Re: Despamming wholesale dialup

[Dean Anderson <dean () av8 com>]

At 05:33 PM 10/29/98 -0500, Scott Gifford wrote:
>  An interesting answer to the problem you discussed above was suggested by
> somebody from the EFF at a spam BOF at USENIX this summer.  He suggested
> that by default, you filter on port 25.  But if somebody needs access for
> legitimate reasons, or even if they don't, have a letter they can fill out,
> sign, and send in which states that they will not send spam, subject to a
> $500/message penalty.  Then if they do, just bill them.

One problem is that the wholesale provider may not have permission to do
this. You must obtain permission from a party to the communication prior to
interfering with it, unless it qualifies as an abuse.  

You should be aware that the pro-spammers have a bill in Congress to
explicitly define spam as a legitimate activity, ie not an abuse.  It will
likely be passed in this session. I tried to tell people a year and a half
ago that spammers were closely associated with an advertising lobby that
would be effective on this is issue, and that they needed to try a more
reasonable approach. But they insisted "I was wrong". 

So "Spam fighting" is now a lost cause, which should not be discussed on
Nanog anyway.  

                --Dean

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           Plain Aviation, Inc                  dean () av8 com
           LAN/WAN/UNIX/NT/TCPIP          http://www.av8.com
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