"Usenet Death Penalty" against AOL 138
An anonymous reader wrote in to send us an article from
Deja News discussing the fact that German Usenet Admins
have declared AOL Rogue, and are discussing
banning the ISP
to cut down trolls and spam. The RFD ist auf Deutsch,
so you might wanna hit up
Babelfish for
your usual amusingly broken translation.
Vital links you need to read (Score:1)
http://spam.abuse.net/ [abuse.net]
http://maps.vix.com/ [vix.com]
It will help you understand why spam is morally and *technically* evil.
Is Usenet WORKABLE anymore? (case for quotas) (Score:1)
If we could enforce per-user quotas on Usenet, it would cut out almost all of the junk, without rmeotely approaching censorship. It would Spamming no longer feasible. Long boring screeds would be rare. And quotas would limit the spread of flames. As for trolling, that wouldn't be an issue if hotheads weren't so easily provoked. So the issue with trolls is really an issue with flamers.
Of course, there are lots of other issues. For instance, the top level heirarchy makes very little sense. And there are too many junk groups, etc.
AOL is just that easy to deal with (Score:1)
Re:Overkill (Score:1)
of a lot of people
it doesnt harm the net access of a lot of people, it harms aol users ability to post to some german language newsgroups. few aol users speak german, and even fewer would have anything interesting to say in those newsgroups.
Only at Slashdot (Score:1)
at Slashdot would someone waste his time complaining that
an interesting post should be marked down.
It is very pertinent and on-topic, especially considering the
general tone of posts which state or imply that AOL users are
the bane of civilization but perhaps, with the help of Slahsdotters,
can be uplifted out of ignorance....
I don't care how the post gets rated. And, to reply to your post,
I'm not so sure that the majority of slashdotters disagree with
much of the post you regard as a troll. Some very vocal, elitist
wannabe nerds, perhaps, who look down their noses at lusers...
It's something they may not think about much and take for
granted - the current system of ISPs and portals which exploit
people using the internet.
Giving individual users the rights and responsibilities of domain
owners would eliminate much of the spam for logistics reasons
alone - it's a lot more expensive to spam a large number of
individual domains and to maintain the mailing lists. This would
also force individual users to become more responsible or to
seek help on their own rather than own if they want to use
the net.
Finally, is your immature reaction to a post for God's sake?
I hope God has something better to think about that the ratings
of posts at Slashdot.
Holy flames
It's not the users (Score:2)
First, the extremely large number of users attracts people who
exploit them with spam and much worse. AOL also exploits
users with pop-up ads that are difficult to remove - like having
one's name taken off a junk mailing list.
Most AOL users just use email for communicating with
relatives and friends and are quite harmless. Very few post
anywhere, even within AOL's own chat rooms.
I think Slashdotters need lessons in netequitte. Relative to the
number of posts or readers, AOL's user base is quite civilized.
The solution is to eliminate ISP's and proliferating domains.
Every citizen of the world should be given a domain, but only
one, and every company allowed only one. ISP's would just
be relay points whose services are contracted by phone and
cable companies or whatever is used to carry the traffic, perhaps
providing storage as well for those connecting with set-top
boxes or other devices that are not full computers. In other words
a net address would be a like a post office address now is.
Many domains would remain inactive, for those choosing not
to use the internet, but many others would be activated. Of
course this would require a reworking of the entire infrastructure
of the net, and can't be done overnight. The way traffic
is handled will change anyway, so why not change it in a manner
which facilitates democracy and true free enterprise rather than
what we have now, which is exploitation of users by unscrupulous
parties providing services whose value is vastly overestimated.
This way every individual, or company, would be responsible for
their own email and content, and real point to point communication
would become a practical reality.
Many nerds are opposed to such freedom, because they make
a good living exploiting users by owning or working for ISPs.
What services do ISP's provide, really. What services do
portals provide? Mostly the illusion of friendliness and convenience.
This would also vastly increase the trade for nerds and others
providing contractural services to individual domain owners,
but in a free market and not by exploiting captive audiences
using ISP"s and portals.
Most importantly it would eliminate the sale and hoarding of
domain names, which really should be outlawed. Anyone with
a grain of sense can see that this practice violates every
principle of human rights and international law.
Signal to AOL ratio .. (Score:3)
"I am sorry, but we do not accept mail from AOL here"
Damn, that would be so satisfying.
Sigh.. (Score:3)
In Holland there are ISP banning AOL e-mails. (Score:3)
Translation: "Free Trial Accounts Are Evil" (Score:5)
friend, that AOL doesn't take action against spammers when notified, and that several Usenet groups are currently being destroyed by spammers using a series of free trial AOL accounts.
From Babelfish, with a little help from me:
AOL Germany vs AOL USA (Score:5)
Another interesting fact is that according to German "netgod" Lutz Donnerhacke AOL Germany is understanding the problem is going to make an announcement to the (de-)abuse-groups, soon.
Finally, the RfD is obviously lacking support of German news-admins so probably the effect, a successful CfV will have, will be minimal. BTW: It is not cleared, yet, if a formal CfV is possible.
- Sebastian Rittau
Re:Not a cartel. (Score:1)
Also, I would say that if a company doesn't play by the "rules", a lot of little companies crushing them is perfectly fair play.
Re:Banning spammers ? (Score:1)
I don't believe that by enforcing the rules now that it should have long ago that USENET will die. Maybe it can be saved from the spammers. Maybe A time will come when all usenet messages can be traced to their authors (the real ones)
That degree of personal accountability is missing, which means that lots of people will take advantage of being anonymous.
Don't get me wrong, being anonymous has advantages sometimes... for whistle blowing, etc, Nobody needs to know what I'm looking at when I surf, but for alt.fan.star-wars? Seriously, who needs to be anonymous there? You're posting to the public...
Re:Banning spammers ? (Score:4)
> of their population or any other way of
> "controlling" the internet
So what's the issue here? The issue here is freedom. If I want to go look at porn, or see information on abortion, or read anti-{insert your country here} propaganda, I should be allowed to. Freedom does not include "doing anything you want." I should not be able to degrade the quality of your service.
I should be free to view whatever content I want.
Spam, however, is another matter entirely. An email message sent to my account is not the same thing as a web page sitting out there. An email to me gets to me, and I am forced to wade through it in order to get to the rest of my messages. The spam sent to me actually causes me harm (in terms of lost time, lost bandwith, and lost disk space). A web page sitting out there that I don't want to see doesn't affect me at all.
USENET has rules. For example, posts are supposed to stay on topic, avoid flames, don't cross post to 1000 different groups. AOL users have violated the policies, and AOL refuses to do anything about it. In order to keep the net sane, they've got to be controled. So we have the freedom to read on topic posts and not see ads for sex sites in EVERY newsgroup.
Re:Banning spammers? (Score:2)
Think of it this way: Australia is trying to impose a trade embargo on the Internet (and trying to get local businesses to pay for and manage the blockade). The German admins are police trying to get a drunk tourist to stop disturbing the peace.
To put it another way, Austrailia is insisting one group of people (ISP's) censor another group of people (normal citizen's). The Germans are determining what takes up the space they paid for, and announcing it to the world in case others feel like following suit.
That's why most of us support the German admin's actions instead of the Australian government's.
Re:Banning spammers ? (Score:1)
Re:The threat (Score:3)
NANA* participation, RRSS (Score:1)
The MAPS RBL should be manditory (it's availible with Sendmail), but ORBS is more radical in it's relay checking. It's very similar to a UDP but invoked often for lesser reasons. A better Relay blocker, the Radparker Relay Spam Stopper (RRSS) [radparker.com], is availble and practices the same goals as the MAPS RBL in respect to open relays.
If every admin read news.admin.net-abuse.email and .usenet, then the world would be less spam-free.
---
Spammed? Click here [sputum.com] for free slack on how to fight it!
Re:Banning spammers ? (Score:2)
Re:AOL needs to show more responsibility. (Score:1)
Re:In Holland there are ISP banning AOL e-mails. (Score:1)
Re:Translation: "Free Trial Accounts Are Evil" (Score:1)
If free trials are evil in your opinion, then permanent free accounts must be doubly so.
But what about the people who can't afford $20/month for an ISP?
Re:It's about time (Score:1)
Re:Not the same thing (Score:1)
Small vs. Large (Score:1)
Perhaps you should check the SMTP servers in the headers of the spam you get - the majority of spam from @aol.com is not from AOL - anybody can write "From: bob@aol.com" in the headers.
Re:Your response is precisely the reason for this. (Score:1)
Telling the people "get a new ISP" is not an option. It is not my place to tell my acquaintances what ISPs they are allowed to use, just as it is not my ISP's place to tell me who I am allowed to send email to.
Bad Idea (Score:2)
This whole deal seems as absurd to me as the fact that several IRC networks banned all cablemodem providers since a lot of cablemodem users had improperly configured WinGate software that allowed abuse.
Very bad comparison (Score:1)
If AOL (or MS, or anyone else) tried to force their own customers to rise up against someone, I would consider that unacceptable. This is not.
Cooperation is expected. (Score:1)
Thankfully, I've only been attacked this once; However, I understand that this kind of assistance and cooperation is commonplace. Were I running an ISP, I would try to offer it myself.
Even an instance on use of proper channels by AOL is ungentlemanly, making them far worse netizens than almost all other ISPs out there. Their unwillingness to offer help against what is generally considered a common enemy is a Very Bad Thing, and I understand other ISPs wishing to have nothing to do with them.
Re:uu.net been through this already (Score:2)
They already do.
> USENET is not the Internet police. No one is.
This has about as much heft as me claiming that no one has the right to tell anyone what to do. It may be true in my way of thinking, but the fact is that a society cannot function like that.
Besides, it's not your systems in question here, so what you think is irrelevant.
Re:The threat (Score:1)
I wasn't speaking about spammers, but the metoo-type posters. I stopped using usenet before the spam was that bad, because of all the noise from worthless/offtopic/etc posts.
Re:The threat (Score:1)
I agree with you. My original post was an impulse post. I was going on what I had seen a couple years ago. I know longer read usenet on a frequent basis. I quit largely because of all the noise. And that was before the spam got really bad.
Unrestricted trial accounts are Evil. Deja news does at least make you go through an extra step of verifing with another e-mail account before you can e-mail or post from there. Not much of check, but it is better than nothing. I only hope they aren't content with that and are looking for a better checking system.
I think aol has improved their image some, here recently. So I don't wish a UDP on them, but I hope it cause them to evaluate some of their processes, including restricted trial acounts (other than a time limit) and user education.
The threat (Score:3)
Hopefully the threat alone will cause AOL to make some changes. I know it's not the company itself, it's the users, but since they know they have the largest base of newbies they should do something.
What is that something? How about forcing users to take a quiz on netiquette that they must pass before given the ability to post. Even just a major effort to educate their users would be a step in the right direction. Most ISPs don't have to worry about this, but AOL isn't most ISPs.
The Reason (Score:1)
I also would like AOL to actually react to mails to abuse@aol.net, not just having their ignorebot giving me replies.
That's a good reason for a UDP. If AOL isn't doing it's part to keep the usnet useable, it must not be allowed to participate. Consider a responsive abuse role account to be a requirement for participation.
The USSC already did (Score:1)
>is an idea that needs protection?
I don't have to--the United States Supreme Court already did. As an attorney i think that the doctrine of "commercial free speech" is one of (but not the) worst to come out of the court in its history, but it'ss there. It came up in the context of lawyer advertising, which virtually every bar association and licensing authority banned. It is now permitted over their objections.
but junkbuster can't read all sites (Score:1)
and it doesn't help that changing the blockfile seems to trigger linux-netscape (the only one i could get to work at all) to crash on freebsd . . .
So I suppose I just wait a few days until i figure out posting . . .
Maybe off topic, but Slashdot is like old-USENET (Score:4)
Re:Maybe off topic, but Slashdot is like old-USENE (Score:1)
For content, sure... but this fscking web interface sucks. Good ol' trn, last updated in 1993, still kicks the pants off of the scroll and drool web interface for usability in reading large numbers of messages.
Re:Banning spammers ? (Score:1)
I'm bothered when I see websites, (including a certain Linux User Group) have a blue Internet ribbon on one side, and a "fight spam" on the other. To me, that sends a contradictory message. "I'm for free speech as long as I approve of it."
Please!! You mean that the ad for non-surgical lyposuction is an idea that needs protection? Do you see us complaining about an unpopular idea? Do you see us trying to get the microsoft web site closed down? No! We just want an end to advertizing where it prohibited!
The money spam causes is from the terabytes of advertizing floating arround usenet that each news server has to deal with. Why don't you keep that mail on you hard drive. Post I LIKE SPAM on a newsgroup and use your REAL e-mail address. See how long it takes for you to delete that!
Re:Banning spammers ? (Score:2)
My freedom ends where yours begins - and freedom always comes with responsibility. You're free to do whatever you want, you're responsible for your actions, you must not limit the freedom of others. It's a simple principle that can and does cause pretty complex situations.
Usually it's obvious, for instance, think about this: Somebody comes along and puts lots of advertisement stickers on my property. No matter how easy they are to be removed, if I don't want them, I shouldn't be bothered with it.
On your property, feel free to put those stickers all over the place, it's your property. Your decision. But leave mine alone, please, as I'll leave yours in peace.
It's about the same situation: ISP's providing boards for discussion and AOL messing it up with ads against the will of the owners. Oh, it's not AOL that abuses the system, it's just some users - so read on:
I am not saying that if people abuse their rights on an online service, we shouldn't punish them. But punishing individuals is not the same as excluding a large internetprovider and all it's clients.
AOL is free to set up its own rules within their service. AOL customers/members are bound by these rules, if they cause trouble, their accounts will be cancelled. Since the service belongs to AOL, only AOL itself decides who can and who cannot access the service.
At the same time, AOL as an ISP is a member of the Internet, not the owner of the net. There are rules and netizens are bound by these rules. If they cause trouble, their ISP's will be involved, too. If the ISP doesn't help enfore the rules but supports the abusers, the ISP will be held responsible, so the ISP will be punished.
Of course that will punish all innocent customers as well. That's the point, those uninvolved people will hopefully realize that AOL has made a mistake, and once enough people increase the pressure, something will be changed. AOL couldn't care less about public newsgroups, but if their users care enough, they'll make AOL care and act.
MediaOne Wingates (Score:1)
The problem is volume, not content (Score:5)
The definition of e-mail spam is "unsolicited bulk email": that is to say, an email message is spam if, and only if, it is unsolicited and sent to a large number of recipients. Likewise, a message is usenet spam if, and only if, it is crossposted or multiposted heavily enough (c.f. the Breidbart Index). In each case, the content of the message is totally irrelevant. Spam is characterized by the manner in which it is delivered, and not by the content contained in the message.
The difference between anti-spam efforts and censorship efforts is that censorship by definition uses message content as the sole criteria for rejection, while spam fighters by definition use message delivery parameters as the sole criteria for rejection.
Re:Banning spammers ? (Score:1)
> so you can't even argue that you are being
> charged for the time to download it.
That's not the point. In general the backbones
have to pay for that and eventually you pay it
because the backbones costs end up in your
flat rate.
You have a point on the free speech issue though.
OTOH, in this particular case AOLusers would
still be able to read news and in the end also be
"allowed" to post via a different newsserver. The
UDP aims at AOL and not it's users.
Re:Banning spammers ? (Score:1)
> would be even cheaper today than it is if not for
> spam. This may be true, but such arguments are
> hard to prove.
Well, either way you wouldn't say that bandwith
is generally satisfying atm. If it would be there
wouldn't be any of the InterNAP ads showing up
on
Re:The threat (Score:1)
Okay, I haven't read any of the BIG-8 groups for two years now, so I can't comment on the damage(!) done by AOL users there, but in de.* you'll mostly find some stupid (or falsely quoted or whatever) postings by AOLers, but you'll find significantly more idiots using Outlook Express or any incarnation of Mozilla. So what do you want to do against that?
UDP against Microsoft users? UDP against Netscape users?
UDP is what you do if an ISP does damage to the net, due to spamhosting (see the (proposed) UDP against PSI - the only active UDP I can remember lately ist the one against netcom (which has been cancelled)), AOL does not do that - you might want to take a look how many of those UCEs which are apparently from AOL aren't (same goes for hotmail or juno).
If you are fed up with Postings from AOL, then put aol.com into your killfile and don't accept any Mail from AOL users. If more and more people are doing this, some people who now are with AOL will change to another ISP (and I hope for you, that these are only the users who are worthwile reading).
But I can't see AOL trying to actively destroy the usenet at the moment.
As I said: I'd like to have a more responsive Abuse team at AOL (maybe Afterburner likes to leave erols.com?) and I want restricted test accounts. But these are my wishes (and those test accounts are mostly misused for UCE, not for spam or velveeta) and no reason for an UDP.
Ralph
Re:Translation: "Free Trial Accounts Are Evil" (Score:1)
There's morons and aggressive people with every ISP, although most ISPs are quicker to react against those people.
Yes, free trial accounts are evil (tm), and Seltzer-McKenzie is changing his trial CDs faster than other people do change their underwear.
But that's no reason for an UDP, is it?
BTW: public@dana.de doesn't get that many UCEs, and not all of them are from AOL.
Plus, there is not that much content on this mailing list (and it is only closely related to usenet
Ralph
Re:The threat (Score:5)
There's something you might miss, when reading a "bablefished" translation of the RfD: The RfD asks the admins to issue an UDP for the de.* hierarchy in Usenet, not banning AOL completely (which would be a quite senseless thing to discuss about in a de.*-only RfD).
It is not even clear, which kind of UDP should be issued, a passive one (where the newsfeeds won't take any postings coming from AOL) or an active one (where any AOL-Postings will be canceled on sight).
Furthermore the RfD talks about many issues, which aren't related to Usenet at all (not reacting on messages sent to abuse@aol.com, sending UCE from AOL test accounts), so many admins (and users) can't agree on issuing an UDP for those points.
Next: The actual reason for posting this RfD is a guy (calling himself Seltzer-McKensey) who is actually destroying four newsgroups in the de.*-hierarchy (de.etc.finanz.*) by posting hundreds of postings there monthly. AOL doesn't react to this (neither by calling them, nor through e-mails sent to abuse@aol.net). They tried to ban him from posting, but this guy just switches to his next AOL-CD and goes on posting.
But through this guy alone, the technical funtionality of Usenet is not harmed, so that's no reason for an UDP. And many of the admins and users in Germany (or in de.* which is international) take the same standpoint. There's idiots with each ISP, AOL has the problem of their non-restricted testing accounts.
Now, before anyone accuses me of standing in for the enemy ;-) - I would like to see those AOL test accounts being restricted (no posting without verification of the person who uses an account), I also would like AOL to actually react to mails to abuse@aol.net, not just having their ignorebot giving me replies. And that they can restrict those accounts has been shown some weeks ago: Without being a verified user with AOL, you can't send any e-mail attachments.
But I don't think that the mentioned points in the RfD qualify for issuing an UDP (and I don't quite see, what an UDP limited to one hierarchy could do). UDP is the last resort against an ISP, and I don't see, that this last resort should be used against AOL at the moment.
If UDP, then hierarchy-wide and not local to one hierarchy. If UDP then for reasons everyone will understand, but not for those. Otherwise there should be an UDP against deja.com right now, for the same reasons (or take any other company which allows webbased posting without checking on the users).
Ralph
Re:Retalliation tactics against spammers? (Score:2)
What bothers me is that AOL is not a true internet provider in the sense that you can't finger a user or use the traditional ntalk to talk some sense into the newbie. AOL lets them hide. The world they know is behind that free CD they got and the protected proprietary services they got. Somehow they found the newsgroups attractive and decided to spam them.
Since there is no way to identify AOL users, the only way I know how to eliminate the crap is to kill it all.
Re:The threat (Score:3)
It amazes me how a provider will not educate users how to properly use the service, but will only tell them how easy it is with point and click. "Click here, now you can post! See how easy that was?"
Death to usenet? No, death to AOL!
Re:Banning spammers ? (Score:3)
Usenet might break and become no more if spammers are unchecked. The death penalty might be the lesser of two evils.
Re:The threat (Score:3)
You can take the dejanews.com power search page, save it and edit the crap out of it. They make it easy as you will see a few comments in there that say "content starts here" and "content ends here." You can cut everything above and below that.
As far as the banner ads go, visit http://waldherr.org/junkbuster/ [waldherr.org] where you can easily install an industrial strength anti ad tool. Its easy to maintain too. If a sex banner or eye killer comes into view, just insert that address into the blockfile. No need to restart anything as the next time you load a page, you can see the changes take effect immediately.
May your surfing days (and nights) be enjoyable and not surf in sewage and spam.
Re:The threat (Score:3)
> 1. Someone posts something that's totally opposite to what you believe. You then:
> a. Post an intelligent, well thought arguement that adds to the debate.
> b. Type an angry reply, one sentence long, in all caps.
I forsee one problem: AOLers aren't *that* stupid. Anyone old enough to know how to send an email/usenet message can also
Oh? Back in about 1994 when AOL opened the floodgates onto usenet, they gave users a big point and click button. I was told they were given a brochure describing "full usenet access" over a variety of topics. The newsgroup alt.best.of.usenet was the group at the top of the list if I remember right. In less than an hour, it was the worst of usenet with thousands of posts destroying any use that group had. To my horror, I was logged in at the time when this happened.
Typing in a one sentence reply in all caps would be the best case. Usually, it was a sentence fragment, or just a thought, or a word or two. Not only that, there was a bug with the posting software that duplicated each post seven times. Irresponsible? I would have to say yes. As I see it, AOL is here to exploit the internet. It raped and pillaged the newsgroups in 1994 and I am not surprised that it is extending its reach into our mailboxes.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
He should complain to AOL management (Score:1)
Of course, your favorite poster could always get a real ISP....
Re:Broken indeed! (Score:1)
Babelfish makes the translation up until 4 para. in, then gives me "**Translation ends here**"
Yes- of course it does- it limits the amount of text you can translate in one pass. If you want to translate large docs, you gotta translate it in pieces.
Re:not the first time AOL was banned from somethin (Score:1)
Re:In Holland there are ISP banning AOL e-mails. (Score:1)
aol's mail servers are actually pretty quick at stopping spam getting out.
rod.
--
Re:It's about time (Score:1)
As far as AOL being banned from IRC, it wasn't specifically because of the users that irc02.irc.aol.com was removed. From reading operlist for awhile (yes, I have no life), there was a lot of arguing about it, but it was finally decided to get rid of the server because the ircops on the server didn't do anything to regulate the users. I think it's pretty much the same thing here. AOL refuses to respond to complaints about their users on usenet, so stuff like this happens.
Also, I do know of a few IRC servers that allow AOL users (irc.prison.net, for one), so they aren't completely shut off.
-mike kania
Re:Banning spammers ? (Score:2)
In Australia, the goverment wants to limit certain content - the UDP doesn't. For the UDP, if you would like to receive spam, we don't care - but since so many (I use 'so many' very loosely here; so far I haven't heard a single person who LIKES spam) people complain about spam and AOL doesn't do anything about it, the UDP is one way to make them think about it again. Once they change their policy the UDP restrictions will be lifted.
From then on, nobody will care about the AOL users email content as long as they aren't spammed with it; e.g. if some guy on AOL sends out a commercial mass mailing to people who explicitly requested it, noone will mind. But if they allow people to spam the whole community with free online accounts, then something is IMHO very wrong.
What I would suggest as a possible policy change, that would be if AOL would change the status of their CDs in a way, that the new user can surf and read news, but as long as he doesn't pay (and with that fully disclose who he really is), the user should be barred from posting articles and sending email via this account (AOL is certainly big enough to build a second dial-in system which is firewall protected to barr those test users dialling in through this number from accessing the outside world via NNTP/NNRP/SMTP. Everything else could stay open... And once the user pays, his login will be transferred to another dial-in number, that doesn't have these services blocked.
Re:The threat (Score:1)
Oh Goody! I've just passed that damn netiquette test!
Now where's that spamming program got to?
UDP is strong magic (Score:4)
If every admin would utilize the MAPS [vix.com], the ORBS database [orbs.org], and participate in these UDPs [sputum.com], the world would be a remarkably spam-free place.
Re:Signal to AOL ratio--but check is in the mail.. (Score:1)
be a check, most likely to my snailbox.
Re:How about an NEW Usenet alternative? (Score:2)
One of the strengths of the Usenet was its distributed design, making it suitable for non-persistant links. Today, I'd say that the cost of running a news server with all the binaries groups outweighs the gain from this design, since most sites who could afford a full newsserver have very good links. A cacheing nntpd is much more useful than a full-blown newsserver these days, except for very large ISPs (IMHO).
Web communities with forums are already evolving nicely, and it seems like they will replace Usenet eventually (except for some die-hards, who still insist on using text consoles and low-bandwidth connections and will do so for the next 10 years; no offense intended).
Note that many Internet users who haven't been around for many years aren't very familiar with Usenet anyway, they'll just go looking for stuff on the web instead.
Re:Banning spammers ? (Score:2)
I know people argue that Spam costs them money... please! On my slow dialup connection it takes less than a second to download a spam mail, and even less time to delete said mail. In the US, most ISPs charge a flat monthly rate, so you can't even argue that you are being charged for the time to download it. I know the situation is different in other countries, but other countries don't have the first amendment either.
Re:Banning spammers ? (Score:2)
In theory. However, I haven't seen that happening. In 1994, before Spam was a problem, I signed up for unlimited access with an ISP, and was paying $19.95/month. Today, I am still paying $19.95/month. If you factor in inflation, then I'm actually paying less today!
Since 1994, the cost of bigger pipes has come way down, today you can get cable modems for about $40, maybe up to twice that for DSL. I expect prices for bandwidth will continue to fall in the forseeable future
I suppose the argument can be made that bandwidth would be even cheaper today than it is if not for spam. This may be true, but such arguments are hard to prove.
Re:The threat (Score:1)
Re:The threat (Score:1)
Re:The threat (Score:1)
Usenet simply has no strong protections against vandalism. The barbarians knocked down the gate a long time ago, it's time to leave them the ashes they've made of it.
Re:Banning spammers ? (Score:1)
Re:Banning spammers ? (Score:1)
Re:Banning spammers ? (Score:1)
You are also free from being compelled to carry the content you do not want. Is your ISP violating your rights by not carrying every single newsgroup?
Re:uu.net been through this already (Score:1)
uu.net been through this already (Score:5)
After those few days, all the spammers that were using uu.net at the time, where gone from uu.net. Of course, later new spammers has come to uu.net, but at least now they're aware that it's a problem. (I wonder where they went :).
Perhaps a complete UDP would make AOL actually see the problem? X million annoyed AOL customers have the power to make AOL change that a few sysadms do not have.
Re:Banning spammers ? (Score:1)
But effective blocking is so laughably impossible, and so laughably ILLEGAL, no ISP would even bother spending the hundreds of thousands of dollars getting filtering routers.
--
We have one cable internet provider in Australia and it sucks. [bigpond.net.au]
Re:Signal to AOL ratio .. (Score:2)
Their rep for clueless users is largely undeserved nowadays. Not that I'd use them myself, but it's important to check reality against prejudice.
not the first time AOL was banned from something (Score:2)
Also, what most don't understand, AOL isn't an ISP. AOL is an "on-line service". The difference? AOL is a proprietary network, that just happens to let users have some access to the internet.
The internet is like a world-wide library. AOL is me letting someone in my basement and going "if you need a book from the public library, I'll see what I can do"
So what's this have to do with usenet and irc? AOL is like the idiots that go to the public library, take out a book, and rip all the pages out of it before they return it. Banning AOL is like saying "don't screw with out stuff, you want to destory books, do it to yours at home. Now return your library card and have a nice day"
Re:Signal to AOL ratio--but check is in the mail.. (Score:2)
You do some consulting for a company.
A company of networked consultants.
Consultants many of whom utilize AOL.
From AOL, who send you specifications.
Specifications you turn into a billable product.
Work done, oh no, have to send invoice.
Have to mail invoice to...guess what.
Accounts payable person with...guess what.
An AOL mail address.
Send invoice and wait.
Hey. what's go'in on?
Oh my! You didn't get the reply?
Needed to validate some information.
Information needed to release the check.
Sorry, you'll have to wait until next month,
to be paid for your work.
Think this is made up?
Sorry, its reality!
Re:Not a cartel. (Score:2)
Actually, considering that that AOL is an ISP, it's probably illegal to form a cartel and block their traffic.
Anyways, how would you feel if AT+T Worldnet, Prodigy, and UUNet decided to block your ISP's traffic?
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Not a cartel. (Score:1)
This isn't like oil or diamonds where supply is strictly limited to a few countries/corporations.
Re: Naive response (Score:1)
It's not. You have to deal with a lot of delays and red tape, and it's hard to get someone's ear if you can't *prove* substantial financial loss.
In our case the FBI investigator told me that they would not take our case, even though I had plenty of logs of someone hidden behind an AOL dynamic IP running DoS attacks for days.
---
The real problem with your argument though, is the premise that AOL should ignore abuse by their subscribers unless forced to do something about it by a governmental body. Government intervention should be the course of LAST resort.
Also, there's a wide range of activity that is considered abuse on the internet but is not technically illegal. Usenet SPAM is such a case, and if AOL continues to ignore the abuse its subscribers perpetrate, UDP is a reasonable response.
In your other post you claim that other ISPs are no better. Well, besides the fact that this does not in any way invalidate the arguments against AOL, it's been my experience that most other ISPs, even larger ones, are significantly better at curtailing abuse.
I'd also like to make a point that just because AOL is a large ISP with a huge userbase, this does not mean that they don't have the capability to be more responsive to abuses, or even more friendly toward outside sysadmins.
-OT
AOL needs to show more responsibility. (Score:5)
Last year a luser at AOL was running a barrage of Denial of Service attacks on our webserver. I don't know why (s)he did this but I do know that I received absolutely ZERO help from AOL resolving the issue. After a many attempts to talk to someone who could understand what a DoS attack is, I was told the equivalent of "tough luck". They wouldn't give me the time of day unless the FBI was involved.
When we discover cracking activity from other ISPs, those ISPs are usually very helpful in taking care of the problem.
This is just one example, but this newsgroup issue and earlier IRC issues seem to indicate a pattern of behavior. AOL needs to realize that the rest of the net doesn't exist for them to exploit. AOL needs to step up and take some kind of responsibility for the problems they create.
The biggest problem is that they've created an accountability nightmare. No one can effectively deal with an abuser armed with a box of AOL CDs, except for AOL. And AOL doesn't really care.
If the UDP forces them to improve their abuse management, I think that it's a good thing. I don't think they will change until there is damage to their reputation/bottom line.
- OT, who would not recommend AOL to anyone.
Re:uu.net been through this already (Score:2)
In the case of AOL, I have nothing but total agreement. But - allow me to wax off-topic for a moment to make this point:
If Microsoft were to adopt, excuse me, 'embrace and extend', this approach to leverage it's customer base against the DOJ in the ongoing suit, what would happen?
If M$ refused to support it's customer base until the suit is dismissed, claiming excessive resources are needed to continue it's case...
X million unhappy M$ users, beating down the Fed's door, would certainly make a point, no?
USENET has even less right to inconvenience all the MEE-TOOS at AOL, than M$ does to inconvenience it's own users. USENET is not the Internet police. No one is.
Re:The threat (Score:1)
After all, why do most AOLers come to AOL to begin with? Because they're too stupid, lazy, or uninterested in learning basic Internet usage skills. AOL understands this and tries make to the AOLer's experience as fast and idiot-proof as possible. Anything requiring them to apprehend and understand information will deter newbies from using the service.
Re:In Holland there are ISP banning AOL e-mails. (Score:1)
Re:Is Usenet WORKABLE anymore? (case for quotas) (Score:1)
time when I leave a group, it is because traffic
is simply too high. With xxx million users, groups
like "35mm photography" explode, with or without
spam. Sadly enough, often there aren't any sensible subdivisions possible so you end up
with one million people all talking in the same place. That's killing Usenet, not spammers.
Re:AOL needs to show more responsibility. (Score:2)
I think one of the previous posters hit it right on the mark. AOL see's the Internet (and all of the materials on it) as resources to be exploited, and not to added to or treated as a community. The idea I have in mind is how certain businesses see Natural Resources in the world. Some go in and strip mine, and deforest, not caring. While others go in and use a resource, making sure that it is not damaged and contributing and adding to the resource.
AOL just has to change it's mind set, and these German's are going to help them. I wish other ISP's would follow their lead.
Re:Banning spammers ? (Score:5)
Australia is trying to dictate what every australian ISP, and user is allowed to download, view, read, carry on their computer systems or internet access. Here the people have no choice in the matter neither do the ISP's who to comply with the new laws will have to invest hundreds to thousands of dollars a piece so that they can filter out and block "unreasonable" content and possibly monitor the activity's of their users.
This on the other hand is nothing more than a specific group of ISP's choosing not to carry certain content. As they own the services they provide they also have the right and the freedom to choose what services they do provide and what content they allow to be stored on their servers and harddrives. No different than me placing a filter in my news group reader to filter out and delete any posts from @aol.com, as I have the right and freedom to view and download what I choose.
Because an ISP chooses not to carry certain content, that does effect their users but those users still have a choice, if they feel the ISP doesn't provide enough services they want or need that have full ability to switch to a new one, subscribe to an online news service where they will probably get access to far more groups than their ISP has ever carried, etc.
So the difference is that in the German ISP situation every person involved has a choice, the ISP's have a choice on what they want to carry and pass thru their equiptment, and their users have a choice of sticking with the ISP's new policy's, switching ISP's, or finding their news posts somewhere else.
Australia no one has a choice, the govt. says this is how it will be and short of moving out of the country you will obey the rules and only see what we want you to see.
An AOL user speaks (Score:2)
i know quite abit about computers (I like to think anyway...)
The reasons are many, kinda long, but I used to travel alot and you can always dial in from anywhere. They even have an 800 number which you can use. Check Email, telnet. Its just really easy. I've had no problems with them.
Thats the problem with AOL is that they make things really too easy. Newbies can do anything. But the AOL admin are not clueless, if you go to use Usenet, they have instruction (unsenet FAQ and Edicite.) right there for people to use. Most probably don't bother to read the instructions (go figure..) They're so big and basically they're turning into the countries biggest ISP. There seems to be less and less AOL content and more internet content now. Its hard to police that many members.
As such, with that TCP/IP connection you can do a lot of things. With their I month free trial, You can get an account, do whatever and be thrown off with out paying.
AOL does bring in people who aren't computer savy into the net. It adds alot to have more non technically oriented people using the internet. They bring a different perspect to NET which is good. The explosive growth of the internet has been helped by AOL getting Main ST. USA onto the internet.
Families like it because for little kids you can block alot of features (web, chat, etc...) I let your kids romp around the relatively safe (abiet boring for adults) AOL stuff.
So in summary you have to take the good with the bad sometimes. throwing of 50 +million people off the internet won't help solve the problem. The problem with just spread to many smaller isps.
/A
Re:Bad Idea (Score:1)
If AOL would restrict the test accounts to read only usenet news and reacts to mails to abuse@aol.com (and not just with an ignorebot), this RfD would not be neccessary.
btw: not the german admins or ISPs are requesting this UDP, but the german users of the de.* hierarchy.
Hendrik
Broken indeed! (Score:2)
I get the drift of the paper, however. In the past, and in the future I suspect, AOL will be a force to be reckoned with as far as spam is concerned. They are so fixated on protecting their users from spam (which they can't) that they don't realise that the users are the spammers. This is certainly unfortunate, as the trend does not seem to be a stoppable one. The best thing to do is to stay away from groups that are prone to spam, and stick to the web for your information.
Word to that (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:3)
Banning spammers ? (Score:5)
If you say that AOL should be banned from USENET altogether, you are in fact not that much different from the Australian government as you pretend to be.
It seems to me that some people here define their freedom by limiting other people's freedom. This is not what i would call freedom.
I am not saying that if people abuse their rights on an online service, we shouldn't punish them. But punishing individuals is not the same as excluding a large internetprovider and all it's clients.
I, for one, think that a lot of people are a bit over-sensitive to spam. They will classify anything they read that does not concern them or has a slight commercial reference as spam. If you don't want to read it there are plenty of ways to avoid it, especially on usenet. I use several filters myself to get rid of the usual crap.
Message on our company Intranet:
"You have a sticker in your private area"
Re:The threat (Score:1)
The solution? I killfiled *@aol.com. It was amazing to watch the S/N ration skyrocket.
Did anyone from AOL say anything important that I missed? Doubt it.
Shortly after, killfiled *@netcom.com. Good, but not as big of an effect.
Now? I just use dejanews.com. But even that is bad nowadays, after their crappy redesign.
Two simple (allbeit long-term) steps (Score:1)
2. AOL software doesn't have inlinded pre-configured internet facilities. It can automatically set up your internet access but it doesn't install configure a newsreader to use it. If you want usenet you have to install and configure it yourself.
The chance this'll happen is less than the chance that a bug in Windows 2000 will re-write Bill Gate's will putting my name in the "beneficairies" slot just before he prints it and then he gets killed the next day, but then again, who knows.
Overkill (Score:2)
There are a lot of worthy and intelligent people using AOL. There are also a lot of idiots. Without doubt it's bad to have AOL's anonymous trial-type accounts unlimited. And AOL's own attitude towards this is often vaguely comical.
But, IMHO, the legitimate users of AOL already have enough problems of their own, without having those problems added to by being UDP'ed simply because of the network provider they choose to use. That's insanity. It's overkill. It's fly-swatting with a flamethrower. And it's not, IMHO, the solution.
Re:AOL needs to show more responsibility. (Score:5)
Re:The threat (Score:2)
Telling someone that you shouldn't do this doesn't stop them from doing this. The people that do this are doing it for the wonderful 15 cents a click. They don't care that it bothers someone or it's wrong.. They care about themselves..
If you're going to ban AOL from USENET, ban every ISP that has a few script kiddies who spam it too.
Re:AOL needs to show more responsibility. (Score:3)
Now, this was all done with modems. AOL is trying to get some of the large cable modem and *dsl providers to offer direct aol access to the net over large bandwidth. If AOL has been such a large problem with only modem access, imagine the trouble an AOLer can get into with some serious bandwidth behind them?