Proposed Usenet Death Penalty for Australia's Largest ISP 240
supine writes "David Ritz has issued a request for discussion on applying a Usenet Death Penalty to Australia's largest ISP, Bigpond (and it's parent company Telstra)." This brought back to memory the time when AOL was facing similar charges.
Big deal. (Score:5, Insightful)
I used to pull from alt.control and alt.test and pull news server that looked like a FQDN and then ping tested them. Then it tried to connect and do a test. I then used them as my 'private news server'. Still, you wanna be careful doing this... cause the net.gods live in control groups. Piss them off, and you already have UDP.
BTW, what's with all these slashdot server errors?????
Re:Big deal. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Big deal. (Score:3, Funny)
Apparently, Slashdot posted a story about the changes they were making to the slashcode. Unfortunately, they included a self-referential link. Hence, slashdot was slashdotted.
Re:Big deal. (Score:2)
Re:Big deal. (Score:2)
How about an E-mail Death Penalty for Bigpond?
Amen to that!
And they said... (Score:4, Interesting)
Why doesn't stuff of this nature happen more often? Why can't this same logic be applied (through different, although possibly similar means) to other Bad Things that happen on the internet? What could stop Adobe suing Russian hackers? What would put an end to bad patents? What could even stop the application of the DMCA? Large scale, cooperative denial of service (in this case denying to serve them, not flooding their lines) of the institutions which do these things.
As an interesting sidenote, Katz specifically talked about applying this to Australian ISPs in the above linked
Re:And they said... (Score:4, Interesting)
1. Few parties involved - Usenet is much more hierarchical than the general Internet. Probably if less than 20 (my guess, it might be wrong) important parties agree on a UDP, it gets enforced. How many entities would have to boycott Adobe (or whoever) for them to actually feel it?
2. Clear and publicly defined "abuse". Spam, rogue cancels & supersedes. You don't get UDP'ed for being nasty to whales or pushing for bad legislation. This makes agreement easier, if not automatic.
Withouth the 2 above conditions, it ends in a parody: Bob from Smallville doesn't show his homepage to Adobe employees, Alice from Podunk drops all mail from Microsoft and the boycotted companies would laugh at this if they only knew that they are "boycotted".
Usenset is still Useful (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course it's still useful... (Score:1, Funny)
Offtopic Yes I know (Score:2)
Email Clients (ping,mutt,mail)
Not Satisfactory (Score:4, Insightful)
I would hardly call this a satisfactory outcome. Anyone with an inkling of knowledge can get around port blocks in a tick. If they are going to invoke a UDP surely the only thing that should lift it would be the prying of the spammers keyboards from their cold dead hands.
Something like that (Score:3, Insightful)
I think it would be sort of like communism.... its great in principle but not in practice.
Re:Something like that (Score:4, Informative)
to be effective "enough" a UDP only needs the participation of a couple dozen of the biggest usenet server admins. And for someone like Telstra, they will participate.
The second phase of this proposed UDP, will only require the participation af a few cancelbots. While some servers ignore cancels, it is to their advantage to obey pgp-signed cancels, and cancels that can be verified as coming from a good source. Those who ignore these cancels, will simply be storing the extra articles themselves, and hurting only themselves and their peers.
Re:Something like that - Cancelbots (Score:2)
What about the sometimes nasty people / groups (riaa??) who poison the binary groups with cancels of 1 part out of 10 or 100 so that the entire file is at best corrupt and at worst unusable.
anymore with Usenet
Now a UDP if you can lock off they're specific peering providers might be a bit more effective
Give it to 'em (Score:2, Funny)
Other than all the haters posting about 'is usenet still around'...jeez usenet threads are almost as offtopic with haters as the sendmail ones...
Punish the innocent to get at the guilty (Score:4, Interesting)
It's like starving out a country to depose a dictator. Whoops.
It's just not something you do, and spam, while a royal pain in the ass, doesn't cut it. I wouldn't punish the innocent to get Usama bin Ladin, let alone spammers.
Re:Punish the innocent to get at the guilty (Score:5, Interesting)
That rather depends on which version of ethics you're using at the time, doesn't it? There are considerably more valid users of usenet *outside* Telestra's borders than there are within, all of whom suffer from Telestra's bad approach to spam. Given that the whole reason for the UDP suggestion is persistent continual large-scale offence from them, it's not as though they've not had the chance to repair their ways. Cutting off a few for the sake of the greater good is very much a valid "moral" choice.
"I wouldn't punish the innocent to get Usama bin Ladin, let alone spammers."
OBL's daily activities don't impinge on you in any way, until you get an odd-one-out. Spammers' activities *do* impinge, through ISPs having to pass on bandwidth costs to someone, ie their users.
Re:Punish the innocent to get at the guilty (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, look... An Aryan troll... Put away your white hood for a moment and pay attention.
scripsit JonTurner:
I'm amazed at how ignorant of history people can be... Let's see:
Yes, that's right -- by a Frenchman. If it weren't for the cowardly, afraid-to-fight, always-surrendering French, the entirety of Western Europe would have falled to the armies of the Khalifat in the eighth century.
Have you lived under Muslim rule? I have. I lived for three years in an Arab country in which Islam is constitutionally the state religion -- and I happen not to be a Muslim. Were there things that sucked, like it being illegal to buy beer on Mohamed's birthday? Sure. I'd definitely rather live there, though, than in many places in the American South. Whatever impact backward religious restrictions there were restricted me less than those in some counties in Texas would. The problems the Arab world faces with liberty are due to the oppressive military dictatorships which the U.S. has kept in power, not to the people's faith.
I am confident that you will do the rest of us the same honor.
Re:The fighting France (Score:2)
scripsit mi:
If you're talking about states, then practically no currently existing state existed in 732. The French monarchy existed more than, for example, the German, Italian, or Danish. (I don't recall if the Merovingian monarchs used the title rex francorum or not--WW-Person [uni-erlangen.de] gives their title in German as ``König im Frankenreich.'') To the extent that you can talk about any nation existing in the eighth century, it is fair to speak of Franks/French.
If that were the only point, then yes, Napoléon would have been a better example (It took all of Europe united to bring him down). However, since the poster to which I was responding decided to invoke the mediaeval Islamic threat to Europe, I thought it appropriate to mention that the person who ended that invasion was Frankish/French.
Re:Punish the innocent to get at the guilty (Score:2)
I'd like to know where you think I said anything like that.
"Please defend your "doesn't impinge" statement before the friends and family of the 3000+ people murdered in the World Trade Center attack."
I have no need to do any such thing, as you obviously didn't bother reading the bit about "daily activities" and "one-off"s.
"Next time, stop and think before you shoot off your stupid mouth."
If you lack for water with which to cool your head, try one of those things called a "toilet".
Re:Punish the innocent to get at the guilty (Score:4, Interesting)
Historically, a UDP benefits the innocent-at-the-offending-provider (aside from a temporary iconvenience) just as much as it benefits the rest of the net. And, as far as I can recall, no UDP has ever lasted longer than a week, so we don't exactly talk about a long-term problem here.
Or, to put it in a different (more familiar to the modern, non-usenet-oriented world) light, consider how much legit users in
As an aside... DAMN! Someone fix Slashdot! I've typed this same blob in about five times so far, because I keep getting logged out, my messages dumped (blank screen loads), and bizarre error message. Aurgh!
Re:Punish the innocent to get at the guilty (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Punish the innocent to get at the guilty (Score:3, Interesting)
If you want to help anyone, help the old folk who have been working their asses off to make a more comfortable world for you and me, not the whiny little shits who cry for more and haven't put a dime in. Children are nothing more than immature adults, with all the potential to do very much good or very much harm.
There are a dozen valid arguments against spam, and, "It will hurt the children," is not one of them. Your argument is about as shit as arguing against child porn "in case other children see it".
(And before you ask, I'm 22, not 65.)
Re:Punish the innocent to get at the guilty (Score:3, Insightful)
Quick reminder: You were once a child, and enjoyed the many protections and benefits that come with that state. To say that others shouldn't have them is a bit hypocritical.
Granted, a lot of people hide their agendas behind "save the children" rhetoric, when they really mean, "save me from thinking" or "save me from dealing with something that makes me feel uncomfortable". This is also hypocritical, and, as Mark Twain knew, it ends up being bad for the children.
The only thing we all have in common is an unbroken line, eons long, of ancestors who took the time to have children. Suggesting that having children is some sort of quirky personal choice ignores the last few hundred million years of history and the essential nature of life itself.
Re:Punish the innocent to get at the guilty (Score:2)
Look, if you want kids it's your responsibility to care for them. I don't like children, and I don't see any special need to care for children. This whole "won't somebody please help the children" is really beginning to piss me off, and I am someone who used to be very politically correct.
How this post is insightful I don't know. Interesting, maybe, but still wrong. It is the responsibility of the collective society to raise and provide for children. This is "left-leaning" and "liberal", but also "reality". You may bitch about paying taxes to fund schools when you have no children, but the alternative is uneducated children dragging society down in street crime and woeful literacy rates (inner cities, anyone?). I don't think it is anyones responsibilty but my own to meter my children's television and entertainment. And I do protect them from what I consider the "unheathy" portions of society. Sadly, email is one of them. I don't want my boys getting invited to check out "Angela on her webcam" or reading of "super ejaculation distance" so they don't get email.
They CAN browse the web, but I forbid name resolution. I add sites I approve of to their computers of via a hosts file. They are young enough that I can get away with that for now.
And to say that no child deserves protections after you just got done having them yourself is selfish, at best.
Re:Punish the innocent to get at the guilty (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Not just annoying (Score:5, Interesting)
I can't remember the amount of bandwidth it takes to keep a news server updated, but it's a pretty big chunk. That makes it expensive to run a Usenet news server in the first place.
Now consider that an estimated 60% of the crap coming out of Telestra is spam, and the issue doesn't just become one of an annoyance. Telestra is costing lots of people lots of money.
Under this situation, I think it is perfectly acceptable for admins to stop listening to the noise Telestra is putting out over the pipes. Frankly, the UDP is the only real defense Usenet has against ill-behaved entities, and it is used rarely, and only when all other options have been exhausted and the provider being UDPd is still refusing to cooperate. Yeah, it sucks for Telestra users, but if they want their Usenet service to return to normal, they can vote with their money by going to another ISP, or they can pressure Telestra to start behaving.
Re:Not just annoying (Score:2, Interesting)
That's why almost every UDP either doesn't get past the threat stage, or is effective within 24 hours of its invokation - the ISPs are fully aware of the problem, and can solve it almost instantly, but while they can keep milking spammers they'll keep milking spammers.
It's easy money until the Usenet Cabal points the finger.
If you look at the UDP FAQ you'll see the snivelling language that they use to thank the ISPs after cleaning up their act, but it's bullshit. That's like thanking the bully for stepping _off_ your foot.
YAW.
Re:Not just annoying (Score:3, Insightful)
Thats it. No fiction, just facts, and a modest proposal to stop propagating their input. (After all, why should ISPs feel the need to help outsiders annoy the ISPs own users. And its not overreaching, they're just saying "If you won't play by our rules, you can't play" -- an axiom of nearly all cooperative activity.
Re:Not just annoying (Score:5, Insightful)
Make no mistake about it, spam and misplaced binaries do cost you money. 59GB/day of wasted bandwidth is not free.
Re:Not just annoying (Score:2)
On the other hand, having done the math, 0.11% is still a lot of traffic for one ISP to be generating. If there were only 1000 ISP's, then ok, that's about average, but if you look at sources of usenet articles (Freenix Top 1000 [freenix.org]) there are 2 bigpond, and 3 telstra servers listed in the top 1000. in the (admitidly old) Feb 2001 stats. What this tells me is that they handle quite a bit of usenet traffic. taking them out of the spam equation should be more than a "drop in the bucket".
Re:Not just annoying (Score:2)
Add up the traffic in his message, it's not costing anyone "lots of money." That's a fiction used to justify these overreaching actions.
(expecting moderators to use their points abusively on this post, because they don't like what it says. Oh well, my karma will survive it)
I see that I was correct, moderators just can't resist modding based on their agreement or disagreement with a viewpoint, and moderate down unpopular viewpoints. What a sad commentary.
Re:Punish the innocent to get at the guilty (Score:2)
Ah, yes... The 13 year-old decides to tell the world how to do things.
There is no such thing as innocent. If you live in a waring country, you are supporting that country's war. The same goes for spammers. If you are getting service from an ISP, you are supporting that ISP's activities.
Saying you should not punish the innocent is like saying that those who buy child porn should not be punished, only those who are actually making the child porn. The same thing applies to drugs, illegial gambling, etc.
Re:Punish the innocent to get at the guilty (Score:3, Interesting)
Not that I ever go there (and when I do its for that articles) but the alt.binaries.* groups have about 50% completion and retention rates that ensure that anything that's larger than 1 part is guaranteed to be ungetable, PAR or otherwise.
IMHO its a deliberate plan on the part of Telstra to ensure that people don't use the service. Quite simply you make the service so bad as to be useless; people stop using it and hey presto you can justify dropping an expensive, revenue losing, part of internet service providing. If anything, they permit the level of spam they do to guarantee that the bulk of it isn't filtered before it hits their servers.
I say this as a Usenet user of many years and a Bigpond user for 4 of them. Their's is quite simply the worst feed I have ever used.
On the other hand, they have the most incompetent bunch of techos I've ever had the displeasure to work with, so it could just be they have no clue how to run a newsfeed.
Re:Punish the innocent to get at the guilty (Score:2)
Do you object to boycotts? They certainly punish the innocent 99% of a company's employees to get at the tiny percentage of malginant or clueless decision-makers, and they also can harm the company's other customers.
Personally, I think that it's bad to punish innocents, but it's also bad to allow innocents to suffer. In the case of a boycott like this, I think punishing the people who are, perhaps unintentionally, supporting a company whose actions harm innocents is an acceptable tradeoff. Not good, but less bad than any immediate alternatives.
When Dictators use the Innocent as Shields (Score:2)
War is all about using innocent people to fight/shield for evil people.
Virtually ALL leaders, generals, dictators, tyrants exploit the concept of human shields, and like sheep, we usually go along with it. If people were smart, we would come to an agreement with our "enemies" and mutually kill the leaders who are using us as thier shilds.
Reality shows us that there no simple answers, let alone perfect answers, to this type of problem. However, History shows us that ignoring/playing into tyrants who use human shields is a big mistake.
From what I've seen, usually the best bet is try to kill/harm as few innocents as possible, but make sure you get the tyrant. In this case, I think it's worth pissing off a few Aussies is worth the benefits to force thier ISP to play by the rules.
If we lived in a perfect world, we would killed Bush, and the Middle East would kill the terrorists
Re:Punish the innocent to get at the guilty (Score:2)
Personally, I think assault is the right way to deal with spammers. A baseball bat to the chest is fitting treatment for people who know they're hurting everyone and keep on doing it just to make a buck. If a few of them met with painful ends the rest would think twice.
Re:Punish the innocent to get at the guilty (Score:2)
Look this "don't punish the innocent to get at the guilty" isn't something I just made up. It's a fundamental principle of justice, leaarned over centuries. It applies even to murder. It doesn't have an "except to stop spam" rider on it.
These people will have their postings blocked and they know nothing of what's going on. They will not get error messages saying their posting was deleted, will they?
Re:Punish the innocent to get at the guilty (Score:2)
Re:Punish the innocent to get at the guilty (Score:2)
(I'm commenting not just on the post above but on many of the replies to this thread.)
And it's also not modified by "I will find some reason to rationalize to myself that they are not really innocent, because they should have known better than to patronize the bad ISP or associate with the wrong fellow users."
If you found your internet connection cut off because other people on your ISP misbehaved, I think most people would be royally pissed.
We have stood up proudly saying "Don't blame the ISP if the users are posting porn" or "Don't blame the ISP if the user is running a kazaa client." Most people here have fought hard against the CDA, DMCA takedown orders, the Verio shutdown of Thing, the German and French attempts to threaten sites like eBay and Yahoo because of bad things their users are doing, to force those companies to block or stop those users.
But when it comes to something we don't like, such as spammers, we are ready to blame and punish the ISP and all the ISP's innocent users.
I'm sorry, but this is a terrible hypocracy. And what I don't get is why spam makes people so emotional that they would participate in this hyporcacy.
Do you believe in an end to end network where you don't punish the midpoints for the data sent by the endpoints? Or don't you?
How can slashdot have proud trumpeting of Doc Searls' new essay on how the internet is all about end to end on the same page with "delete messages from users at ISPs that don't deal with spammers as we want."
Now this is a day old
Good! And keep them banned. (Score:4, Interesting)
Talk about netizenship.
Re:Good! And keep them banned. (Score:5, Informative)
Have you checked rfc-ignorant.org [rfc-ignorant.org]?
Re:Good! And keep them banned. (Score:2)
Re:Good! And keep them banned. (Score:2)
I don't block on it anyway, I just use it as part of my spamassassin score.
Re:Good! And keep them banned. (Score:2)
As long as Sun et.al. won't have them as default, domains won't make them available. Most sysadmins struggle to keep the MTA alive, and don't know shit about proper configuration.
Usenet Used to be Useful (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Usenet Used to be Useful (Score:2)
P.S. those web boards have no memory, irritating interfaces, long load times, and stupid graphics.
Re:Usenet Used to be Useful (Score:5, Insightful)
Hmmmm. And evolution leads to less geekiness and this is a good thing?
If the rise of web-based discussion systems means all the AOL weenies get *off* Usenet, I suppose that's a good thing. But don't say Usenet hasn't "evolved" as though it were a bad thing. After all, there's nothing to stop you setting yourself up with a perfectly decent news-reader and actually talking to people on it, even on windoze, is there?
Re:Usenet Used to be Useful (Score:2)
Me too!
Re:Usenet Used to be Useful (Score:5, Informative)
Usenet failed to evolve along with the rest of the Internet.
I find this an odd comment. With a decent newreader (MT-Newswatcher for you Mac folks), USENET has features that web boards can only dream of: it's still years ahead of anything else on the web for discussion. Can you imagine how much nicer /. would be with the ability to create intelligent scorefiles with color-coding? Or no more waiting for a web page to load? No blinking ads covering half the page?
Through Google (nee Deja) I can get USENET postings back to the early 90s almost instantly. Web boards often don't archive, so everything there is lost after a few months
I can't get USENET at my current work (save through Google) so I spend time on /., K5 and FARK. Other than the Photoshop contests on FARK, I can't think of anything any of these boards does better than trn+a good news feed did back in 1990.
Re:Usenet Used to be Useful (Score:2)
> On Mon, 03 Mar 2003 22:05:51 GMT, Timberwoof
> wrote:
>
> >In article
> > "Ice Queen" wrote:
> >
> >> "Mike" wrote in message
> >> news:rlm56vck5u6mcfm0n4guvm0e1b9be2dfvm@4ax.com..
> >>
> >> > even AFTER my war, I STILL find the need to support my Country AND my
> >> > President when called upon. With, or WITHOUT "proof absolute". I don't
> >> > know, maybe I feel it's just part of the price we pay to call
> >> > ourselves "Americans". I hear the whispers of doubt in my own soul,
> >> > but I feel the need to stand and fight when called, right or wrong,
> >> > not as part of Nationalism. But as payment for being free.
> >>
> >> If that's not nationalism, then what do you think nationalism is? A
> >> weird
> >> disease "other" people get? What you just posted is practically a textbook
> >> definition of a nationalist statement.
> >
> >
> >Let's just do it this way...
> >
> >> > even AFTER my war, I STILL find the need to support my Fatherland AND my
> >> > F?hrer[1] when called upon. With, or WITHOUT "proof absolute". I don't
> >> > know, maybe I feel it's just part of the price we pay to call
> >> > ourselves "Germans". I hear the whispers of doubt in my own soul,
> >> > but I feel the need to stand and fight when called, right or wrong,
> >> > not as part of National Socialism. But as payment for being free.
> >
> >Think about all those Germans who heard the whispers of doubt, yet went
> >along with Hitler, and then tell us that we must do the same.
> >
> >
> >[1] Godwin has long since been invoked by comparing Saddam to Hitler.
>
> Not to rejoin this circus, but I AM glad to flush out your belief
> that the U.S. Government is akin to Hitler & Germany! Good Lord, I
> thought our history was just a tad better than that? Ah, what do I
> know. On with the show...Mike
Is unreadble! And thats only four layers of ">>>>". Some discussions get even more.
Some basic bold and italitcs would be nice. I'm not asking for unlimited html functions or pictures or stupid smiley face emoticon pictures, but a few functions that are standard (and unobtrusive) in most web forums would be nice.
I agree that the features you mentioned about usenet are nice, but there is no reason why they have to be the be all and end all.
Re:Usenet Used to be Useful (Score:2)
Some newsreaders will provide color coding for different levels of quotes. My preferred newsreader, Microplanet Gravity (for Windows), lets me configure the color, font, style, of quoted text however I want to differentiate it from the new text. Mozilla's newsreader gives you even more control if you dig into userContent.css.
The best thing about Usenet is that it's plain vanilla text. It's up to the client software to display it according to the reader's preferences.
ROUGE! (Score:2, Funny)
Too harsh! (Score:3, Funny)
telstra have problems (Score:5, Interesting)
Telstra have been losing money for a while now due to shoddy work in all of their services. Consumers just wont stand for it any longer, and this is strongly reflected by their dropping share price.
I believe they are losing money at such a rate that they refuse to outlay any on ressurecting this current spam problem - that, or they really are ignorant of the problem (due to incompitance).
Re:telstra have problems (Score:5, Insightful)
Problems come up when one department of telstra need to talk to another. There's just no useful communication between groups, no trust from one section to another.
I once had a billing issue I had to contact telstra about. Billing attempted several times to contact the technical dept that did the work. That just didn't happen after 3 weeks, despite constantly calling Billing.
After a day of phoning around I was able to get through to one of the engineering departments who performed phone work for me, and they immediately saw the error and attempted to get back in contact with Billing. It took another month, and *ME* faxing information sent to me by engineering, to actually get anything resolved.
It could have been fixed overnight if there was appropriate communicationbetween departments. I get the feeling telstra like breaking up into little bureaucratic bundles, each with their own world.
Re:telstra have problems (Score:4, Funny)
I think we should give the inpectors more time!
Roast the bastards (Score:4, Insightful)
Roast em.
Redo! (Score:5, Insightful)
It's time to design newer, more secure infrastructures so we can scrap the old stuff and (hopefully) deal with less of this bullshit in the future.
Re:Redo! (Score:2)
But then you'd break someones crappy 1979 unix newsreader, and we can't have that!
Re:Redo! (Score:2)
> doesn't matter, because people whose primary goal
> in life is to make money by annoying the living
> shit out of other people will just find ways to
> circumvent the latest and greatest
> filter/banning/whatever.
Newsguy has effective filters. My newsfeed is completely spam free and has been for years.
Re:Redo! (Score:2)
Are you sure you're not the one on the crack pipe?
BTW, your website sucks. Only somebody on crack would use Tripod to post their favorite songs.
Re:Redo! (Score:2)
What It Is (Score:2, Informative)
UDP, or Usenet Death Penalty, is a means by which site administrators and others around the world attempt to enforce the cooperative nature of usenet on an uncooperative member of that community...
An Active UDP is one in which every message posted to usenet by the offending site is canceled or failed to be propagated.
If it reduces spam, I'm all for it. I for one have read far too many ads for health plans, penis enlargements, low-interest credit cards and fabulous marketing opportunities!
Telstra (Score:1)
To all those saying how bad usenet is... (Score:4, Funny)
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anything you may have done (Score:1)
- tried to log in
- tried to post
- tried to view a reply on the thread
Yeah the last week or so
of course for some reason, even though I'm not logged in, I am. Weird.
Re:To all those saying how bad usenet is... (Score:2)
Can someone explain to me how HTTP status 200 (OK) could possibly be reported as an error? What hacking would you have to do to Apache to get it to give you this message?
Re:To all those saying how bad usenet is... (Score:2)
For an admin geek... (Score:1)
Next step (Score:2)
Mom and Pop (Score:4, Interesting)
Xix.
Re:Mom and Pop (Score:2, Informative)
A UDP is a voluntary action by all of the upstream feeds who agree to stop asking news.bigpond.net for new articles. Obviously, to be effective, all of the upstream feeds must participate. This is usually not a problem, since news admins typically take an official UDP very seriously. The RFC lists a dozen or so upstream servers that pull from bigpond. Those are the only admins that really matter here. Notice that many of these are outside of Australia.
As far as getting the lawyers involved, I don't see how they could force the upstream feeds to query news.bigpond.net for new articles. It would be like my neighbor trying to get in injunction to force me to take in his newspapers for him while he's on vacation.Re:Mom and Pop (Score:2)
But the UDP isn't that different from the RBL, or even proposed Internet Death Penalties where backbone providers refuse to carry traffic to or from various netblocks. Companies that haven't contracted to carry your traffic are deciding that they don't wish to deal with you, and as there's no contract, they're free to do what they want.
When the RBL is threatened with lawsuits it's for defamation. They're suggesting that telling people you're a spammer is defamation. (And in some countries, notably the UK and Australia they're right, truth isn't a defense.) So you allowed to apply a death penalty to someone, but you're not allowed to tell anyone why. The legal system is pathetic.
Of course, the possible outcome of the lawsuits doesn't matter in most countries, just that you can cost the opposition enough that they'll do what you want. (See the above point about lawyers not being human.)
alt.luser.recovery (Score:4, Interesting)
google groups alt.luser.recovery [google.com.au]
some more is not even spam (found by just checking random message id's in spamhippo)
ps fix the damned web server already (couldn't get preview to work so cross your fingers)
Is Usenet Still Relevant? (Score:2, Informative)
Hypocritical ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yet when it comes to spam, most posters here are prepared to swing the heaviest hammer they can find at supposed offenders. But I wonder whether this is hypocritical.
Let's consider the parallels:
Is this a classic case of "do what I say, not what I do". ?
Re:Hypocritical ? (Score:4, Insightful)
The difference being E-mail is usually considered personal communication, or one to one, where websites and USENET are mass communication, or one to many.
> there is no good way to opt-out of spam, and no good way to opt-out of the
Block http requests by referrer.
> spammers and
It can be argued
Re:Hypocritical ? (Score:3, Insightful)
The slashdot effect is short term and exists because the end-users took an interest in what you presented to the world - if you are unprepared for the populairty of what you've presented that is not the world's fault - find and implement some way to limit the admission, and be happy that what you did had an impact.
But, spam irritates forever and only continues to exist because the middlemen have an interest in presenting the material - the end-users have no interest.
Usenet exists because it links multiple smaller networks. If Usenet is to have any value then the middlemen need to react to the end users complaints. Fortunately the UDP works because there is a hierarchal structure - all big ISPs are equal in their vote and all have an interest in their end-users - those big ISPs that don't have that interest because they have been compromised by the soft-money of spammers are cut off from the network and suffer in the only manner they recognize - financially.
Goodbye to BeerGuy and Matilda??? ** SNIFF ** (Score:2)
(alligator tears)
Boy, I know some newsgroups are going to get real empty...
UDP ad.doubleclick..net (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:UDP ad.doubleclick..net (Score:2)
You get DoubleClick popup banners in Usenet?
You know in Mozilla you can disable images and JavaScript in mail & newsgroups?
Me too! (Score:2)
Anyway, I like the idea of a UDP. I don't believe it is censorship since an ISP doesn't *have* to honor a UDP cancel. So, for example, a UDP'd user's posts may still appear on deja-news or google groups, for example, if those archives chose to retain them. In many ways, it's no different than blocking calls on your phone. Plus a UDP'd user often can switch to a non UDP'd ISP (not always true, I realize).
Also, while a person may have the right to free speech, that doesn't mean that everyone is obligated to listen to him/her. That's why it's not okay to go around screaming at the top of your lungs in the middle of the night in most neighborhoods -- frat row is a different case, of course
Anyway, I think it'd be worth trying. If it seemed like it wasn't working, it could always be repealed.
Re:Me too! (Score:2)
if you're going to skulk around at night i suggest stealth
And I thought that Usenet was supposed to be free (Score:2)
The Patented Slashdot Slippery Slope (Score:2)
Slippery Slopes are illogical, by defintion, and and, alternately, a way of life for some slashdotters. *sigh* There is no sufficient evidence to demonstrate that they (whoever 'they' are) will proceed from one step to the next down the slope.
Re:And I thought that Usenet was supposed to be fr (Score:2)
spam costs money to receive. the costs are just hidden as something else.
Re:isn't Usenet dead? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:isn't Usenet dead? (Score:4, Informative)
It comes in quite useful at time like these..
Re:isn't Usenet dead? (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure, but I think you're missing the point. It would serve as a clear warning to other ISPs with simular non existing ignore-abuse-mails policies. I am with an ISP with such a policy and it is sometimes d*mned frustrating (especially when you compare with their competitors). The last thing they pulled was letting a former employee use personal customer data for personal profit and spamming (I assume it's the guy that came to make my pc 'surf-ready' and entered with the words Ah, this is Linux, I can't do anything here, as if his services were needed or requested).
I'm pretty certain that my abuse mail about this got redirected to
Re:OFFTOPIC as hell (Score:2, Insightful)
Offtopic?
Hum... why have UDPs been used or threatend to be used in the past?
Lets see...
Erols.com
Bell Atlantic, July, 1997 SPAM!
UUnet SPAM!
Compuserve October, 1997, SPAM!
TIAC December, 1997 SPAM!
Netcom February, 1998 SPAM!
MCI2000.com August, 1998 SPAM!
PSINet November, 1998 SPAM!
Starnet IncJune of 1999 SPAM!
HKT (Hong Kong) June of 1999 SPAM!
BBNPlane October 1999 SPAM!
Ameritech November of 1999 SPAM!
VSNL and SILNET (India) December of 1999 SPAM!
In the Usenet Death Penalty article it frequently mentions that these example UDP's happened because the ISPs were major/#1 source for usenet spam. So the admins tightened things up and the spam disapeared from their servers, only to appear on someone elses. Spam just keeps getting worse and worse. UDPs may be a great way to enforce antispam policies, but it doesn't seem to stop the rotting public groups.
~Z
Re:UDP = Censorship (Score:4, Informative)
Isn't this censorship?
No. Firstly, the legal definition of censorship in the USA (where, unfortunately, most of the spammers are, even when they use resources outside the USA) is that it can only be done by the government - private entities can not, by definition, be guilty of censorship. Outside the US, laws are varied. Secondly, even ignoring that definition, and using the uninformed public's opinion of what censorship is [preventing someone from saying something that they don't like], this does not fall under that criteria, either. The articles being canceled or shunned by pathhost aliasing are not picked and chosen by their content - ALL articles from the offending site are canceled or shunned. It has nothing to do with likes and dislikes - it has to do with abuse by one system of all of the other systems on usenet.
Now perhaps you disagree with that, but I thought I'd point it out. Personally I agree with it. Also, if you haven't read the entire FAQ, you should. There are a lote of interesting points made. Please don't bother to reply to this post unless you have. Here's another good one:
So if you cancel everything from the UDP site, don't legitimate people get canceled, too?
Yes. One of the driving forces behind forcing compliance with generally accepted guidelines is that the ISP's own legitimate users (if any) can bring pressure to bear on their rogue ISP. Remember, the UDP is a near-last-resort measure.
Re:UDP = Censorship (Score:2)
I can only assume that you're not a regular usenet user. I've been using usenet since 1992 and without system admins enforcing UDPs, the whole network would've gone to hell years ago.
Face it, the reason the admins are putting the UDP in is to STOP SPAM. It's not like they want to block legitimate posts from their users.
Get a clue.
BTW: I block entire subnets from my mailserver because I get incoming spam from certain addresses in those blocks. Am I "censoring" people, or am I staging a "coup" if I do that?
Remember, it's my system and I can do what I want with it. The same as any other system admin, there's nothing that guarantees you access, or guarantees your post will be seen. This isn't the post office.
N.
Re:UDP = Censorship (Score:2)
Been using Usenet since 1984, thank you. Regular? Yup.
You asked: "BTW: I block entire subnets from my mailserver because I get incoming spam from certain addresses in those blocks. Am I "censoring" people, or am I staging a "coup" if I do that?"
No, because it's your system you're controlling. The key difference here is that they're not just killing posts from propogating to their servers, but to all of the NNTP servers in the world. You're not couping, but they are. That's the difference. They will use 'cancelmoose' or 'cancelbunny' or some other shit to kill all, and I want to repeat that, all, messages from an entire domain! What you're comparing is apples to oranges.
Re:UDP = Censorship (Score:2)
Re:UDP = Censorship (Score:2)
More seriously if you read news.admin.net-abuse.usenet you'll soon realise that a lot of debate and agonizing goes on before a UDP. Often this debate is enough of a warning to an ISP that the UDP isn't necessary. UDPs are definitely a last resort, not a knee-jerk reaction.
Getting a consensus of the admins on nanau (news.admin etc) is considerably harder than herding cats, lurk a while and learn what goes on if you don't already know.
Re:UDP = Censorship (Score:2)
No, actually censoring is "to examine in order to suppress or delete anything considered objectionable." The fallacy that "only the government can censor" is bullshit of the highest order.
"UDP is a collective decision to not accept traffic from a particular server or provider."
Ideally, yes, but in reality what they will do is issue cancel messages for all outgoing posts from the domain being targetted. This isn't just "hey, let's ignore Bigpond!" it's "hey, let's kill Bigpond's usenet connections!" It's a DoS.
"A UDP is backbones and the like agreeing that the UDPed provider is behaving obnoxiously and refusing to listen to him..."
Again, that would be ideal, but that's not what happens in reality. They are a handful of people deciding that nobody from Bigpond has the right to be heard via usenet. In addition to being censorship it is also discrimination. And, although I enjoy Heinlein, he's not a founding father and his views posted in a book (albeit a good one) are not law and shouldn't be taken as such.
UDP != Censorship (Score:2)
The analogy I find useful is to consider like my reaction to certain politicians speeches - when they come on the babblebox I turn over or off - I refuse to listen. They may be able to speak but they don't have to be able to be heard - especially if I have to pay the bill (or part of it).
Re:UDP = Censorship (Score:2)
The problem is that Telestra isn't doing much to get their users to stop being asses. If more action was done by Telestra in warning/stopping the spammers, there wouldn't be an issue.
Re:UDP = Censorship (Score:2)
No, actually censoring is "to examine in order to suppress or delete anything considered objectionable." The fallacy that "only the government can censor" is bullshit of the highest order. Why don't you go learn something.