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Spam

XS4ALL Wins Anti-Spam Suit 140

Posted by michael from the access-for-all-except-spammers dept.
johnpc writes: "In a court case started by Dutch ISP XS4ALL, a judge ruled yesterday that spam outfit AbFab is forbidden to send spam to all subscribers of said ISP. The judge writes: 'The essential point is that XS4ALL has no legal conveyance obligation. (...) XS4ALL does not wish to convey messages which its customers have not asked to receive and therefore does not wish these messages to be delivered through its systems, in this case from Abfab. The question of whether the unsolicited sending of large volumes of advertising messages by e-mail should be referred to as 'spam' or 'electronic direct marketing' is not relevant to this dispute.' This is obviously not a solution to the spam problem within the Netherlands, but it is a step in the right direction. You can read an english abstract of the ruling. Unfortunately, most of the actual case documents are in dutch, some of which are still being translated."
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XS4ALL Wins Anti-Spam Suit More

XS4ALL Wins Anti-Spam Suit

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  • This is a stunning victory against the forces of spam.

    Now if my own country (United states) would get a similar precident....

    Horray for XS4All!

    (reads more closely)
    • Mayhaps I misunderstood this?

      A judge ruled that an ISP doesn't have to use its own resources to deliver advertisements (for free) for someone else to whom they have no obligation of any kind?

      US companies have no such problem that I am aware of, and it greatly disturbs me that a judge in any country should have to state this explicitly.
      • The point is that XS4ALL doesn't want to block e-mail themselves. They don't want to filter or censor anything. Instead they want the originating company to stop sending the e-mail through their networks in the first place. That is what the case was about, and the judge ruled in their favour.

  • I have to laugh (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Slash Veteran ( 561542 )
    I have to laugh everytime I read one of these "spam is illegal/spam is made illegal/spammer is found to be violating the law" stories.

    If the US congress tomorrow passes a law that clearly and completely illegalizes spam, the amount of pr0n and online diploma spam I get will drop ZERO PERCENT.

    How do you sue? Like I'm going to sue a korean mail relay. Stop. You are wasting my time. This problem can't and won't be solved by Trent Lott and Tom Daschle. Stop pretending it will.

    • Well, you and the spammers both seem to have one thing in common... wasting bandwidth.
    • If the law allowed for brutal public execution of spammers and people who knowingly contract spam run, I suspect that your spam load would drop significantly.
    • It's just the first step in the right direction.
      When we have the laws that make it illegal, it will become a problem for the government, as it has to make sure that these laws are followed. More and more restrictions will arise thanks to these laws, and might actually slowly make spamming a hell of a pain for the spammers.
    • Currently spam is frictionless; that is, there is almost zero marginal cost associated with spamming, hence the constant increase in junk email.

      Something like this in the US would undoubtedly increase the cost of doing business for spammers aned their clients.

      Some spamming companies would get caught, have judegements filed against them, and have to pay up. Korean mail relays notwithstanding.

      No, I don't agree with your assertion that a judegement like this in the US would cause spam to "drop ZERO PERCENT".

      I'm willing to listen to your arguement, but as you've presented it its baseless.

    • Re:I have to laugh (Score:3, Insightful)

      by ender81b ( 520454 )
      You are right. Any spammer based outside the U.S. will be able to spam at will. BUT inside the U.S. they will be liable to prosecution AND any company USING spam who is inside the U.S. will be liable for prosecution/civil suits. Believe me, enough of these get prosecuted and you won't have many left willing to risk it. If you *knew* that if you reported spam to a government agency they would prosecute the spammers wouldn't you send every piece to them?

      Wham-Bam 90% of spam is eliminated.
      • That is a very good point. The spam is not spam for its own sake, it tries to promote something. And if that "something" (site, phonenumber, P.O.Box etc) is in the US, the chances might be substantial.

        Just my 0.02

        Alex
      • Wrong. The only spam that comes from the US are from mom & pop outfits who are just trying it for the first time. 90% of all spam comes from organizations or individuals who know what they're doing. People who know what they're doing when it comes to spam don't have anything to do with the US... servers in Asia, incorporated in Bermuda, etc. A few US laws won't effect 'em one bit.
    • How do you know who to sue? You follow the money.

    • Re:I have to laugh (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Teun ( 17872 ) on Saturday March 09, 2002 @09:21AM (#3134637)
      But you miss part of the picture, already before this company got it's clients in trouble.
      AbFab had sold their services to a few big names in Holland and this made them get on their knees begging the public for forgiveness about the spam they had send by means of AbFab.

      Any legal solution has to include punishment for the companies trying to sell the goods, not just the mail boys.
      And they are generaly in your own country!

  • Instead of fighting HUGE spammers, why not take smaller ones to court to set precedents. Then build up to larger and larger ones?

    This is a great step in the correct direction.
  • A step in the right direction. Let's hope that ISPs in Holland follow suit and this becomes an international trend.

    Die spamers!

  • Now if we can get all the other ISP's to get on the bandwagon to just use the threat of litigation where a precedent has been set.
  • Expect to see more of this on Slashdot, which will post basically anything spam-related in the news. Companies sue other companies for spam. Your ISP fights for you. Things work out...
    Gotta win one of these in the US to make it a reality though.
    • Gotta win one of these in the US to make it a reality though.

      That's right, the Netherlands are situated in 'unreality'. Hello? I think you mean that a similar case has to be won in the US to affect the amount of spam you get when you live in the US.

      I'm sorry to be complaining here, but I get so tired of Americans who think the world ends north of Minnesota and south of Texas.

      One little ruling in an insignificant country like the Netherlands does not change the world, but it's a start.
      • Sorry, I was under the impression that all spam basically originates from the USA. Certainly somebody from australia has more to fear from an american spammer than a dutch one, no?
        • Well, maybe. I don't know. Point of this ruling is that XS4ALL has the right to block spam (as in "not distribute"). I guess you are right that this will not help US users in the short term. But, spammers use all the relays they have access to, and the more blocks, the better.
          (My reply could have been a little friendlier, sorry ;-)

          • Re:Here it is: the first of many (Score:5, Informative)

            by satanami69 ( 209636 ) on Saturday March 09, 2002 @04:31AM (#3134384) Homepage
            "Point of this ruling is that XS4ALL has the right to block spam"


            The point is even better than that. The ISP can tell a company not to send email through it's servers. If that company does, then the company can lose up to 2.5 million whatevertheircurrencyis. XS4ALL doesn't have to change or try to block any spam at all from the company. Overall, this brings down XS4ALL's operating cost, plus reduces the spam their customers get. Good news, I hope it goes forward.

            • Errr, you're right. Thanks for the correction.
            • "Point of this ruling is that XS4ALL has the right to block spam"
              The point is even better than that. The ISP can tell a company not to send email through it's servers. If that company does, then the company can lose up to 2.5 million whatevertheircurrencyis. XS4ALL doesn't have to change or try to block any spam at all from the company. Overall, this brings down XS4ALL's operating cost, plus reduces the spam their customers get. Good news, I hope it goes forward.

              This is the point I'm not sure I agree with. According to the ruling (at least the English translation, which I'm assuming is accurate) "XS4ALL has no legal conveyance obligation", which means they don't have to relay the spam. I'm not sure where this translates into AbFab can't send mail to the mail servers. IT seems to me it would more logically mean that XS4ALL doesn't have to deliver the mail if it is sent to their servers (they have no legal obligation to convey these messages to their users). It's kinda like if I get mail for someone else at my house. I have no legal obligation to convey that message on to the correct address, I can just throw it out. But I can't charge the person who sent it to my house (even if they did it on purpose). They other question is what happens if a user requests email fro AbFab. Out of all their users, I'm sure their is at least one person who wants whatever crap it is their selling. As this ruling talks about unsolicited email, if a person signs up for it, can they be charged for sending it?
              • Hi Dirk, Since XS4ALL has no legal obligation, you can see it as a service to their clients. These clients are paying for their bandwidth (and other services, like email servers) every month. Now somebody is going to use this bandwidth and servers for not asked for email. Therefore they are abusing the services the clients are paying the ISP for. When you are receiving spam at your house, it doesn't cost you a thing. The spammer pays to get their message accross. Obviously, if you are requesting email from AbFab (a very unlikely event indeed) AbFab is not abusing your or the ISP's facilities, so they won't have to pay a penny. Maarten ps. xs4all has had / is having a problem with unsolicited email putting a very high load on their email servers.
      • I get so tired of Americans who think the world ends north of Minnesota and south of Texas

        What? We're well aware of Alaska and Hawaii!
        • What? We're well aware of Alaska and Hawaii!

          I wouldn't be so sure...;-)

          Anyway, brings me to the following (-1:Offtopic, +1:Interesting):

          What are the most Northern, Southern, Eastern and Western of the United States?

  • victims & sentence (Score:5, Informative)

    by storem ( 117912 ) on Saturday March 09, 2002 @03:31AM (#3134308) Homepage
    It's seems that the court case was initiated by some XS4ALL users (spam victims) in co-operation with the ISP.

    The sentence translates to:

    The sentencing judge:

    1. Prohibits AB.FAB from sending commercial e-mail messages (or have them sent), in their name or in the name of third parties, to (e-mail addresses of) users and/or customers and/or members of XS4ALL. Otherwise a penality of 50,- per e-mail message, with a maximum of 2.500.000 (two and a half million euro), where user and/or customer and/or member of XS4ALL is at least:

      everyone who holds an e-mail address ending in a domainname containing the word XS4ALL, explicitely inluding domainnames: XS4ALL.NL, XS4ALL.com, XS4ALL.net, XS4ALL.org, XS4ALL.co.uk, XS4ALL.be, and the domainnname hacktic.nl.

    2. Refuses the provision asked by the XXXXX c.s. (the spam victims)
    3. Compensates the costs of trial so, every party pays it's own costs.
    4. Declares the ruling executable.
    5. Denies more or different askings.

  • Great, what about the rest of the planet? (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Fantastic, Dutch ISPs will now be able to block spam with impunity. However, I don't really see how this will help the state of affairs for the majority of the global online populous (aka netizens).
    • I guess the rest of the planet could become spam refugees by subscribing to xs4all. However they'd still need some other ISP for their actual connection to the net (for now...)

      Am I spamming by writing this?

      • Re:Great, what about the rest of the planet? (Score:1, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Actually, I have a XS4all account since 1996 and am soon abandoning it because it gets way too much spam. The bulk of it comes down the pipe from dial-up accounts from the biggest American ISPs and Asian open relays. The ruling hasn't stopped that.

        Blame for my innoncence for using my XS4all address when posting on Usenet during 1996 and 1997 and putting up on my website, but spam wasn't such an issue then.
    • No they can't block the spam but they can go after the spammers.
      As AbFab was a national company with mainly national clients this was relatively easy.
      It's still just as hard to fight against spammers from far away.
      Xs4all is running a trial with a few hundred subscribers on a DNS-based anti-spam system, looks good so far and might be available to all in the future.

  • The ruling is not about SPAM. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by www.sorehands.com ( 142825 ) on Saturday March 09, 2002 @03:40AM (#3134320) Homepage
    The ruling is more about rights of an ISP to control its own system. The approaches what the appeals court ruled in Intel v. Hamibi [intelhamidi.com].

    Similar rulings in the United States would start detailing the landscape of rights of website owners to keep SPAMMERS from scraping.

    • I checked that site -- what a whiner! Exactly what is it that Hamibi believes he has a "right" to force onto Intel's privately owned machines at their expense?
    • I went ahead and had a look at Hamibi's website, too, and had to laugh through my disgust.
      "granted Intel an unprecedented preliminary injunction to ban me from sending informative and educational e-mail messages to Intel employees."
      Yeah, right. I can just imagine his idea of "Educational and informative" now:

      TO: staff@intel.com
      FROM: eoiff30dn3@hotmail.com
      SUBJECT: INCREASE YOUR PENIS SIZE NOW - NINE INCHES GUARIANTEED!!!!!!!

      Hamibi Enterprises, a well known and medically respected pharmaceutical manufacturer announces a fantastic new brakesthru now - bring out the REAL you! Results GURANTEED!....
      Got a couple of Shifmans [petemoss.com] in his family tree, I guess.
    • Hamibi seems to claim that since Intel connected their network up to the Internet, it is now public domain, just like the public roads, and he should be able to send email to anyone on that network.
      By his reasoning, he should be able to put stuff in my garage because it's hooked up to the public roads via my driveway.
      • I dunno about california, but if I go out onto a public road and do donuts, speed, etc... I get in a wee bit of trouble.

        Anyway, since when is the Internet a public resource? It may have been started by the US gov, but isn't the public internet now owned by MCI, Sprint, etc...

        BTW - where is your house...my garage is full :)
    • Except Hamibi doesn't have a case. He was clearly abusing a PRIVATELY owned server.

      Just because a system is publicly accessible doesn't mean its "public domain property".

      What about stores in a Mall? I can just walk in off the street, does that I mean I can do what I want in the store?

      I think "Hamibi" is a good example of people trying to make causes [like Kevin Mitnick another criminal]. I mean how can you do something that at the least is clearly bad faith [if not illegal] then sit back and cry your rights are violated when they stop you from abusing other peoples equipment?

      Tom
  • Unfortunately, most of the actual case documents are in dutch, some of which are still being translated.

    Well, I read the 8 page verdict, and there's not a whole lot there that's not in the English abstract. So don't worry, I don't think you're missing a lot.
    (Sorry, I'm not going to translate 8 pages of Dutch legalese into English).
    • For those who don't like to read scanned paper, here's a link to the official Dutch site where almost all verdicts are made publicly available:

      http://www.rechtspraak.nl/uitspraak/frameset.asp ?u i_id=31892

  • I don't understand (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    One thing I am really confused about is what makes congress fellows hesitate about passing a law to ban spam? Does that conflict their personal interests, or is that (possibly?) unconstitutional, or is it just technicalities? Doesn't banning spam benifit everybody except spammers?
    • My simple answer: those congress fellows think about e-mail as a way to advertise for their own re-election.

      The not-so-simple answer: a correct definition of unsollicited e-mail is hard to make. At the receiving end it may look easy (based on contents) but think of the shades of grey when replying to a posting. Example: You ask for help on selecting an upgrade for your PC, you are doubting whether a Yoyodine tapedrive will work. One reply is "I use a Yoyodine tapedrive and it works great", one is "we at WeSellHardware sell a lot of Yoyodine tapedrives and customers are happy", one is "Special offer for Yoyodine tapedrives!". The middle one is both usefull information and a sort of advertisment. Is it spam ? Depends on what the receiver feels about it.

      • The not-so-simple answer: a correct definition of unsollicited e-mail is hard to make.

        That's why the important thing to go after is unsolicited bulk email. The "I posted about Yoyodyne tape drives and got a response from a Yoyodyne reseller" example is one thing; the "I posted about Yoyodyne tape drives and me and everyone else on the group got a bunch of messages about hot and horny mortgage lenders" is another.

        It should be fairly easy for a reasonable-sized ISP to prove the bulk part all by themselves; even smaller sites can usually do it via news.admin.net-abuse.email.

        Single, human-sent-to-a-specific-person commercial email doesn't scale fast enough (and costs the sender too much, even in this economy) to be the same problem as scrape-the-net-and-blast-it-out stuff. Attack the latter first.

      • and having (certain)websites that have all those checkboxes at the bottom of sign-up pages
        (which after you uncheck them, and submit,
        but forget to put in a password, they magicaly
        become re-checked)
        does not help make that line any clearer.

        and in my opinion. anything i did not check my-self, or ask for would be spam. even if it is useful, i did not ask for it.

  • This is such flaming bullshit (Score:3, Insightful)

    by AgentTim3 ( 447311 ) on Saturday March 09, 2002 @03:58AM (#3134342) Journal
    disclamer: I only ask that you READ all the way through this mess before modding it as troll. thx.

    Get ready for a long one. YES, spam sucks. We all know it, we agree with it, no one likes it. Guess what? DEAL with it!

    In order to legislate the Internet, parallels must be drawn between it and regular society. Why? Because the Internet IS regular society, en masse. You've read all the shite about it being a global community, well, it IS!

    We've all seen the posts before comparing spam to junk mail and why that makes it legitimate. No one has bothered to fully explain that so I'm going to, because IT'S TRUE.

    You move into/purchase/rent/lease a house. Your address is thereby registered in various marketing pools. By participating in surveys, signing up for credit cards, buying various things, your Home Address gets propagated around the Real World net. Advertisers troll these networks and eventually pick up that you, Person A, live at Address B. And so they begin to send you mass mailings. The ones you receive may be personalized to your community. Depending on how much information you've volunteered to the Network, they may be personalized to your age/sex/religion/choice of pets/favorite video game console/etc. These people pay money to the (very much legitimate) US Postal Service to see that their advertisements/coupons/etc. are mailed to you.

    Now we move to the Internet parallel. You have signed up for an Internet Address. The Internet is public. I will repeat this. The Internet is PUBLIC. Therefore people on the Internet can determine your address, just as much as I can browse the white pages looking for Real World home addresses. Depending on how much information you have submitted through various channels to the Internet, people may have put together certain profiles about you. Just as in real life, they will determine which advertisements are best suited to you, and make sure to send them to your PUBLIC address.

    Being that this is Slashdot and no space to write novels, I would hope that we have all seen the obvious parallels between Home Addresses and Internet Addresses. If not, reread the above paragraphs until it makes sense.

    Now, onto the problem (and indeed, I will propose the Solution)...

    The US Postal Service requires MONEY in order to send out bulk mailings. The cost IS proportionate to the amount of mail that one wishes to send out. If I wish to print one million full color ten page Pennysavers and send them out to my "most likely to buy stuff" list of targets, I must pay a requisite sum to the Postal Service in order to see that these ads are delivered. This is where the Internet FAILS MISERABLY. ISP's do not care about bulk mail. Open relays allow far too many people to send far too many identical messages without caring about how many poor souls are copied on the same duplicated message. The ISP level is where it MUST CEASE. The current system is retarded and asinine. Those that maintain SMTP servers MUST begin to charge appropriate rates for bulk mail. There is no reason not to do this. Yes, I hear you whiners coming with "I'm a busy business professional, mail rates will hamper me!" BULLSHIT. *I* am an extremely busy business professional. I send AT MOST fifty emails a day. DAMN sure that they are all NOT identical ads merely being copied to various other people. At the ISP level, this is not in any way difficult to filter out and charge for.

    I propose a simple and effective email charge system, where bulk mailers are FORCED to pay an appropriate amount in order to mail to a few thousand, tens of thousand, etc people.

    The problem now is that our "open" network allows spammers to do their business virtually for free. If we can force them to conform to a business model that mimics the Real World and no longer lives in Fantasy Land, I will guarantee you that our goal of receiving less spam will be accomplished. However, I can't say this enough: Attempting to legislate against this practice is not only ineffective, it is UNCONSTITUTIONAL and completely worthless. Restricting people from advertising their products to PUBLIC networks and PUBLIC addresses on those networks goes against everything our country was founded on.

    There also exists a second solution, which I'm sure many people will bitch about as well. But it's simple: Maintain TWO email addresses. Keep one public, open to any senders. Go through it as your business needs demand, and filter out any important emails. Keep the second address PRIVATE, that is, only accept emails from people on your "accept" list. I submit that this is really not that horrible a thing, and many of us are doing it already. Is my /. address my "main"? Not even close!! I have a personal address which I give out to coworkers, close friends, etc., which they have instant access to. The access list blocks any emails orginating from unfamiliar territory. I check my other, public list as I need to, and filter out the crap that builds up in there.

    In short summary, legislating against spam is yet another of the giant wastes of time that government spends its time doing. It needs to be addressed from the economical model (reasonable ISP charges) or from the personal level (maintain public/private email addresses). Anything else does nothing but waste clock cycles.

    --t
    • I think I agree with your intent, but not your logic. When you say the Internet is a "public" network, you are only partially correct. A truly public network would not be owned by companies like UUNET, Sprint, and AT&T, not to mention the countless companies whose infrastructure makes up the Internet. I agree totally that new laws won't do what is needed, what is needed is for ISP's and enterprises to take their claims of harm (wasted bandwidth & processor cycles) to court and make it very expensive for companies to use UCE. The problem with trying to create a system that forces the Spammers to pay the network providers is there isn't "one" entity like the Post Office that handles email, or even email policies for America, much less the rest of the world. I think a better long term approach is to force opt-in, which will force advertisers to go down the pay the recipient track. ISP's and other service providers will have to watch for abuse from endusers, but disk qoutas and aging would handle most of that problem. If users started getting out of hand max email per day qoutas could be built fairly easily.

      Thorizdin

    • Re:This is such flaming bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)

      by bero-rh ( 98815 ) <bero AT redhat DOT com> on Saturday March 09, 2002 @05:13AM (#3134421) Homepage
      Now we move to the Internet parallel. You have signed up for an Internet Address. The Internet is public. I will repeat this. The Internet is PUBLIC. Therefore people on the Internet can determine your address, just as much as I can browse the white pages looking for Real World home addresses. Depending on how much information you have submitted through various channels to the Internet, people may have put together certain profiles about you. Just as in real life, they will determine which advertisements are best suited to you, and make sure to send them to your PUBLIC address.

      Not really.
      I receive loads of pr0n spam, and I'm actually one of the guys who are seriously offended by this sort of crap. I also make a point of publishing the fact that I don't want spam in my .signature, and nobody "targets" that.

      And there's another difference you're overlooking. "Real" junk mail doesn't cost the recipient anything (other than the time to throw it away), while many people actually pay for their net connectivity by volume or by duration, both of which causes them to pay for receiving spam.

      And, of course, at least some countries have laws allowing for "no junk mail" stickers on mail boxes, and disallowing delivery of junk mail to those. This actually works; I've received only one piece of junk snailmail this year [and its sender won't dare to do that again], in contrast to roughly 400 spam mails per day.

      I propose a simple and effective email charge system, where bulk mailers are FORCED to pay an appropriate amount in order to mail to a few thousand, tens of thousand, etc people.

      If it's used to compensate the recipients for their loss, it may actually be fair.

      Restricting people from advertising their products to PUBLIC networks and PUBLIC addresses on those networks goes against everything our country was founded on.

      Not quite. It has never been legal to steal, and spam is stealing bandwidth and connectivity cost.
      A rough equivalent to stealing bandwidth by spamming is stealing capacity of a bus or train - so if you think spammers should be protected by the constitution, you're implying that people who ride a train/bus/plane or any other piece of PUBLIC transportation without a ticket should be protected, as well.

    • Re:This is such flaming bullshit (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Ummm, your parallel is flawed in that the US Supreme Court has held since 1970 (Rowan v. USPS) that anyone may prohibit anyone from mailing them anything. All one has to do is file the appropriate paperwork with the Post Office. The PO then sends a prohibitory order to the mailer, who must then delete the name, address, etc. from their lists. They can't send you anything for 5 years. The court's ruling was quite interesting and it blew all of the Snail Mail spammer's arguments right out of the water...

      See also - the federal junk fax ban... PAssed because it costs virtually nothing to send faxes, but passes the cost onto the recipient in the form of paper, toner, maintenance of phone line, inability to use that line for business, etc...

      I fail to see why that same 1970 case doesn't apply to email, or why spammers ought to be able to send me anything without my express double-opt-in consent. If I want their crap, I'll search for it and ask for it. I'll verify it. But don't you dare presume to *think* that you know my preferences or desires. Don't you presume to think that wasting even a femtosecond of my time is your right. I have the absolute right to be let alone and fully intend to enjoy it - so keep your fucken opinions to yourself and those who request them. Leave me out of it. I ought not to have to delete anything - there's 500 million people on the net - if even 10% of those people sent me an email every day, I'd never get anything done.

      God damned spammers ought to be taken out and shot.
    • The Internet is public. I will repeat this. The Internet is PUBLIC.

      The Internet is not public. I will repeat this. The Internet is NOT PUBLIC.

      It has some public elements. Parts of it are held by public institutions. Other parts of it are exposed to the public.
      But the vast majority of the Internet is owned by private companies.

    • I'm responding to a troll. Shoot me now. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by The Famous Brett Wat ( 12688 ) on Saturday March 09, 2002 @06:03AM (#3134464) Homepage Journal
      The Internet is public. I will repeat this. The Internet is PUBLIC.

      Rather than repeating yourself, it would have been better to clarify which sense of "public" you meant. Open to all the people, like a public meeting? Maintained at the public expense, like a public library? Open to the view or knowledge of all, like when a fact goes public? I have a couple of servers permanently connected to the Internet, and only parts of them can be considered "public" in any of these senses (and not at all in the "funding" sense, alas). Perhaps you simply meant that you can't control what people do with information that you've disclosed (made public). I can agree with that, but I think "the Internet is public" is a poor way of expressing it.

      I propose a simple and effective email charge system, where bulk mailers are FORCED to pay an appropriate amount in order to mail to a few thousand, tens of thousand, etc people.

      Which bulk mailers will be forced how and by whom to comply with this?

      If we can force them to conform to a business model that mimics the Real World and no longer lives in Fantasy Land...

      Hate to burst your bubble, but at this moment in time the Internet exists in the real world, and your proposal exists in fantasy land. How were you intending to transpose them?

      However, I can't say this enough: Attempting to legislate against this practice is not only ineffective, it is UNCONSTITUTIONAL and completely worthless.

      To which constitution were you referring? The Internet does not have a "constitution" of which I'm aware. I take it that you're not proposing to legislate that ISPs should have to charge for bulk mail, then? Or would that be both constitutional and worthwhile? You mentioned forcing people to comply, so I assumed you meant law, but now I'm not so sure.

      In short summary, legislating against spam is yet another of the giant wastes of time that government spends its time doing. It needs to be addressed from the economical model (reasonable ISP charges) or from the personal level (maintain public/private email addresses).

      Oh, so you are against legislation in this case. You expect every ISP under the sun to spontaneously start charging for bulk mail. Well, if that's our only solution, then my guess is that spam is here to stay.

      My bet is that an improved set of mail protocols will be the answer. That's why I'm working on them full time right now. Ask me about them in another four months or so.

      • I propose a simple and effective email charge system, where bulk mailers are FORCED to pay an appropriate amount in order to mail to a few thousand, tens of thousand, etc people.
        Which bulk mailers will be forced how and by whom to comply with this?
        Make providers charge per application layer "artefacts" and not per volume independent of its semantics. Charge per email, per HTML page, per whatever and not per bit transferred.
      • To which constitution were you referring?

        That's a good question. In my experience, people who write "it is UNCONSTITUTIONAL" (in ALL-CAPS) are generally advancing some argument along the lines of "the income tax is illegal because Ohio was not properly admitted to the Union until 1953". (Really -- people actually say this [straightdope.com].)

    • Re:This is such flaming bullshit (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I disagree with the notion that one of your proposals could be the solution to the spam problem. Charging for mail sent and using different addresses for different purposes are two often-heard proposals, which are just as often rejected because they either do not work or are even more in fantasy land than the current system.

      Just two facts: If you're using separate mail addresses, what are you going to do with the mails coming in on the "spam magnet" address? Ignore them? If so, why don't you just stop using an email address in these situations at all? If you are sifting through the shitload of spam to find legitimate messages, you might just as well use one address for all as sorting them first only to look at all anyway isn't going to save you anything. Then there's the problem that it's simply impossible to keep mail addresses secret. They leak through CCs, worms, web greeting cards ex-friends on a mission, etc.

      Then about the send-fees: Faxes already cost the sender money, and I get a shitload of faxspam anyway, clogging my fax machine, costing my time to money. If you want a system like paper junk mail, use paper junk mail.

    • I dunno about the rest of the world but here in Holland we can put stickers on our mailboxes saying I don't want any marketing leaflets and/or free local newspapers etc, which is in my eyes just snail-mail spam. I want the same stickers on my email mailbox, and this is the first step towards that. If I don't want spam I don't want spam not even if the sender payed to get it delivered.
    • The "e-stamps" model has been looked at and rejected for two reasons:

      1. Political: You would need to get EVERYONE to agree on a new standard. We can't even get everyone to upgrade sendmail. We can't even get everyone to agree that closing relays is a good thing.

      2. The technology-scaling challenges in creating and tracking such stamps are overwhelming, and perhaps impossible to overcome. As someone pointed out, the USPS is a monolithic system, and it's easy for them to make sure all stamps are at least cursorily checked for authenticity. Not so with e-mail, which is a store-and-forward system. You can't open a connection from each final-hop mail server to the origin, so you need some sort of "one-time pad", which is difficult (impossible?) to do without centralization.

      Jay the ex-AOL mail guy
      • I'd like to see a law that ensures all spam/unsolicated bulk email has -
        1. A correct from: and replay-to: addresses
        2. Correct relayed-by: headers
        3. A 'X-UCE: Yes''header
        If such laws are passed, then filtering (either at sendmail or mailclient level) will get rid of most spam, and it would be easier to complain to the spammer, not that would do much.
        I'm not holding my breath for such laws to be passed though....
        • That still requires processing the full content of the message to discover that it's spam. Big sites like AOL spend millions of dollars on equipment to process mail that will eventually hit the bit bucket. Much better to stop it before it hits.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Those that maintain SMTP servers MUST begin to charge appropriate rates for bulk mail.

      Little problem with that... I run SMTP servers on most of my boxes for development, testing, etc. SMTP servers don't have anything to do with ISP's.
    • Guess what? DEAL with it!


      I am attempting to deal with spammers. Unfortunately, justice is thwarted by the law, so I cannot deal with spammers the way George Bush is dealing with al-Qaeda, but I get as close to that idea as I can.

  • What's spam? (Score:2, Funny)

    by trollbot ( 542020 )
    For the vast majority of law-abiding Americans, spam is a non-issue. Almost everybody I fraternise with uses MicroSoft [microsoft.com]'s HoTMaiL.NET [hotmale.com] service.

    During recent renovations to the worlds first and best web-mail system, MicroSoft were kind and talented enough to add a heuristics-based artificial intelligence spam-blocking feature. At first I was sceptical - I mean, I use a sophisticated L.I.N.U.X. [redhat.com] system to try and reduce spam, and still I receive around 10-20 spam messages every day. Imagine my suprise the day I peered over a colleague's [cjb.net] shoulder to see the work of art that is the new HoTMaiL.NET [hotmail.com] User Interface. Not only was it exceptionally aesthetically pleasing [microsoft.com], but it had a helpful 'Junk-Mail' mailbox to keep precisely that - Junk Mail!!! I proceeded to enquire about this fantastic, energy saving innovation [microsoft.com]. My co-worker simply could not contain her delight with the system. She confided that since the HoTMaiL [hotmale.com] revamp, she had received a total of zero unwanted messages, including ones from a mentally unstable transient [stallman.org] who had been stalking her for weeks!!

    I'm sorry if I rant, or come off as an 'astro-turfer' (whatever that means), but I prefer to think of myself as an evangelist [brigada.org]. Simply put, HoTMaiL.NET is the finest e-mail system currently in use, and I would have no problems whatsoever in recommending it to anybody who would rather receive less unwanted mail. I'm sure that when the Netherlands receives access to the civilised Internet, the judge's decision will be overturned as their population migrates to a powerful, easy-to-use system such as MicroSoft's spam filter.

    • > I'm sure that when the Netherlands receives access to the civilised Internet I am, I am, do you really think we aren't receiving acces to the "civilised" internet? Most of us are using cable and/or ADSL so, shut up.
  • XS4ALL have said that they have no legal obligation to deliver all mail that their customers are sent. While true, using this as a reason to ban certain e-mail from their system is a little worrying.

    Why? Because it means that screening e-mail will become commonplace and ethically acceptable in future.

    Take a less essential system such as IRC. Large channels often have ridiculous bans in place.. for example, kick/ban all those with French hosts, AOL users, people from Asia, people with nicknames they don't like.. and so on and so forth. E-mail could become a similarly uncontrolled system.

    Do you really want to use a provider who, yes, blocks spam.. but, if the administrator doesn't like the French.. oh well, that means no-one using that ISP will receive any e-mail sent from French ISPs? Or, say, mail from Middle Eastern countries?

    So, yeah, blocking spam is good.. but making this screening behavior morally acceptable simply means that a lot more mail is going to be screened in the future.. and you might not be getting all of the e-mails you are due.
    • Actually, my experience with the XS4ALL guys is that they are a bunch of clueful people who won't suddenly decide all mail from a certain region is spam. Also, they don't have to block it; I'm currently using a mail account with spambox - all blocked mail can be downloaded separately, so I don't lose a thing and I won't have to sift through spam in my inbox.

    • Re:This isn't as good as it sounds. (Score:5, Informative)

      by Tyndareos ( 206375 ) on Saturday March 09, 2002 @05:41AM (#3134440) Homepage
      You obviously don't know XS4ALL. Your statement definitely stands, but only on the premise that XS4ALL would want to screen email. I can assure you that this is not the case.

      Because of this verdiect XS4ALL doesn't need to screen email. Whenever a customer receives unsollicited email from ABFAB, they can report this voluntarily and ABFAB has to pay.

      XS4ALL is defintely the very best ISP in the Netherlands (and possibly even in a more global sense) in the 'your rights online' category. They were the first ISP in the Netherlands founded by a couple of 'hackers' starting their business in may 1993. From the start they offered services such as mail by UUCP and telnet-access to powerful UNIX-machines. In 1997 they were the only (!) Dutch ISP to refuse to cooperate in a nationwide 'tap', because they didn't think the law being referenced in the tap-order could actually be used to order a tap. A judge proved them right. During the Serbian war they kept B52, the radio station of Belgrado, on-air online. They encourage their customers to use encryption by giving every single one of them a personal copy of PGP. They mirror almost everything cool in the open-source world and have donated the official machine and bandwidth of the munitions international crypto-resource. They are the primary sponsors and organisers of the 'hacking-festivals', HEU (Hacking at the end of the universe), HIP (Hacking in progress) and HAL (Hackers at large). They have never pulled content of their customers, when they received orders to do so, unless the order cam from a judge. They support Linux/BSD by offering documentation, howto's and software on their website. It's even possible to meet most of the sysadmins on irc and talk about how their systems work, ask about the specs and generally talk with them. I could tell you more, but I think the point is made: XS4ALL is no threat to our online privacy and rights. I would almost say that they're the dream-isp of almost any slashdot-fanatic.
      • Very true. Also, they have a very interesting policy that they encourage you to crack their systems, and as long as you don't destroy anything, and tell them about the security hole you've found, they'll refund part of your subscription as a reward.
      • Plus the fact that xs4all dared to take on the creeps of scientology, and won. That, and their technical expertise is why I have been a subscriber from 1994.
      • XS4ALL may be the finest ISP around. But that doesn't negate the point: if the ruling is based on the premise that an ISP has this degree of control over the resources it makes available to its customers, then it opens the door for ISP's to censor content. It destroys what Lessig calls the "end-to-end" quality that makes the Internet so appealing. Maybe we don't need to worry about XS4ALL - that's great. The problem is how the legal precedent could be used by other less discriminating operators.
    • Actually, no, this isn't true. The quoted pieces of the ruling do not show it, but XS4ALL claims to have the legal obligation of delivering all mail (unless otherwise indicated by the user(s) themselves) and the complete ruling actually stipulates this:
      The essential point is that XS4ALL has no legal conveyance obligation. It has nevertheless given its users and/or customers and/or subscribers (hereinafter referred to as customers) a commitment that it will convey all e-mail messages and has thus imposed a conveyance obligation upon itself.
      Please read the entire story at www.xs4all.nl/uk [xs4all.nl]. The court ruled 'no legal conveyance obligation', yes, which is indeed a pity. It is up to each ISP to declare that for themselves, and up to each individual to make sure they choose an ISP that does exactly that :-)

  • This is not the victory that many of you think (Score:4, Insightful)

    by kcbrown ( 7426 ) <slashdot@sysexperts.com> on Saturday March 09, 2002 @04:58AM (#3134409)
    The judge says that "XS4ALL does not have a conveyance obligation".

    Now, XS4ALL is not an U.S. based ISP, so certain concepts like that of common carrier status may not apply. But such things used to apply in the U.S., even if they don't apply today.

    The reason this isn't a victory is that it essentially declares that the ISP may transport ("convey") whatever data it pleases.

    Well, it is a privately owned company, and I can see some merit to the argument that what it does with its resources is its own business.

    But now apply the same logic to all ISPs, particularly the large ones, in light of the behavior of the media. That's right, folks: this ruling means that ISPs have the right to refuse to transmit any data they see fit. In short, they have the right to censor. After all, there's nothing that prevents them from selectively filtering.

    How would you like it if an ISP decided that it didn't want to bother transiting any Slashdot traffic? Or Kuro5hin? Or any non-mainstream web source? What if they start dropping data based on the content of the data itself? Think it can't happen?

    You say you could go to another ISP? Tell us that when the only ISPs left are AOL/TW and AT&T (the former, at least, has a very large interest in being selective about what you, the audience, see).

    This may be a "victory" in the fight against spam, but it has ramifications that are so bad that I'll take the spam, thank you.

    • The reason it went to court was that XS4ALL did not wish to censor any of the incoming traffic, as it had committment to deliver everything that was sent to its customers to its customers.

      It could have filtered out all their mail, but chose rather to try and get Abfab to stop sending the mail, therefore meaning that it has not had to do any censorship at all.
    • How would you like it if an ISP decided that it didn't want to bother transiting any Slashdot traffic?

      I'd switch to a different ISP.

      If an ISP is going to block email, then it should indicate exactly what email it's blocking (what domains, keywords, etc.). As long as it does this, I have no problem with it; I can switch providers if I don't like the policy of my current one. However, if one of the functions that it's charging you for in your monthly bill is delivering email, and it deliberately blocks certain email without telling you what it is that it's blocking, then it's committing fraud (charging for services not rendered). But as long as it's telling you what it's doing (and as long as it's not doing anything illegal), your ISP should be able to do what it wants to with its property.

    • Re:This is not the victory that many of you think (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Yhg1s ( 565361 ) on Saturday March 09, 2002 @07:19AM (#3134537)
      You are looking at this from the wrong side. ISPs were already perfectly in their rights, from a legal viewpoint, to block whatever and whoever they want. They are private companies *without* special governmental or legal privileges or duties (contrary to postal companies, for example.) Because of the 'youth' of the new media, very, very few regulations bind them, other than 'internet conventions' and the laws of public opinion, and supply and demand.

      XS4ALL has always wanted to change that, has always opposed censorship and blocks of any kind (except self-imposed by users, instead of ISPs) and what this court ruling states is that because XS4ALL explicitly and implicitly imposes the conveyance obligation on themselves, it is as legal as if it were a forced obligation.

      The reason there are no exlicit legal bounds to the rights and privileges of email, other 'new media' communication methods (think IRC, ICQ/IMs) and ISPs in general is simply that this is a 'new' media. This court ruling means that another step is made towards legitimizing and legalizing the rules and regulations that bind ISPs and the duties they have to attend to, as well as public (as in 'beyond the computing/internet community') awareness of the issues. This is important. It is not a single solution; it is not the big strike that ends spam immediately. It will be a long process but at least progress is being made. That is the hippy coolness of this news.

    • Now, XS4ALL is not an U.S. based ISP, so certain concepts like that of common carrier status may not apply. But such things used to apply in the U.S., even if they don't apply today.

      Unfortunately, I don't think common carrier applies to ISPs. Because they don't act as such.

      Consider:
      You take an envelope to a post office, pay due fee for delivery, and they will deliver that. They can't deny the use of service from You.
      You go to Your local telco. You ask for a phone line to be installed, and pay due fee for the installation. They can't deny the use of service from You. They can't deny it even later for as long as You continue to pay the bills and not attach dangerous devices to the line.

      You go to an ISP. They may decide not to sell service to You. If You tell them that they must, and they accept that they really can't deny that, we're on the right track. You get the internet connection, including a public address? Wrong. If You get a static IP, it's a public address. Dynamic IP is not a public address in the same sense. OK, You use the connection, and the ISP tells You that You can't do that or they'll terminate.
      Oh yes, then there are service requirements. Can You call Your ISP and get a problem solved? 24h a day? Even sunday morning @0400?

      Backbones probably are common carriers. They don't look at the bits they transport. They sell bulk. They sell to ISPs, local telcos, and such. They would probably sell to You too.
    • Filtering of customer traffic is already widespread. It isn't called censorship because it hasn't been based on content. But filtering is done by port (to stop inbound connections to customers), by protocol and direction (egress filtering to block email to non-ISP mail servers, or to block any spoofed packets, especially outgoing broadcast requests), etc. What you should be afraid of is a world where there is only one ISP to choose, because then you'll give what they get you and like it.

  • censorship? nah (Score:2, Informative)

    by rixdaffy ( 138224 )
    first of all a disclaimer, I've been a proud xs4all user for many years now so I'm a little biased ;)

    anyway in can understand that some people may see this as an ISP trying getting censorship power this way... but if you now enough about what XS4ALL stands for, you will know that is absolutely NOT their intention... XS4ALL is by far one of the most cyberrights-aware (if that's a word :) ) ISP's I know... trust me on this, applying censorship is the last thing they want to do...

    Ricardo.

  • (XS4all is my ISP since 1994 and I also do know a person working for the spamming company in this case, AbFab. I receive 15 spammails or so a day on that xs4all account)

    There is a problem: The EU. They accepted a law that made spam 'opt-out' or in other words: the user should tell the smapping company to remove the emailaddress of the user from their list. XS4all was and still is fighting this stupid law, but with no luck so far. I've asked them several times to block anything coming from .tw, .kr and .cn at least, but they don't do that for individual customers. Now the ISP can tell the smapping company to quit or they have to pay a fine, but this is not workable with oversees spammingfactories like the taiwanese and korean (which make up the fast majority of the spam IMHO).

    AbFab is just a company sending email on behalf of mostly dutch companies. When you look at it that way, it's quite the same as the unsollicited mail you get in your snailmailbox: sometimes it's not totally useless, but most of the time it is: you get advertising shit about products you don't need or even CAN use. If advertising-mail is more targeted at people who will possibly be interested, it would be less annoying.

    This verdict will probably the end of AbFab, since other ISP's will now also come with a block request and AbFab can't refuse that now. People will be out of a job.
    • I should have used the preview button yadda yadda. haha :) what a stupid typo.
    • "I've asked them several times to block anything coming from .tw, .kr and .cn at least, but they don't do that for individual customers."

      They do offer a SPAM header tagging or blocking system you can ask for to be applied to your e-mail account. It uses several blocklist to tag your mail so you can filter it to a special folder (if you'd want to do that). If you choose blocking than those e-mails never arrive in your mailbox in the first place.

      DNS block [google.com] (Dutch only) for explanation

  • XS4ALL , possibly one of the best isp's ever... (Score:5, Informative)

    by SqyD ( 256970 ) on Saturday March 09, 2002 @07:44AM (#3134556)
    These guys have been on the forefront of allmost any ethical debate concerning the Internet and digital freedoms in general. XS4ALL was formed in 1993 [xs4all.nl] by the infamous hackergroup Hacktic [hacktic.nl](RIP) and was the first dutch ISP to allow access to private persons. Since then they haven't like so many others sold out to profitmaking instincts but kept to their goal of providing high quality, afforable internet access to the masses. Over the years they've suceeded without giving in on netpolitical [xs4all.nl] views like the right to privacy, freedom of speech and freedom of choice.

    - On numerous other occasions [xs4all.nl] they've been in court defending the privacy of their costumers and other basic rights.
    - Threre's no single ad on any of their pages. They're an internet provider, not a advertising agency! Me and many others will gladly pay some more 's for that.
    - They offer analog, isdn(128k), gsm, gprs and adsl access and their service includes free licences for mcafee virusscan and pgp software (all platforms). Do you know any other ISP that does that?
    - There's a whole lot of other goodies you don't find at your average ISP: a telnet/ssh shell, static ip with bSMTP (if you want it), adfree secure webmail, and good public irc, gaming and hosting servers.
    - Their bussiness services are also quite exelent.
    - And they're definitly the only isp in the world that grows marijuana [xs4all.nl] in the workplace [xs4all.nl]!!! (in dutch).

    [DISCL: No, I don't own stock or work there, I'm just a ver loyal costumer that has been with them since 1996 both privatly and professionaly.]

    SqyD
    • You forgot:

      - best fscking helpdesk there is, answers email with the hour, and great customer-breivings. Great service.
      - Heaps of linux/bsd/unix-support. This is a geek-ISP for geeks.
      - You can choose your own hostname :D

      In other words: an ISP that knows what we want, and gives it the way we like it :)
  • How about an extra feature on some-ones xs4all email box, that basicly says "Welcome, but unsollicited spamlike email not wanted". Lotsa dutch people have just the same sign on their snailmail mailbox.

    Robert
  • Recently I've been receiving several E-mails per day imploring I should sign up to accept credit cards.
    And now it seems some centralised effort is spoiling the fun for the spammers!

    Look at the example [xs4all.nl] I copied to my website!

  • Doesn't spam cost the receiver money? (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    It seems to me that we should not receive spam for the same reason people with cell phones don't receive telemarketing calls.

    That is, people who use cell phone pay for their service. Don't users of email similarly pay for their email?

    Since I am paying for my email, not someone else, I would think I should not have to deal with SPAM.

    Hmmm...

  • Letter. (Score:3, Informative)

    by rew ( 6140 ) <r.e.wolff@BitWizard.nl> on Saturday March 09, 2002 @10:24AM (#3134701) Homepage
    As a small ISP (just over 10 customers, over 40 domains) I have just printed a letter to Ab.Fab which asks them not to send any mail to my clients.

    Given the ruling, I think they will have to comply with that.

    I hope that lots of others do the same. Especially if you can legally claim to control more than a couple of domains.

    I used the address that I found on their site as "how to find us":

    ab.fab Interactive Media Group
    Postbus 9088
    1180 MB Amstelveen
    [the netherlands]

    I hope that this will at least stop the "spamfactories".

    Roger.

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