[Gllug] Re: www.spews.org - spamming blacklist

[Mike Brodbelt]

On Mon, 2003-06-02 at 22:57, David Damerell wrote:
> On , 2 Jun 2003, Mike Brodbelt wrote:
> >Yep, that's spews. Nice reasoned, rational response. Find a spammer,
> >then proceed to completely screw over a whole load of totally innocent
> >people just because they happen to have the same ISP.
> 
> This response is both reasoned (perhaps not reasonable) and rational.
> This _really_ motivates the ISP to do something about the spammer.

It's an unacceptable level of collateral damage. Spam is objectionable
because it is an anti-social invasion of someone's mailbox. It is
considerably more anti-social to deny innocent users (many of who, will
have no idea what has happened or why) access to their own
communications.

> Call the cure worse than the disease, fine.

So much worse that it's not funny.

>  Say that SPEWS in
> particular are lousy at identifying the right ranges to block, often
> block on false positives, and are unresponsive to problems being
> fixed, also fine.

That's almost minor - they'd cause huge damage even were they adhering
properly to their own rules. The fact that they can't even undo the
damage they do in a timely manner just makes the incompetent, as well as
misguided.

> But there's no point saying there's not a clearly thought out
> rationale behind this approach; in general, it weakens any valid
> arguments you may have if you present invalid ones at the same time.

Point taken. I should have said "they have a reasoned argument in the
limited sense of being thought out, but they have failed to apply
proportional judgement in considering the consequences of their actions,
and somehow consider the damage they cause to the network to be more
morally acceptable than the damage caused by spammers, despite it being
far more severe for those unfortunates caught in the firing line."

They have a holier than thou attitude that really annoys me.
Anti-spammers have a bad tendency to get so fixated on "getting the
soammer" that they sometimes forget the point is not to get the bad guy,
but to *improve* the quality of the network for other users. It's the
same attitude evinced by the home office to justify legislative
excesses. When will people learn that it's *not* OK to trample over the
rights of the little guy because you're on a crusade to get the bad
people....

Mike.



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