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

[David Damerell]

On , 3 Jun 2003, Mike Brodbelt wrote:
>On Tue, 2003-06-03 at 00:03, David Damerell wrote:
>>On , 2 Jun 2003, Mike Brodbelt wrote:
>>>On Mon, 2003-06-02 at 22:57, David Damerell wrote:
>>Unacceptable to you, maybe. Not to them.
>Fine - they should keep it to themselves then. I filter my own spam too,
>according to my arbitrary criteria. Unlike SPEWS, I don't try to force
>my viewpoint of what should be filtered onto others.

Neither do they - I even pointed out that this is a fallacy in the
message you are replying to. Other people, themselves running systems,
choose to use SPEWS' assessment to block mail.

>>And, to be honest,
>>remembering the great days of spammer haven ISPs, before the spammers
>>had to exploit open relays or crack machines as a matter of
>>course... hmmm. Sometimes it _is_ the only solution. SPEWS is badly
>>run, but the underlying idea is a sound one.
>SpamAssassin demonstrates quite well that netblock lookups are an
>unnecessary blunt instrument.

Nonsense. SpamAssassin does nothing to discourage sending spam.

>>However, you're also perpetrating a basic untruth about this sort of
>>operation. SPEWS do not block anyone's mail.
>While strictly true, I think that's a flawed argument. They know full
>well the impact they have,

An impact they have only because _other people_ use the data they provide.

>>The only reason they can
>>have an effect is that a significant number of systems _agree_ with
>Phrasing it like that avoids the basic truth that in 99% of cases where
>SPEWS is used a sysadmin just inflicts this on the users without their
>knowledge or consent.

Momentarily ignoring the fact that your "basic truth" is a statistic
you made up, perhaps you should blame the sysadmins?

>>What you're saying here is essentially "they are wrong because they do
>>not agree with me".
>I don't give a damn whether or not they agree with me - they're entitled
>to their opinion, and it carries neither more nor less weight than my
>own. What I object to is them electing themselves at the email police
>force, making up the law as they go along, and then ramming it down the
>throats of people who want nothing to do with them.

They don't "ram" it down anyone's throat. Sysadmins who have the
authority to do it use SPEWS.

>If I want to remove all spam from my machine, I can just unplug it from
>the network. Most people would think that's overkill, but it's my
>choice. If, however, I choose to wander round unplugging machines at
>random to save other people from spam, I'd expect to get into trouble
>for damaging people's systems.

However, if you are a sysadmin doing so, don't exceed your authority,
and have the cooperation of management - well, it's an odd decision,
but (as with any approved policy) this is rather different from
victimising random third parties.

>SPEWS does almost exactly this, but
>digitally as opposed to physically. That some of the people they unplug
>may agree with them and some not is entirely irrelevant - it doesn't
>give them the right to do it.

Then it's good that _they don't do it_.

-- 
David Damerell <damerell at chiark.greenend.org.uk> flcl?


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