Date: Thu, 08 May 1997 23:19:20 -0700 From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com> To: jbryant@tfs.net Cc: freebsd-isp@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: ESCAPE! Florida Cruise/Vacation $598/4 People Message-ID: <16755.863158760@time.cdrom.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 09 May 1997 00:16:09 CDT." <199705090516.AAA00327@argus>
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> given that most of the people on this mailing list are either > operating system programmers, ISP owners, ISP sysadmins, or people > looking for technical help with the FreeBSD Unix operating system, we > must not overlook that the spammers are now using our mailing list to > further their scams... I agree. However, I think that waiting for congress to face, let alone deal with, this problem is a strategy guaranteed to have all of us reading spam in ever increasing quantities, right up to the start of the next millenium and probably well beyond it. Government is just not going to move as fast as we need it to move one this, and while it's certainly a commendable goal to push this into the limited scope of awareness most congresscritters seem to possess, it's just not a solution for the short-to-medium term. We need to do this in *parallel* with a set of more realistic initiatives in order for the quality of our lives to improve anytime soon. Such realistic initiatives, IMHO, are: 1. Registering any and all spammers with Paul Vixie's spammer blacklist (http://spam.abuse.net/spam/). He, at least, is one of the very few people trying to organize this process somewhat. 2. Blocking, as ISPs, any and all traffic from known spammers. THIS IS CRUCIAL! By denying the spammers access to your customer base, you are achieving two objectives: First, you are sparing your customers from the ravages of SPAM. Second, you are imposing a harsh penalty on any other ISP who might host spammers since you're blocking all traffic from them. Refuse to peer with ISPs who host spammers or otherwise do business with them. Basically, *make life as hard as possible* for spammers or spam-hosting ISPs so that the cost-effectiveness of this medium is eroded for them. Only once the monetary incentive is removed, or the punishments become severe enough, will this stop (e.g. robbing a Brink's truck may be "profitable", but the likelyhood of being shot to death in the process or hounded to the ends of the earth afterwards makes it considerably less desirable). 3. START EXCHANGING MORE INFORMATION! It's an all-too-common scenario now that notorious spammers simply jump from one ISP to another. Wore out your welcome at ATT.NET? No problem! IBM.NET will be *happy* to take your cash! IBM.NET now starting to get snippy after that last 100,000 entry spam? No problem, there are dozens of ISPs who are so desparate for a buck that they'd sell services to Jeffrey Dahmer for his Shrunken Heads Page if he had the money. This kind of money-before-everything-else- and-damn-the-ethics approach to selling services has got to stop, and you guys are the only ones to stop it. Consider also that most sports or professions which are inherantly dangerous and/or have a high abuse potential are either: a) Regulated by goverment. b) Self-regulated. And having the luxury of being in section (b) is primarily the result of taking such effective self-policing action that the government never feels compelled to step in. Blow it and you'll have Big Brother breathing down your neck and only yourselves to blame (not that this will stop ISPs from crying from the rafters about what a poor, abused minority they are when it happens :). A good example of (b) is the International Hang-gliding Association. They have their own rules and regs, and they preside over a fairly dangerous sport (strapping a kite to your back and jumping off of tall cliffs is, I'd say, a risky hobby). Well, about 10 years ago if not a little longer, the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) was considering making hang gliders licensed craft and imposing a whole set of regulations on them to ensure that they were airworthy, the pilots could handle them, etc. The association saw this as an undesirable scenario given that such certification could only drive the costs of the sport up considerably, so they stepped in with a set of rules *even more stringent* than the FAA proposed rulings and they enforced them at all landing sites, using volunteer instructor pilots. So successful was this program that the FAA backed off and actually congradulated the IHGA on its degree of responsibility and effectiveness, citing that the IHGA was now policing the sport even better than the FAA could ever hope to manage and, thus, needed no government oversite in the matter. Now the ISPs can take it one of two ways: 1. You can continue to jealously guard your customer lists and refuse to talk to any other ISPs since you know they're just out to steal your precious bodily fluids anyway and can't be trusted. 2. You can realize that selling services to spammers is a truly bad thing and it's time for you to start passing blacklists around, just as various merchants (whom, I might add, are also in competition with one another but grew up and got past arguing that point) do with bad- check writers and notorious forgers. You can generally see the array of pictures up behind the sales counter. You could even put the equivalent of an "IHGA" together to manage the blacklist and publish a newsletter of relevant topics. But first and before any of this can happen, the ISPs need to grow up and stop trying to poke eachother in the eyes with sticks and start cooperating. Sadly, my perception of about 80% of the ISP market is that they wouldn't paddle on the same side of the boat if they needed to do so in order to escape an approaching tsunami, preferring instead to drown rather than give eachother the time of day. That's not only sad, but if spammers take over the internet and break it as a reasonable medium, it will be *solely* through poor business practices (and even less ethics) like this, and the ISPs will be squarely to blame for opening the gates to the barbarian hordes in exchange for a piece of the action on their raping and pillaging. Jordan
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