more on more on ICANN ordered by Illinois court to suspend spamhaus.org

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Dave Crocker <dcrocker () bbiw net>
Date: October 11, 2006 11:56:43 AM EDT
To: David Farber <dave () farber net>, ip () v2 listbox com
Cc: "Prof. Jonathan I. Ezor" <jezor () tourolaw edu>
Subject: Re: [IP] more on ICANN ordered by Illinois court to suspend  
spamhaus.org


David Farber wrote:
> From: "Prof. Jonathan I. Ezor" <jezor () tourolaw edu>
> I'm writing an article on this very subject which I will presenting  
> in Denmark in December (http://www.iblt.eu), so I've been following  
> this case with some interest.   I'm not surprised by the ruling,  
> nor by Spamhaus' recalcitrance--I have seen first hand how Spamhaus  
> will threaten to block list an entire hosting company in order to  
> get the host to shut down a Web site Spamhaus has decided is a  
> spammer, and also received caustic e-mail from Spamhaus when I  
> wrote on behalf of a wrongly blocklisted client.
> Improper inclusion in filters and block lists is becoming a huge  
> problem for legitimate communicators...


Dave,

What is most unfortunate about Prof. Ezor's note is that he correctly
identifies a significant concern but incorrectly asserts that Spamhaus
is guilty of it.

Those of us signing this response are active in anti-spam efforts. None
of us has direct or indirect involvement with any aspect of Spamhaus
operation, although some of us use one or more of the Spamhaus published
lists and are quite familiar with its operation. We feel that Prof.
Ezor's note warrants a community response, rather than merely getting
one from Spamhaus.

The world of spam and anti-spam engenders confusion and emotion, exactly
as one might expect from something involving open communication and
abuses of it.  That is why it is so important to distinguish between
participants who operate responsibly and those who do not.

It is certainly true that some anti-spam lists are operated in a
cavalier manner, even serving as outlets for personal vendettas.
Spamhaus is not one of these.  Spamhaus has a well-earned reputation in
the industry for acting responsibly, effectively and fairly.

Its criteria for being listed are clear and reasonable. Its mechanisms
for remedying being listed also are reasonable.  (See
<http://www.spamhaus.org/>.)  Not perfect, but reasonable. Indeed there
is a very strong consensus among the anti-spam community that Spamhaus
provides an essential infrastructure capability, needed for sustaining a
viable Internet mail service.

It is estimated that use of Spamhaus lists provides an extremely
efficient and inexpensive pre-filter of incoming mail, that detects
perhaps 75% of received spam. The remainder must be subjected to
computationally-costly and error-prone heuristic analysis. Remove the
benefits of having Spamhaus lists, and hosts receiving mail will
quadruple their processing overhead, along with significantly increasing
the number of false positives -- legitimatemail that is incorrectly
refused delivery.

It is worth considering Prof. Ezor's complaint in light of this
background. He characterizes Spamhaus as acting with threats and caustic
language, and of wholesale blockage of neighboring IP addresses that
have committed no offense.

We did some research on Prof. Ezor's case.  Spamhaus blocked exactly one
host IP Address.  Not a set, as he claims.  The host in question had
been the source of spam for some weeks, prior to being added to a
Spamhaus list.

Here is the entire text of the response that Spamhaus sent, after
receiving Prof. Ezor's claim that his client was improperly listed:

> ------------------------------------------------------------
> From: linford () spamhaus org
> Subject: Re: Urgent Letter Regarding Improper SBL Listing
> Date: 2 June 2004 09:37:27 GMT+02:00
> To: jonathan () lustigmanfirm com
> Hello,
> When your client ceases employing spamming as a marketing method, your
> client will be removed from our database, until then your client will
> remain listed, it really is that simple. Legal threats serve only to
> inform us that rather than stop the spamming, the entity hopes to
> attempt to scare us into allowing him to continue with the spamming.
> National Collector's Mint engaged the services of not just one, but
> two extremely well known professional spammers listed in our Register
> of Known Spam Operations (ROKSO) database: Magnum Enterprises and John
> Grandinetti ("britmilla.com") to market their products. Spamhaus lists
> not only sources of spam, but also resources of those who directly
> profit by it.
> If National Collector's Mint doesn't like the reputation it is making
> for itself of being a purveyor of spam, and the consequences of
> spamming (being listed in the SBL), may I suggest you direct your
> legal effort at those responsible for your clients situation: the
> professional spammers your client is hiring and whomever in your
> client's organization hired them to spam for your client.
> Regards,
>   Steve Linford
>   The Spamhaus Project
>   http://www.spamhaus.org
> ------------------------------------------------------------


Even from the perspective of someone attempting to improve their
negotiating leverage, we do not see any reasonable way to characterize
Spamhaus' note as containing threats or caustic language.

What we do see is that Prof. Ezor's note makes it that much more
difficult to conduct reasoned public discussion of this very difficult
topic.

At the least, we hope that his upcoming presentation in Denmark is
written with more care, accuracy and balance than his note to the IP  
list.


Sincerely,

   Dave Crocker
        Principal
        Brandenburg InternetWorking
        bbiw.net

   Neil Schwartzman
        Chair
        on behalf of the Board of Directors
        CAUCE Canada: The Canadian Coalition Against
           Unsolicited Commercial Email
        http://cauce.ca/node/1

   James Lick
        Chair, on behalf of APCAUCE
        APCAUCE
        wiki.apcauce.org

   Scott Hazen Mueller
        Chairman and Founder, on behalf of the Board
        CAUCE (US)
        www.cauce.org

        Director and Founder
        International Coalition Against Unsolicited
           Commercial E-mail (iCAUCE)
        www.international.cauce.org

   Rick Wesson
        CEO
        Support Intelligence, LLC
        support-intelligence.com

        CEO
        Alice's Registry, Inc.
        ar.com

   Justin Mason
        PMC Member
        Apache SpamAssassin project
        spamassassin.apache.org

   Justin Greene
        President/CEO
        The Spamex Disposable Email Address Service
        www.spamex.com

   Larry E. Smith
        Owner/Partner
        Electronic Communication Systems
        www.ecsis.net

   J. William Campbell, Jr.
        Manager
        Celestial Software, LLC
        www.celestial.com

   Huey Callison
        Software designer and anti-spam activist
        huey.callison () gmail com

   Bob O'Brien
        Software Craftsman
        whitelist.com

   Matt Sergeant
        Co-Author
        Draft DNSBL Best Practices (IETF ASRG)

        Member of the Board
        CAUCE Canada

   Chris Lewis
        Anti-spam infrastructure architect
        Nortel

        Senior Technical Advisor
        MAAWG

   Michael "der Mouse" Parker
        Vice-Chair and Secretary to the Board
        The Canadian Coalition Against
           Unsolicited Commercial Email
        http://www.cauce.ca/

   Peter Seebach
        President
        Plethora Internet
        http://www.plethora.net/

   Mickey Chandler
        President/CEO
        Whizardries, Inc.
        www.whizardries.com

   Paul Myers
        Publisher
        TalkBiz News
        www.talkbiznews.com

   John Glube
        Owner
        Glube's - Business Services
        www.trusted-email-sender.com

   Victor Duchovni
        Postfix developer
        http://www.postfix.org

   Suresh Ramasubramanian
        Coordinator
        APCAUCE
        wiki.apcauce.org

        Manager, Antispam Operations,
        Outblaze Ltd
        http://www.hserus.net

   Gadi Evron
        Security Evangelist
        Beyond Security

   Daniel Senie
        President/Founder
        Amaranth Networks Inc.
        amaranth.net

   Michael A. Atkinson
        Email Security Consultant
        mike.atkinson () gmail com

   John Levine
        Member (North America)
        ICANN At Large Advisory Committee

   Edward Falk
        The Spam Diaries
        thespamdiaries.blogspot.com

   Don M. Blumenthal
        Former Internet Lab Director
        US Federal Trade Commission

   Gerard Alan Latham
        walcots () gmail com

   Steven Champeon
        CTO
        hesketh.com/inc.

        Founder
        enemieslist.com

   Clifton Royston
        Antispam software developer
        President
        I and I Computing
        www.iandicomputing.com

   John Fitch
        Professor of Software Engineering
        University of Bath, UK
        people.bath.ac.uk/masjpf

        Director
        Codemist Ltd
        www.codemist.co.uk

   Peter Salanki
        Network Architect
        Bahnhof AB
        www.bahnhof.net

   Jonas Birgersson
        CEO Labs2 Group
        www.labs2.com

   Amar Andersson
        Senior Network Engineer
        TeliaSonera AB
        www.teliasonera.com

   Joe Greco
        sol.net Network Services
        http://www.sol.net

   Kelsey Cummings
        System Architect
        Sonic.net, Inc.
        corp.sonic.net

   Mark Mallett
        President
        MV Communications, Inc.
        www.mv.com

   Russell Nelson
        President
        Crynwr Software
        webmaster () qmail org

   Gerard Alan Latham
        Moderator
        sci.archaeology.moderated

   Patrick W. Gilmore
        Network Architect
        patrick () ianai net

   Sean Eric Fagan
        Former MAPS employee
        sef () Kithrup COM

   Robert H. Braver
        Owner
        oklahoma-isp.net
        www.oklahoma-isp.net

   Rik van Riel
        Linux kernel developer
        http://surriel.com/

   Mike Paulsen
        Concerned end-user
        mike.paulsen () ownrecognizance com

   Ray Everett-Church, Esq.
        Principal
        PrivacyClue LLC
        www.privacyclue.com

        Co-Author
        Fighting Spam for Dummies

   Nick Nicholas
        In the Nick of Time IT Consulting
        nicknicholas.net

   Tony Finch
        Email systems specialist
        University of Cambridge
        dotat.at

   David Wright
        ISP Development Services, UK
        www.dww.org.uk

   Richard Welty
       Owner,
       Averill Park Networking
       www.averillpark.net

       Webmaster
       Spamvertized
       www.spamvertized.org/

   Jake Richter
       Managing Director
       NetTech, N.V.
       nettech.an

   Matthew Vernhout
       Concerned end-user
       www.vernhout.net

--

  Dave Crocker
  Brandenburg InternetWorking
  bbiw.net






















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