing.

And second, to the extent that you *are* using a given list, I suspect
(and IANAL, of course), that you are -- constructively -- allowing them
to act as your agent for the purpose of deciding which mail to block
(absent caselaw to the contrary, which I'll admit I haven't
researched), which gives you a lot less leeway to be mad at them.

And of course, the only *real* liability you ought to have in the first
place is to *your users*, and as long as you're disclosing to them that
you use mail BL's, then that one's a bit arguable, as well.

Cheers,
-- jr 'IANAI,E' a
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

      If you can read this... thank a system administrator.  Or two.  --me