From list-managers-owner Mon Jun 5 17:10:39 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id QAA27551; Mon, 5 Jun 2000 16:02:25 -0700 (PDT) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id QAA27541 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Mon, 5 Jun 2000 16:02:22 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mail.rev.net (mail.rev.net [206.67.68.8]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id FAA05706 for ; Sun, 4 Jun 2000 05:25:23 -0700 (PDT) Received: from fantasy (USER13.GVA.NET [216.80.135.17]) by mail.rev.net (8.10.0/8.10.0) with ESMTP id e54CPci22572 for ; Sun, 4 Jun 2000 08:25:39 -0400 Message-Id: <200006041225.e54CPci22572@mail.rev.net> From: "Bernie Cosell" Organization: Fantasy Farm Fibers To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Date: Sun, 4 Jun 2000 08:25:32 -0400 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Is listbot.com for real? X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.12c) Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk I was just wondering if listbot is a real MLM site or just a spamhaven. This morning I got _two_ messages from listbot.com claiming that some bogus [and obviously all-spam] "mailing list" had been moved to listbot and it gave me an email address to unsubscribe via. What's interesting is that the two addresses that I was subscribed under are [respectively] 10 and 4 years old [that is, that's how long it has been since I last used them for anything]. /Bernie\ -- Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers mailto:bernie@fantasyfarm.com Pearisburg, VA --> Too many people, too few sheep <-- From list-managers-owner Wed Jun 7 12:06:38 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id MAA03580; Wed, 7 Jun 2000 12:05:30 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mail.rev.net (mail.rev.net [206.67.68.8]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id MAA03568 for ; Wed, 7 Jun 2000 12:05:20 -0700 (PDT) Received: from admin3 (admin3.rev.net [12.26.100.205]) by mail.rev.net (8.10.0/8.10.0) with ESMTP id e57J6OO02321 for ; Wed, 7 Jun 2000 15:06:24 -0400 Message-Id: <200006071906.e57J6OO02321@mail.rev.net> From: "Bernie Cosell" Organization: Fantasy Farm Fibers To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Date: Wed, 7 Jun 2000 15:06:22 -0400 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Netiquette: forwarding things to other forums Reply-to: bernie@fantasyfarm.com X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.12b) Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Dumb question time: I was e-chatting with a colleague and I mentioned that IMO it was impolite and improper to forward a person's postings in one forum to another forum without their knowledge and consent. He argued back, in essence, that "public is public", and it wasn't like he had divulged private correspondence or anything, and I should just chill out... So I poked around a bit at a bunch of online netiquette resources and I was rather surprised NOT to find support for my position. I still think it is reasonable and polite, but apparently the net-standards for behavior don't agree. For example, RFC 1855 says... - If you are forwarding or re-posting a message you've received, do not change the wording. If the message was a personal message to you and you are re-posting to a group, you should ask permission first... And clearly by implication if it was *NOT* a personal message that asking permission is not necessary... Am I off base here? It seems that way ... [I'm a bit more disturbed than I ought to be about something relatively minor like this mostly because I've played this game for a LONG time now and it is always a bit unsettling to learn that something you took for granted not only wasn't "obvious" but might even be against-the-flow]. Also, it would have implications for the "copyright" crowd: if the long-standing internet standard is "public is public", then one would have a much weaker claim [if anyone actually dared to bring such a suit] to claim copyright restrictions in blocking further-propagation of postings to new/strange forums --- it would seem to be pefectly adequate to reply that the implied-license of sending a submission to a public list is broad, indeed]. /Bernie\ -- Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers mailto:bernie@fantasyfarm.com Pearisburg, VA --> Too many people, too few sheep <-- From list-managers-owner Wed Jun 7 13:22:51 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id NAA04227; Wed, 7 Jun 2000 13:15:15 -0700 (PDT) Received: from public.lists.apple.com (public.lists.apple.com [17.254.0.151]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id NAA04218 for ; Wed, 7 Jun 2000 13:15:10 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [17.216.27.193] (A17-216-27-193.apple.com [17.216.27.193]) by public.lists.apple.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id NAA59454 ; Wed, 7 Jun 2000 13:17:16 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Sender: chuqui@newboy.plaidworks.com Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <200006071906.e57J6OO02321@mail.rev.net> References: <200006071906.e57J6OO02321@mail.rev.net> Date: Wed, 7 Jun 2000 13:15:24 -0700 To: bernie@fantasyfarm.com, list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: Netiquette: forwarding things to other forums Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 3:06 PM -0400 6/7/2000, Bernie Cosell wrote: >Dumb question time: I was e-chatting with a colleague and I mentioned >that IMO it was impolite and improper to forward a person's postings >in one forum to another forum without their knowledge and consent. >He argued back, in essence, that "public is public", and it wasn't >like he had divulged private correspondence or anything, and I should >just chill out... I think, basically, that I agree with the "chill" aspect. When I do this, I try to make sure I don't mess with the context. Attribution depends on the situation, but if it's the person's piece, I carry forward the attribution. if it's more "straight news", I don't. but if someone posts something to one of my hockey lists that's relevant to another list, I sure don't see the problem in forwarding it. Now, if I took something posted to the Dallas Stars list and forwarded it to the New Jersey Devil's list with a "look what this idiot said about us, let's get him", it'd be different... I think it fits okay under fair use. I mean, in reality, most lists have archives today, and nobody would think twice about pointing with a URL to the same message in an archive, right? so we're simply cutting a level of indirection out of the loop. -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar and say 'Man, what are you doing here?'" From list-managers-owner Wed Jun 7 14:08:04 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id NAA04611; Wed, 7 Jun 2000 13:56:22 -0700 (PDT) Received: from roscoe.burstmedia.com ([207.159.105.131]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id NAA04604 for ; Wed, 7 Jun 2000 13:56:16 -0700 (PDT) Received: by roscoe.burstmedia.com with Internet Mail Service (5.5.2650.10) id ; Wed, 7 Jun 2000 16:57:58 -0400 Message-ID: From: Bob McCown To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: RE: Netiquette: forwarding things to other forums Date: Wed, 7 Jun 2000 16:57:58 -0400 MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2650.10) Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Just another datapoint, but it applies. Recently, a bunch of thread responses on Slashdot (www.slashdot.org) were taken, and were going to be put into a book. There was such a hew and cry from the people that posted, they decided NOT to publish the book, but make it in electronic format. -=Bob -----Original Message----- From: Bernie Cosell [mailto:bernie@fantasyfarm.com] Sent: Wednesday, June 07, 2000 3:06 PM To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Netiquette: forwarding things to other forums Dumb question time: I was e-chatting with a colleague and I mentioned that IMO it was impolite and improper to forward a person's postings in one forum to another forum without their knowledge and consent. He argued back, in essence, that "public is public", and it wasn't like he had divulged private correspondence or anything, and I should just chill out... So I poked around a bit at a bunch of online netiquette resources and I was rather surprised NOT to find support for my position. I still think it is reasonable and polite, but apparently the net-standards for behavior don't agree. For example, RFC 1855 says... - If you are forwarding or re-posting a message you've received, do not change the wording. If the message was a personal message to you and you are re-posting to a group, you should ask permission first... And clearly by implication if it was *NOT* a personal message that asking permission is not necessary... Am I off base here? It seems that way ... [I'm a bit more disturbed than I ought to be about something relatively minor like this mostly because I've played this game for a LONG time now and it is always a bit unsettling to learn that something you took for granted not only wasn't "obvious" but might even be against-the-flow]. Also, it would have implications for the "copyright" crowd: if the long-standing internet standard is "public is public", then one would have a much weaker claim [if anyone actually dared to bring such a suit] to claim copyright restrictions in blocking further-propagation of postings to new/strange forums --- it would seem to be pefectly adequate to reply that the implied-license of sending a submission to a public list is broad, indeed]. /Bernie\ -- Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers mailto:bernie@fantasyfarm.com Pearisburg, VA --> Too many people, too few sheep <-- From list-managers-owner Wed Jun 7 16:22:38 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id QAA06368; Wed, 7 Jun 2000 16:13:11 -0700 (PDT) Received: from smtp.pacifier.com (comet.pacifier.com [199.2.117.155]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id QAA06361 for ; Wed, 7 Jun 2000 16:13:01 -0700 (PDT) Received: from shell.pacifier.com (IDENT:neil@shell.pacifier.com [199.2.117.66]) by smtp.pacifier.com (8.9.3/8.9.3pop) with ESMTP id QAA10978 for ; Wed, 7 Jun 2000 16:14:13 -0700 (PDT) Date: Wed, 7 Jun 2000 16:14:16 -0700 (PDT) From: Neil To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: restrict post question Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk I have several email lists, hosted at my ISP, to which I have restricted access with a password. I use a Unix email program so I was able to add 'Approved: password' to the header and then the 'Subject: whatever' line shows up in the header; when those who use a Windows email program try it, the 'Subject:' line in the header ends up being blank. The reason is that the they have to put 'Approved: password' on the first line of the body of the message. What I would like to do is eliminate the need for a password by setting up a restric_post in the config file. The assistant unix admin at my ISP said he would be happy to "touch" a file for me but he doesn't know much about majordomo and would need instructions. The system is a BSD (OpenBSD to be exact). Could someone tell me what file he needs to touch and the permissions and can it be writeable so I can add emails to it? Also, what exactly do I put in the config file? As much simple detail as possible would be appreciated. If there is another, better way to restrict who can send to a list then I am open to suggestions. Thanks. Neil Neil From list-managers-owner Thu Jun 8 07:37:55 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id HAA16948; Thu, 8 Jun 2000 07:30:35 -0700 (PDT) Received: from asante.asante.com (asante.asante.COM [192.108.250.1]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id HAA16941 for ; Thu, 8 Jun 2000 07:30:28 -0700 (PDT) Received: from pacbell.net (IDENT:bpm@archy.asante.COM [192.203.52.121]) by asante.asante.com (8.9.3/8.9.1) with ESMTP id HAA00373 for ; Thu, 8 Jun 2000 07:34:24 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <200006081434.HAA00373@asante.asante.com> Date: Thu, 8 Jun 2000 06:36:01 -0700 (PDT) From: bmullins@pacbell.net, UNEXPECTED_DATA_AFTER_ADDRESS@.SYNTAX-ERROR Reply-To: bmullins@pacbell.net Subject: Re: Netiquette: forwarding things to other forums To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/plain; CHARSET=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On 7 Jun, Chuq Von Rospach wrote: > I think it fits okay under fair use. I mean, in reality, most lists > have archives today, and nobody would think twice about pointing > with a URL to the same message in an archive, right? so we're simply > cutting a level of indirection out of the loop. Interesting point. In general I don't forward without asking permission, but I also spend a lot of time on a list with closed archives. The understanding on that list is pretty clearly that asking before forwarding is expected. -- Breen Mullins San Mateo, Calif. From list-managers-owner Thu Jun 8 09:07:55 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id IAA17712; Thu, 8 Jun 2000 08:59:34 -0700 (PDT) Received: from grassyhill.org (grassyhill.org [208.231.0.71]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id IAA17703 for ; Thu, 8 Jun 2000 08:59:25 -0700 (PDT) Received: from tomw70 (dsl_120w70 [151.202.20.126]) by grassyhill.org (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id LAA90947 for ; Thu, 8 Jun 2000 11:59:56 -0400 (EDT) (envelope-from tneff@panix.com) From: "Tom Neff" To: Subject: Re: Netiquette: forwarding things to other forums Date: Thu, 8 Jun 2000 12:00:41 -0400 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2911.0) Importance: Normal In-Reply-To: <200006080800.BAA10974@honor.greatcircle.com> X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2919.6700 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Forwarding an informational post from one topical public forum to another related-topic forum is not considered rude, although if you wanted to be extra nice, you could notify the original author that you've done this, so they're not surprised to hear from strangers later on. A good example: an announcement of, say, a Lyle Lovett benefit concert is posted to a general music forum by the show's organizers, and a reader passes the posting on to the Lyle Lovett fan forum. Forwarding flame posts to every group you can think of for the purpose of informing a wider world what an idiot your opponent is, is considered rude. :) Forwarding an entire Digest for the sake of a five line posting buried inside is considered rude. Forwarding a binary encoded HTML MIME attachment from some board or forum into a text based list or Digest is considered rude regardless of the author's intentions. > -----Original Message----- > From: "Bernie Cosell" > Subject: Netiquette: forwarding things to other forums > > Dumb question time: I was e-chatting with a colleague and I mentioned > that IMO it was impolite and improper to forward a person's postings > in one forum to another forum without their knowledge and consent. > He argued back, in essence, that "public is public", and it wasn't > like he had divulged private correspondence or anything, and I should > just chill out... From list-managers-owner Thu Jun 8 09:22:55 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id JAA17918; Thu, 8 Jun 2000 09:19:23 -0700 (PDT) Received: from grassyhill.org (grassyhill.org [208.231.0.71]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id JAA17911 for ; Thu, 8 Jun 2000 09:19:16 -0700 (PDT) Received: from tomw70 (dsl_120w70 [151.202.20.126]) by grassyhill.org (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id MAA91676 for ; Thu, 8 Jun 2000 12:19:57 -0400 (EDT) (envelope-from tneff@panix.com) From: "Tom Neff" To: Subject: headers beyond Approved Date: Thu, 8 Jun 2000 12:20:43 -0400 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2911.0) Importance: Normal In-Reply-To: <200006080800.BAA10974@honor.greatcircle.com> X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2919.6700 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Neil wrote: > I have several email lists, hosted at my ISP, to which I have restricted > access with a password. > > I use a Unix email program so I was able to add 'Approved: password' to > the header and then the 'Subject: whatever' line shows up in the > header; when those who use a Windows email program try it, the 'Subject:' > line in the header ends up being blank. The reason is that the they have > to put 'Approved: password' on the first line of the body of the message. Although you don't say so explicitly, I assume these are Majordomo lists. I recommend mentioning the name and version of the list software you're using when requesting technical help. An often overlooked feature of Majordomo is this: When you put the Approved: header in the first line of the message body, you can KEEP ADDING HEADER LINES in that "block" before a blank line separates you from the actual body text that Majordomo will approve through. In some cases it is necessary to do this in order for the header fields to come out non-blank in the final message or Digest. So for example +--------------------------- | From: tweed@tammany.org header | To: spainlovers@lists.net | Subject: +--------------------------- +--------------------------- | Approved: guernica body | Subject: Good places to hide? | From: An Anonymous Civic Leader | | I am looking for a discreet hidey hole where my wretched | enemies will be unable to hunt me down. Private replies | preferred. Please don't tell Nast. +--------------------------- You may still prefer to mess with restrict_post, but I wanted to make sure people know how to overcome the Approved blank-header problem. I think this is all being addressed in newer Majordomos. From list-managers-owner Thu Jun 8 09:52:58 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id JAA18155; Thu, 8 Jun 2000 09:45:09 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mail.rev.net (mail.rev.net [206.67.68.8]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id JAA18148 for ; Thu, 8 Jun 2000 09:45:04 -0700 (PDT) Received: from admin3 (admin3.rev.net [12.26.100.205]) by mail.rev.net (8.10.0/8.10.0) with ESMTP id e58GkQp21196 for ; Thu, 8 Jun 2000 12:46:27 -0400 Message-Id: <200006081646.e58GkQp21196@mail.rev.net> From: "Bernie Cosell" Organization: Fantasy Farm Fibers To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Date: Thu, 8 Jun 2000 12:46:24 -0400 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Re: Netiquette: forwarding things to other forums Reply-to: bernie@fantasyfarm.com In-reply-to: <393EBFD2.E35EA0D2@louisiana.edu> X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.12b) Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On 7 Jun 00, at 16:34, Istvan Berkeley wrote: > ...I think > that RFC 1855 is misleading here. The issue is really one about > copyright.... My understanding is that, for the purposes of the > law e-mail should be treated like a letter. If I send a (private) > letter, or e-mail to you, whilst you own the physical object (or virtual > object in the case of e-mail), I would still hold the copyright on the > content. I asked about 'netiquette' and tried to leave aside the question of whether it was *LEGAL* to forward a message on to other forums.... not because it is an uninteresting or unimportant aspect of the question, but for two reasons: 1) AFAIK it has *NEVER* been tested in court, and so when you say "should be treated like a letter" I'm pretty sure that you [or your legal-advisor] is just guessing/analogizing. And because email is used for so many things [and indeed, private email will almost certainly if/when the law gets around to dealing with it, be addressed separately from email sent knowingly and intentionally to an unrestricted public forum] I think that the final 'analogy' will end up being a LOT more complicated than just 'like a letter'. 2) Apart from copyrights and the matter of 'fair use' there's a secondary question of implied-license. When an author chooses to 'broadcast' their work to an unrestricted public forum, they have _clearly_ conceded *some* copying-rights. But exactly which rights? And to whom? And under what circumstances? And we have thrashed that out some [and it does surface again from time to time as moderators claim "compilation copyrights" and such], but I was really asking the somewhat "squishier" question --- if you will, it is the _precursor_ to deciding what the law ought to say: thinking about what's "right" and "proper"... And I didn't really weigh in with my thinking on this [I just tossed out the 'teaser'], so let me rectify tha: I said that I thought it improper to repost without permission... I have two reasons why: 1) public is not necessarily public. A person might dislike or disapprove of some forums, or have bad blood with some of its participants or for any or no reason NOT want their stuff to appear _there_ [even if they might be otherwise mellow about its being reposted someplace else]. If you don't ask permission the author doesn't get the chance to inform you of their preferences. 2) The person is separated from the discussion [and perhaps debate!] engendered by their reposted comments. This seems pretty unfair -- they don't have a chance to defend themselves, to correct misconceptions, to answer and expand on questions that arise. Someone commented about how it is inappropriate to put in a prologue "Look at what this idiot said...", but even without the prologue, posting the words themselves in a 'hostile' forum might get the same reaction. /Bernie\ -- Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers mailto:bernie@fantasyfarm.com Pearisburg, VA --> Too many people, too few sheep <-- From list-managers-owner Thu Jun 8 10:37:58 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id KAA18632; Thu, 8 Jun 2000 10:32:16 -0700 (PDT) Received: from public.lists.apple.com (public.lists.apple.com [17.254.0.151]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id KAA18625 for ; Thu, 8 Jun 2000 10:32:11 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [17.216.27.193] (A17-216-27-193.apple.com [17.216.27.193]) by public.lists.apple.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id KAA37020 ; Thu, 8 Jun 2000 10:34:01 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Sender: chuqui@newboy.plaidworks.com Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <200006081434.HAA00373@asante.asante.com> References: <200006081434.HAA00373@asante.asante.com> Date: Thu, 8 Jun 2000 10:32:04 -0700 To: bmullins@pacbell.net, list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: Netiquette: forwarding things to other forums Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 6:36 AM -0700 6/8/2000, bmullins@pacbell.net, >Interesting point. In general I don't forward without asking permission, >but I also spend a lot of time on a list with closed archives. The >understanding on that list is pretty clearly that asking before >forwarding is expected. with closed archives, that makes sense. In situations like these, I'd make these expectations explicit in the list rules. I guess it comes down to "if the poster has an expectation of privacy (or at least discretion), they should get it. the more public the postings are, the less I worry about redirecting the content. -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar and say 'Man, what are you doing here?'" From list-managers-owner Thu Jun 8 13:22:55 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id NAA20337; Thu, 8 Jun 2000 13:15:10 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ivan.iecc.com (ivan.iecc.com [208.31.42.33]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id NAA20329 for ; Thu, 8 Jun 2000 13:15:05 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 10340 invoked by uid 100); 8 Jun 2000 16:16:29 -0400 Date: Thu, 8 Jun 2000 16:16:27 -0400 (EDT) From: John R Levine To: Bernie Cosell cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Netiquette: forwarding things to other forums In-Reply-To: <200006081646.e58GkQp21196@mail.rev.net> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > I asked about 'netiquette' and tried to leave aside the question of > whether it was *LEGAL* to forward a message on to other forums.... It's hard to see how it could be illegal unless your intention was to defame or harass, e.g., taking a message from someone else and reposting it in 100 random alt.sex groups. Turning email into a book is a separate issue, one of the fair use criteria is the commercial potential of material, and if it's valuable enough to put into a book, clearly the author deserves a crack at the money to be earned thereby. On the other hand, I've always felt that it's rude to forward mail without permission, regardless of the forum. In comp.compilers, I've always told anyone who forwarded a third party message to ask the original author to resend it, or at least confirm that it's OK to forward. And I've gotten occasional clueless but very angry mail from people who read a crossposted message in another newsgroup, replied to it, and got bent out of shape that the message showed up in my newsgroup. Regards, John Levine, comp.compilers moderator, johnl@iecc.com, http://iecc.com/compilers From list-managers-owner Thu Jun 8 15:24:51 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id PAA21907; Thu, 8 Jun 2000 15:21:21 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ntcorp.dn.net (ntcorp.dn.net [207.226.172.79]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id PAA21899 for ; Thu, 8 Jun 2000 15:21:15 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (fidelman@localhost) by ntcorp.dn.net (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id SAA27834 for ; Thu, 8 Jun 2000 18:19:18 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 8 Jun 2000 18:19:18 -0400 (EDT) From: Miles Fidelman X-Sender: fidelman@ntcorp.dn.net To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Netiquette: forwarding things to other forums In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Thu, 8 Jun 2000, John R Levine wrote: > > I asked about 'netiquette' and tried to leave aside the question of > > whether it was *LEGAL* to forward a message on to other forums.... > > It's hard to see how it could be illegal unless your intention was to defame > or harass, e.g., taking a message from someone else and reposting it in 100 since copyright remains with the author, whether it's legal to repost or not comes down to whether or not reposting falls under either an implied license or fair use - something that hasn't (to my knowledge) been estalished in either statutory or case law ************************************************************************** The Center for Civic Networking PO Box 600618 Miles R. Fidelman, President & Newtonville, MA 02460-0006 Director, Municipal Telecommunications Strategies Program 617-558-3698 fax: 617-630-8946 mfidelman@civicnet.org http://civic.net/ccn.html Information Infrastructure: Public Spaces for the 21st Century Let's Start With: Internet Wall-Plugs Everywhere Say It Often, Say It Loud: "I Want My Internet!" ************************************************************************** From list-managers-owner Thu Jun 8 16:09:29 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id QAA22245; Thu, 8 Jun 2000 16:01:59 -0700 (PDT) Received: from yellow.rahul.net (yellow.rahul.net [192.160.13.18]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id QAA22238 for ; Thu, 8 Jun 2000 16:01:56 -0700 (PDT) Received: from rahul.net (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by yellow.rahul.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id 173EC7C37 for ; Thu, 8 Jun 2000 16:03:22 -0700 (PDT) To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Netiquette: forwarding things to other forums In-reply-to: Date: Thu, 08 Jun 2000 16:03:22 -0700 From: Michelle Dick Message-Id: <20000608230322.173EC7C37@yellow.rahul.net> Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Wed, 7 Jun 2000 16:57:58 -0400 Bob McCown wrote: > Just another datapoint, but it applies. Recently, a bunch of thread > responses on Slashdot (www.slashdot.org) were taken, and were going to be > put into a book. There was such a hew and cry from the people that posted, > they decided NOT to publish the book, but make it in electronic format. And I bet that, say, Salon.com and any of their (paid) columnists might be rather put out if I replicated one of their web articles on my site or extracted the articles and posted them regularly to a mailing list sans Salon.com formating and advertising using the justification that, well, anyone could view it on their website, point to it with a URL, and heck, *even have it emailed to anyone* with a click from their site. They MUST be putting it in the public domain. Yeah, right. I always welcome requests to repost my posts to other email lists, and almost always say yes. I also advise those who ask me if they can repost things from my lists to get permission from the poster. I consider it the most basic of netiquette irrespective of the copyright issues. -- Michelle Dick artemis@rahul.net East Palo Alto, CA From list-managers-owner Thu Jun 8 16:39:29 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id QAA22416; Thu, 8 Jun 2000 16:34:19 -0700 (PDT) Received: from smtp2.vnet.net (smtp2.vnet.net [166.82.1.32]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id QAA22409 for ; Thu, 8 Jun 2000 16:34:14 -0700 (PDT) Received: from katie.vnet.net (katie.vnet.net [166.82.1.7]) by smtp2.vnet.net (8.10.1/8.10.1) with ESMTP id e58NZdN27268; Thu, 8 Jun 2000 19:35:39 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost (murr@localhost) by katie.vnet.net (8.9.3+Sun/8.9.1) with ESMTP id TAA09033; Thu, 8 Jun 2000 19:35:39 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 8 Jun 2000 19:35:38 -0400 (EDT) From: murr rhame To: John R Levine cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Netiquette: forwarding things to other forums In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Thu, 8 Jun 2000, John R Levine wrote: > ... Turning email into a book is a separate issue, one of the > fair use criteria is the commercial potential of material, > and if it's valuable enough to put into a book, clearly the > author deserves a crack at the money to be earned thereby... To the best of my knowledge, profit has nothing to do with fair use criteria. Please cite a credible reference that supports your contention. - murr - From list-managers-owner Thu Jun 8 20:39:48 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id UAA24235; Thu, 8 Jun 2000 20:27:39 -0700 (PDT) Received: from toocan.com (adsl-63-203-59-66.dsl.snfc21.pacbell.net [63.203.59.66]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id UAA24228 for ; Thu, 8 Jun 2000 20:27:34 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (ar@localhost) by toocan.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id UAA07705; Thu, 8 Jun 2000 20:28:52 -0700 Date: Thu, 8 Jun 2000 20:28:52 -0700 (PDT) From: Ash To: murr rhame cc: John R Levine , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Netiquette: forwarding things to other forums In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk hi murr, u r incorrect when you state that profit has nothing to do with fair use. fair use balances 4 elements: 1 the purpose and character of the use. 2 the nature of the copyrighted work. 3 the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole. 4 THE EFFECT OF THE USE ON THE POTENTIAL MARKET FOR, OR VALUE OF, THE COPYRIGHTED WORK element 4 is most definitely concerned with profit:) if u r interested in studying the issue more see title 17 United States Codes 101 et.seq.. (the section u write on is 107). u might find it helpful to use www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html hope it helps ash On Thu, 8 Jun 2000, murr rhame wrote: > On Thu, 8 Jun 2000, John R Levine wrote: > > > ... Turning email into a book is a separate issue, one of the > > fair use criteria is the commercial potential of material, > > and if it's valuable enough to put into a book, clearly the > > author deserves a crack at the money to be earned thereby... > > To the best of my knowledge, profit has nothing to do with fair > use criteria. Please cite a credible reference that supports > your contention. > > > - murr - > From list-managers-owner Fri Jun 9 02:10:55 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id CAA28084; Fri, 9 Jun 2000 02:01:32 -0700 (PDT) Received: from smtp2.vnet.net (smtp2.vnet.net [166.82.1.32]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id CAA28077 for ; Fri, 9 Jun 2000 02:01:22 -0700 (PDT) Received: from katie.vnet.net (katie.vnet.net [166.82.1.7]) by smtp2.vnet.net (8.10.1/8.10.1) with ESMTP id e5992pw07189; Fri, 9 Jun 2000 05:02:51 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost (murr@localhost) by katie.vnet.net (8.9.3+Sun/8.9.1) with ESMTP id FAA21729; Fri, 9 Jun 2000 05:02:51 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 9 Jun 2000 05:02:50 -0400 (EDT) From: murr rhame To: Ash cc: John R Levine , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Netiquette: forwarding things to other forums In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Thu, 8 Jun 2000, Ash wrote: > fair use balances 4 elements: > > 1 the purpose and character of the use. > 2 the nature of the copyrighted work. > 3 the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to > the copyrighted work as a whole. > 4 THE EFFECT OF THE USE ON THE POTENTIAL MARKET FOR, OR VALUE OF, > THE COPYRIGHTED WORK I stand corrected. It is my understanding that non-profit use does not provide a general exemption to redistribute copyrighted material without permission. - murr - From list-managers-owner Fri Jun 9 06:50:47 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id GAA02163; Fri, 9 Jun 2000 06:30:21 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mail01a.rapidsite.net (ip230.hway.net [207.158.192.230]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id GAA02155 for ; Fri, 9 Jun 2000 06:30:14 -0700 (PDT) Received: from www.jadebox.com (207.158.243.143) by mail01a.rapidsite.net (RS ver 1.0.57s) with SMTP id 02657007 for ; Fri, 9 Jun 2000 09:31:27 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <000d01bfd217$01ee04c0$63bbf1d1@mail3.tacintel.com> From: "Roger Smith" To: Subject: Fw: Netiquette: forwarding things to other forums Date: Fri, 9 Jun 2000 09:31:22 -0400 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 4.72.2120.0 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V4.72.2120.0 X-Loop-Detect: 1 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk >u r incorrect when you state that profit has nothing to do with fair >use. > >fair use balances 4 elements: > > 1 the purpose and character of the use. > 2 the nature of the copyrighted work. > 3 the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to > the copyrighted work as a whole. > 4 THE EFFECT OF THE USE ON THE POTENTIAL MARKET FOR, OR VALUE OF, > THE COPYRIGHTED WORK > >element 4 is most definitely concerned with profit:) > >if u r interested in studying the issue more see title 17 United States >Codes 101 et.seq.. (the section u write on is 107). u might find it >helpful to use www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html You're ("u r") right. I think the confusion is because many people think that you can use a copyrighted work in any way you wish as long as you, yourself, don't profit from it. That's wrong, of course, as your citation points out. Since a message is automatically copyrighted by the person who creates it, you technically should have permission before posting it somewhere else. It's also a matter of courtesy to ask. I ask permission unless the message is obviously something the sender wants to have spread around (such as a press release). -- Roger The Guardians Safety Game: http://www.safetygame.com Teach Your Children to Think Safe! From list-managers-owner Fri Jun 9 07:42:59 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id HAA02727; Fri, 9 Jun 2000 07:33:50 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ripco.com (pop2a.ripco.com [209.100.227.25]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id HAA02720 for ; Fri, 9 Jun 2000 07:33:43 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from dattier@localhost) by ripco.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) id JAA25561 for list-managers@GreatCircle.COM; Fri, 9 Jun 2000 09:37:09 -0500 (CDT) From: "David W. Tamkin" Message-Id: <200006091437.JAA25561@ripco.com> Subject: Re: Netiquette: forwarding things to other forums Date: Fri, 9 Jun 2000 09:37:09 -0500 (CDT) Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM In-Reply-To: <20000608230322.173EC7C37@yellow.rahul.net> from "Michelle Dick" at Jun 08, 2000 04:03:22 PM X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.5 PL2] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Michelle Dick wrote, | I always welcome requests to repost my posts to other email lists, and | almost always say yes. So do I, but I frequently find that what I wrote for one venue needs to be tweaked slightly to suit the place where the person wants to repost it (for example, because the context of earlier posts in the thread in the original forum would be unknown there), so more often than not I make some small changes to it and ask the reposter to use the modified version. That's yet another reason to consult with the author first. From list-managers-owner Fri Jun 9 10:47:54 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id KAA04422; Fri, 9 Jun 2000 10:21:33 -0700 (PDT) Received: from toocan.com (adsl-63-203-59-66.dsl.snfc21.pacbell.net [63.203.59.66]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id KAA04414 for ; Fri, 9 Jun 2000 10:21:27 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (ar@localhost) by toocan.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id KAA08141; Fri, 9 Jun 2000 10:22:55 -0700 Date: Fri, 9 Jun 2000 10:22:55 -0700 (PDT) From: Ash To: Roger Smith cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Fw: Netiquette: forwarding things to other forums In-Reply-To: <000d01bfd217$01ee04c0$63bbf1d1@mail3.tacintel.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk hi roger, i also follow your point - when in doubt ask - courtesy and respect for individuals cannot hurt:) Mike Godwin (general counsel for the Electronic Frontier Foundation) makes exactly your points (and more) in his book CyberRights:Defending Free Speech in the Digital Age (approximately page 200 - section on avoiding copyright lawsuits) On Fri, 9 Jun 2000, Roger Smith wrote: > >u r incorrect when you state that profit has nothing to do with fair > >use. > > > >fair use balances 4 elements: > > > > 1 the purpose and character of the use. > > 2 the nature of the copyrighted work. > > 3 the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to > > the copyrighted work as a whole. > > 4 THE EFFECT OF THE USE ON THE POTENTIAL MARKET FOR, OR VALUE OF, > > THE COPYRIGHTED WORK > > > >element 4 is most definitely concerned with profit:) > > > >if u r interested in studying the issue more see title 17 United States > >Codes 101 et.seq.. (the section u write on is 107). u might find it > >helpful to use www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html > > You're ("u r") right. I think the confusion is because many people > think that you can use a copyrighted work in any way you wish as long as > you, yourself, don't profit from it. That's wrong, of course, as your > citation points out. > > Since a message is automatically copyrighted by the person who creates > it, you technically should have permission before posting it somewhere > else. It's also a matter of courtesy to ask. I ask permission unless > the message is obviously something the sender wants to have spread > around (such as a press release). > > -- Roger > The Guardians Safety Game: http://www.safetygame.com > Teach Your Children to Think Safe! > > > From list-managers-owner Wed Jun 14 22:49:03 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id WAA07617; Wed, 14 Jun 2000 22:38:15 -0700 (PDT) Received: from newboy.plaidworks.com (a203.plaidworks.com [209.239.169.203]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id WAA07610 for ; Wed, 14 Jun 2000 22:38:10 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [209.239.169.197] (a197.plaidworks.com [209.239.169.197]) by newboy.plaidworks.com (8.10.1/8.10.1) with ESMTP id e5F5eKo26573 for ; Wed, 14 Jun 2000 22:40:20 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Sender: chuqui@newboy.plaidworks.com Message-Id: Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2000 22:40:23 -0700 To: list-managers@greatcircle.com From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: FYI -- above.net and RBL. Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Something folks probably ought to know about. above.net has (fairly recently, as far as I can tell), set up their networks to block any IP traffic to sites that are listed in the RBL. This has the side effect that any site downstream of them (I buy network from wombatnet, which buys network from above.net, for instance), is now controlled by the RBL, whether they want to be or not. Now while I support the RBL in theory, in practice, I have issues with it (because, among other things, I know of too many cases, including one I was indirectly involved in, where they tend to shoot first and ask questions when the lawyers call), and I don't run it on my machines. I now find it's irrelevant whether or not I run it; worse, if someone decides they want to "get" me, or any other downstream customer of above.net, they can attack us via the RBL. In fact, today I had to remote access into work to access a web site of a company to unsubscribe from a mailing list I was subscribed to at home, because the mailing list was on an RBLed site, and I couldn't access them via any protocol from home. I know that company pretty well, and it doesn't spam, except under very tight-@ss definitions of spam, but to put it bluntly, one or two tight-@ss can get you loaded into the RBL, and then you're in deep. Especially if you're downstream of above.net, and can't get to the RBL sites to find out what's going on or work on resolving it... Sites on the wrong side of this can literally be made to disappear without access to fix it. I'm not thrilled at this. I think blocking ALL traffic based on RBL data is excessive (I'd be unhappy if they blocked SMTP, but I can live with that), especially since the RBL is sometimes unreliable, and their definition of bad-stuff isn't universally accepted by a long shot. I've brought up these issues with my ISP, since I this is a well-intentioned wrong-think. I'm bringing it up here because I ran into it when subscribed members of my lists started having mail back up for no reason, and it took me a couple of days to track it down. Since above.net's fairly large and blocks traffic bi-directionally and unilaterally, it could be affecting everyone's delivery and mail queues as well. And if your main network routes through above.net, you're at risk of a complete blackout if someone decides to get you dumped into the RBL. Something you might want to be aware of, folks... This might be affecting you, and you don't know it. Which isn't a big deal if you support the RBL yourself, but if you don't, you may find that you are and didn't realize it. chuq -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar and say 'Man, what are you doing here?'" From list-managers-owner Thu Jun 15 00:18:31 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id XAA08237; Wed, 14 Jun 2000 23:58:27 -0700 (PDT) Received: from windlord.stanford.edu (windlord.Stanford.EDU [171.64.12.23]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id XAA08230 for ; Wed, 14 Jun 2000 23:58:21 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 15671 invoked by uid 50); 15 Jun 2000 07:00:53 -0000 To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: FYI -- above.net and RBL. References: In-Reply-To: Chuq Von Rospach's message of "Wed, 14 Jun 2000 22:40:23 -0700" From: Russ Allbery Organization: The Eyrie Date: 15 Jun 2000 00:00:53 -0700 Message-ID: Lines: 37 User-Agent: Gnus/5.0802 (Gnus v5.8.2) XEmacs/21.1 (Biscayne) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Chuq Von Rospach writes: > above.net has (fairly recently, as far as I can tell), set up their > networks to block any IP traffic to sites that are listed in the RBL. Hasn't this been the case for eons? I thought above.net was one of the very early subscribers to the RBL BGP feed. I don't believe this is anything new. > In fact, today I had to remote access into work to access a web site of > a company to unsubscribe from a mailing list I was subscribed to at > home, because the mailing list was on an RBLed site, and I couldn't > access them via any protocol from home. I know that company pretty well, > and it doesn't spam, except under very tight-@ss definitions of spam, > but to put it bluntly, one or two tight-@ss can get you loaded into the > RBL, and then you're in deep. Have you contacted the RBL folks and asked why that site is listed, or are you speculating? In my experience, they're incredibly conservative about who they're willing to list. > I'm not thrilled at this. I think blocking ALL traffic based on RBL data > is excessive (I'd be unhappy if they blocked SMTP, but I can live with > that), especially since the RBL is sometimes unreliable, and their > definition of bad-stuff isn't universally accepted by a long shot. I've > brought up these issues with my ISP, since I this is a well-intentioned > wrong-think. I personally consider it a very significant feature offered by above.net, and for this reason I would actively seek out connectivity via above.net rather than other providers because of this policy (as well as other, very intelligent policies that they've set about spam and network abuse). So opinions differ here, predictably. -- Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu) From list-managers-owner Thu Jun 15 01:48:36 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id BAA10156; Thu, 15 Jun 2000 01:31:01 -0700 (PDT) Received: from monkeys.com (236.dsl9226.rcsis.com [63.92.26.236]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id BAA10149 for ; Thu, 15 Jun 2000 01:30:44 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost.monkeys.com (localhost.monkeys.com [127.0.0.1]) by monkeys.com (8.10.1/8.10.1) with SMTP id e5F8SSI57301 for ; Thu, 15 Jun 2000 01:28:28 -0700 (PDT) To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: FYI -- above.net and RBL. In-reply-to: Your message of Wed, 14 Jun 2000 22:40:23 -0700. Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2000 01:28:28 -0700 Message-ID: <57299.961057708@segfault.monkeys.com> From: "Ronald F. Guilmette" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk In message , Chuq Von Rospach wrote: >Now while I support the RBL in theory, in practice, I have issues >with it (because, among other things, I know of too many cases, >including one I was indirectly involved in, where they tend to shoot >first and ask questions when the lawyers call), and I don't run it on >my machines. I now find it's irrelevant whether or not I run it; >worse, if someone decides they want to "get" me, or any other >downstream customer of above.net, they can attack us via the RBL. > >In fact, today I had to remote access into work to access a web site >of a company to unsubscribe from a mailing list I was subscribed to >at home, because the mailing list was on an RBLed site, and I >couldn't access them via any protocol from home. I know that company >pretty well, and it doesn't spam, except under very tight-@ss >definitions of spam, but to put it bluntly, one or two tight-@ss can >get you loaded into the RBL... Whatsa matter Chuq? Did some of your pals who are just as obstinate as you about refusing to secure their mailing lists run up against this? http://www.mail-abuse.org/rbl/candidacy.html#OriginationNow >... The opt-out approach violates our fundamental principle: >all communications must be consensual. > >This fundamental principle is sometimes violated by mailing >lists with inadequate confirmation or verification steps. >Mailing lists lacking a subscription confirmation step can >be used to send unsolicited mass e-mail to unwilling recipients. >A mailing list should include only those who have explicitly >indicated an interest in receiving messages from the list. > >Prudent mailing list management mandates verification of all >subscription requests before mailings commence. Many well- >meaning list managers have found themselves in the spamming >business when they don't confirm subscriptions. Please review >Basic Mailing List Management Principles for Preventing Abuse >for additional expectations and best current practices regarding >proper mailing list management. When are you going to get it through your thick skull that if Company XYZ spams me and then says ``Oh gosh! We're sorry! Somebody ELSE must have signed you up maliciously via our web site.'' there is quite simply NO WAY for me or anyone else... other that the company itself... to determine reliably if this statement/excuse, offered by the company, is a lie or not? REAL spammers say this exact thing ALL OF THE TIME. But when YOU say it, I and the other people you've spammed are just supposed to blindly believe it, right? What you don't understand, and what you apparently will NEVER understand, is that from THIS side of the wire, what the REAL spammers have told me, repeatedly, (i.e. "not our fault") and what you, and Apple have told me when YOU and Apple spammed me are EXACTLY identical, AND that I have no more reason to believe it when Apple says it than I do when any ordinary garden variety sleezbag selling XXX porno or swamp land in Florida says it. Give me one good reason why I should believe that when Apple spammed me recently it WASN'T just an intentional, premeditated, and concious spamming of my mailbox on the part of Apple. Just one. You can't do it. All you can say is ``Oh Apple is a Big and Reputable company, and we would never do THAT!'' But how do *I* know you would never do that? How can I possibly know to a 100% certainty that some new-hire clown in Apple's marketing department wouldn't think to himself one day ``Hey! I can use the Internet and just blast out this message to EVERYBODY!'' The answer is clear. I certainly DO NOT have any way of knowing for sure if your lame excuses that ``Oh gee! Some malicious person must have forged your e-mail address onto our web site signup form!'' are really truthful or not. Apple certainly WOULD NOT be the first large or well-known company to try dipping their big toe into the spamming cesspool. You just object to the fact that on the Internet now, because of spamming and other such shenanigans, people and companies are now being held *accountable* for what they do and how they do it, AND it is clear that you aren't happy that that you, Apple, IBM, Intel, General Motors, Proctor & Gamble, and the rest of the Fortune 500 are ALL being held to the SAME single standard as we now hold the real out-and-out low-life slug spammers to... i.e. no mail without PERMISSION. And why does this make you unhappy? Because you think that you're better than everybody else. You're the worst sort of elitist snob. You think that you, and Apple, and your other greedy and self-serving pals at other sites who, like you, are also running mailing lists with- out any confirmation on them, should be exempt from the general rules now being applied to everybody else. Why? Because you're "special". Get over yourself. You're not that special. In fact, as far as MY mailbox is concerned, you and Apple are just as bad as any other spammers. You place YOUR short term revenue well above MY privacy in your list of priorities, and thus, you run your mailing lists wide open, thus denying any objective independent outside observer any clear basis on which to determine if you/Apple are just plain spamming or not. You don't want the rest of the world to be able to clearly detemine if you/Apple are spamming or not. OK. Fine. Given that, I, and other people that you have sent unsolicited commercial mail to have every right to just throw up our hands and say that any commercial mail that Apple sends, without being requested, is, by default, "spam", and that we can reach no other conclusion that this because YOU have made it impossible to reach any other conclusion. If you had up-front confirmation on your lists, and if then, Apple just started sending me jizz out of the blue... as you did recently... then I would know to a 100% certainty that somebody at Apple was spamming. And conversely, if you could produce an associated confirmation that I sent in, explicitly ASKING to be on your list, then I would know that Apple WASN'T spamming. But because of your intentional LACK of con- firmation on your mailing lists, all I have is a strong and reasonable _suspicion_ that Apple has engaged in spamming... a suspicion which NOBDOY can either prove or dispove to a 100% certainty. YOU intentionally setup this situation in which Apple's spamming can neither be 100% proven nor 100% disproven (via your mailing list admin policies), and given that, you should expect people to take note of your deliberate obfsucation of the facts and to conclude that Apple really doesn't want anybody to know for sure if Apple is spamming or not. And if Apple wants that, it can only be because Apple *is* spamming. In short, YOU are responsible for it if people logically conclude that Apple *is* spamming. In short, you made your bed. Now lie in it. >... and then you're in deep. Especially if >you're downstream of above.net, and can't get to the RBL sites to >find out what's going on or work on resolving it... Sites on the >wrong side of this can literally be made to disappear without access >to fix it. Apparently you haven't heard yet, so let me be the first to tell you. There's this fellow named "Bell". He's invented this wonderful new gaget that allows you to speak into a box and actually have someone at some remote and perhaps distant location HEAR your voice, which is transmitted via electrical signals over copper wire. Look into it. (You might also want to investigate this new-fangled thing called a WHOIS server that allows you to find the contact phone numbers for other Internet sites. DUH!) >I'm not thrilled at this. I think blocking ALL traffic based on RBL >data is excessive (I'd be unhappy if they blocked SMTP, but I can >live with that), especially since the RBL is sometimes unreliable, Objection. Heresay evidence. Please confine your comments to the facts. >and their definition of bad-stuff isn't universally accepted... That's 100% true. An awful lot of people, myself included, feel that the MAPS people are far far too lenient in the way they often let Fortune 1000 companies off without any disiplinary action, even when they (the companies) are doing stuff that many netizens consider to be "bad stuff". >I'm bringing it up here because I ran into it when subscribed members >of my lists started having mail back up for no reason... "Subscribed members" like me for example?? What exactly do you want... a signed affidavit saying that I *never* asked to be on any of the several Apple mailing lists that you allowed me to be added to without my request or consent? -- rfg From list-managers-owner Thu Jun 15 07:12:38 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id HAA15020; Thu, 15 Jun 2000 07:06:41 -0700 (PDT) Received: from gsp.org (rsk.tidalwave.com [208.211.3.21]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id HAA15012 for ; Thu, 15 Jun 2000 07:06:26 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from rsk@localhost) by gsp.org (8.9.3/8.9.3) id KAA14294 for list-managers@GreatCircle.COM; Thu, 15 Jun 2000 10:10:28 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2000 10:10:26 -0400 From: Rich Kulawiec To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: FYI -- above.net and RBL. Message-ID: <20000615101026.A14248@gsp.org> References: <57299.961057708@segfault.monkeys.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2i In-Reply-To: <57299.961057708@segfault.monkeys.com>; from rfg@monkeys.com on Thu, Jun 15, 2000 at 01:28:28AM -0700 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Y'know, it's not often that I agree with Ron -- and I've toasted him more than once on Spam-L when I didn't. But this time I have to agree with him: there is NO acceptable excuse for running any kind of mailing list that doesn't employ verification. Is it hard? Possibly. Is it confusing to users? Maybe. Is it more work? Probably. Does it have to be done? Absolutely. And in some ways, that's too bad, because in the days before spammers and pranksters were so prevalent, it wasn't necessary. Abuses were few and far between, and could be dealt with as they happened. But thanks to the tolerance for spam/abuse exhibited by many of those who either (a) don't care or (b) put profits ahead of ethics, it's a different 'net, and, well, for the moment at least, we're stuck with it. And just like we can't have world-writable FTP archives or world-mountable NFS volumes without opening the door for all kinds of trouble, we can't have non-verified mailing lists. As to the RBL, my experience is that they're quite picky and that it's rather difficult to get a site listed -- as it should be. I do wish, though, that they would provide an always-accessible email address so that it's not necessary to call them. (Voice communications are difficult for those of us with hearing problems.) ---Rsk Rich Kulawiec rsk@gsp.org From list-managers-owner Thu Jun 15 08:10:28 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id IAA15612; Thu, 15 Jun 2000 08:05:11 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ns.secondary.com (ns.secondary.com [208.184.76.39]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id IAA15605 for ; Thu, 15 Jun 2000 08:05:06 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [165.227.249.13] (ip13.proper.com [165.227.249.13]) by ns.secondary.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id IAA24893; Thu, 15 Jun 2000 08:08:00 -0700 (PDT) Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Sender: phoffman@mail.imc.org Message-Id: In-Reply-To: References: Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2000 08:07:38 -0700 To: Chuq Von Rospach , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Paul Hoffman / IMC Subject: Re: FYI -- above.net and RBL. Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 10:40 PM -0700 6/14/00, Chuq Von Rospach wrote: >above.net has (fairly recently, as far as I can tell), Russ is right: it has been true for a long time. As someone who now colocates at above.net, I was pretty surprised when I heard about this recently, given that I've been at above.net for nine months. The fact that they use the RBL isn't mentioned anywhere in my colo contact, but it is mentioned in the text of one of the URLs in the contract. Having said that, I still don't know how I feel about it. On the one hand, like Chuq, I wouldn't choose to use the RBL, and even briefly considered leaving above.net when I found out that it was being forced on me. On the other hand, it hasn't caused us any noticeable problems that I know of. Unlike most companies on the web, we list our telephone number and postal address on hour home page, so someone who was aggrieved by us blocking them would be able to let us know fairly easily. We moved from a non-RBL colo site to above.net about nine months ago, so anyone who had been able to get to use before but couldn't now would have had plenty of time to tell us. So far, nothing. The only way I found out about it was hearing the MAPS folk talk about above.net. I also note that, being at above.net hasn't caused that much less spam from getting to IMC mailing lists. When we added DULS checking to our sendmail setup, the spam dropped noticeably, but we still get enough on some mailing lists to elicit complaints. --Paul Hoffman, Director --Internet Mail Consortium From list-managers-owner Thu Jun 15 10:40:35 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id KAA17217; Thu, 15 Jun 2000 10:35:06 -0700 (PDT) Received: from public.lists.apple.com (public.lists.apple.com [17.254.0.151]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id KAA17205 for ; Thu, 15 Jun 2000 10:34:58 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [17.216.27.193] (A17-216-27-193.apple.com [17.216.27.193]) by public.lists.apple.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id KAA40598 ; Thu, 15 Jun 2000 10:38:30 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Sender: chuqui@newboy.plaidworks.com Message-Id: In-Reply-To: References: Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2000 10:35:19 -0700 To: Paul Hoffman / IMC , Chuq Von Rospach , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: FYI -- above.net and RBL. Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 8:07 AM -0700 6/15/2000, Paul Hoffman / IMC wrote: >At 10:40 PM -0700 6/14/00, Chuq Von Rospach wrote: >>above.net has (fairly recently, as far as I can tell), > >Russ is right: it has been true for a long time. Yes, someone from above.net popped in and let me know. It was a combination of both bigfoot and mailcity getting RBLed that made me go snoop the network connections -- so at one level, since it took this long to notice, it's not a big issue. On the other hand, I still prefer to make this decision for myself. On the other hand, I support what the RBL is trying to do, even though, on the other, other hand, they sometimes make mistakes. I just don't want to be one of those mistakes, especially if it means I can't get through above.net to find out what's gone on and try to get it resolved..... And, like Paul, if it's cutting down my spam, I sure don't notice. So much spam is being relayed from offshore now it's not funny, and there are so many open relays out there... >Having said that, I still don't know how I feel about it. Since it's been around for such a long time without me realizing it before now, that pretty much means that in practice, it's not a significant issue, so I won't worry about it, at least for now. I still think blocking ALL IP is overkill and could create problems, but at this point, I'll define it as net-neutral and keep an eye on it. >Unlike most companies on the web, we list our telephone number and >postal address on hour home page, so someone who was aggrieved by us >blocking them would be able to let us know fairly easily. I do, also, although I'm taking the phone number off. I've just had too many cold calls recently from people trying to sell me advertising for my web site, or to have me buy advertising from my site. I get tired of clueless sales droids, and if there's a technical problem, someone with half a clue can find out how to get ahold of me via NIC records. >I also note that, being at above.net hasn't caused that much less >spam from getting to IMC mailing lists. When we added DULS checking >to our sendmail setup, the spam dropped noticeably, but we still get >enough on some mailing lists to elicit complaints. DULS? I know I know that acronym, but I'm hitting a blank. -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar and say 'Man, what are you doing here?'" From list-managers-owner Thu Jun 15 12:25:28 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id MAA18158; Thu, 15 Jun 2000 12:10:10 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ivan.iecc.com (ivan.iecc.com [208.31.42.33]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id MAA18151 for ; Thu, 15 Jun 2000 12:10:05 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 25610 invoked by uid 100); 15 Jun 2000 15:12:42 -0400 Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2000 15:12:42 -0400 (EDT) From: John R Levine To: Chuq Von Rospach cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: FYI -- above.net and RBL. In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > I still think blocking ALL IP is overkill and could create problems, But Chuq, blocking all IPs is SUPPOSED to create problems, and gives the RBL much of its effectiveness. This is particularly true for places like iBill who provide credit card service for porngraphers (an entirely legit service for the many legit pornographers) but would never have kicked off spamming customers without the pressure from loss of connectivity to their web site. Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://iecc.com/johnl, Sewer Commissioner Finger for PGP key, f'print = 3A 5B D0 3F D9 A0 6A A4 2D AC 1E 9E A6 36 A3 47 From list-managers-owner Thu Jun 15 12:40:29 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id MAA18142; Thu, 15 Jun 2000 12:08:17 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ripco.com (pop2a.ripco.com [209.100.227.25]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id MAA18135 for ; Thu, 15 Jun 2000 12:08:11 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ripco.com (root@golden.ripco.com [209.100.227.10]) by ripco.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id OAA07355 for ; Thu, 15 Jun 2000 14:12:00 -0500 (CDT) Received: by ripco.com (Smail #1) id m132f3b-000IRHC; Thu, 15 Jun 2000 14:12:03 -0500 (CDT) Message-Id: From: dattier@ripco.com (David W. Tamkin) Subject: Re: FYI -- above.net and RBL. Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2000 14:12:02 -0500 (CDT) Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM In-Reply-To: <20000615101026.A14248@gsp.org> from "Rich Kulawiec" at Jun 15, 2000 10:10:26 AM X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.5 PL2] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Rich Kulawiec wrote, | I do wish, though, that they would provide an always-accessible | email address so that it's not necessary to call them. (Voice | communications are difficult for those of us with hearing problems.) I made the same suggestion to Paul Vixie concerning contact from admins of sites that wanted to get off (by proving that they'd been listed incorrectly or that they'd closed their open relay), and he dismissed it by saying that such an address "would just get spammed." From list-managers-owner Thu Jun 15 14:03:44 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id NAA19100; Thu, 15 Jun 2000 13:42:53 -0700 (PDT) Received: from public.lists.apple.com (public.lists.apple.com [17.254.0.151]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id NAA19093 for ; Thu, 15 Jun 2000 13:42:48 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [17.216.27.193] (A17-216-27-193.apple.com [17.216.27.193]) by public.lists.apple.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id NAA58838 ; Thu, 15 Jun 2000 13:46:26 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Sender: chuqui@newboy.plaidworks.com Message-Id: In-Reply-To: References: Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2000 13:44:28 -0700 To: dattier@ripco.com (David W. Tamkin) From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: FYI -- above.net and RBL. Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 2:12 PM -0500 6/15/2000, David W. Tamkin wrote: >I made the same suggestion to Paul Vixie concerning contact from admins of >sites that wanted to get off (by proving that they'd been listed incorrectly >or that they'd closed their open relay), and he dismissed it by saying that >such an address "would just get spammed." Ya know, I get ripped here at times for not doing the mailback-validate on every piece of email in the universe -- but on *my* systems, there's always a human being available to resolve problems that come up. where's the moral high ground here? If my system screws up (and what system is perfect), there's a body there to fix it. And the impact of my system screwing up is a lot less than the RBL's. and, FWIW, my mailbox gets spammed, too. That's part of doing business -- and the accessibility to solve problems that were created via my site far outweighs the inconvenience of dealing with the spam that mailbox generates. IMHO, you can't have it both ways. If you are going to impact other people, you need to be accessible to resolve problems. I do. why doesn't RBL? -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar and say 'Man, what are you doing here?'" From list-managers-owner Thu Jun 15 14:33:32 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id OAA19635; Thu, 15 Jun 2000 14:21:42 -0700 (PDT) Received: from windlord.stanford.edu (windlord.Stanford.EDU [171.64.12.23]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id OAA19628 for ; Thu, 15 Jun 2000 14:21:38 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 19878 invoked by uid 50); 15 Jun 2000 21:24:16 -0000 To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: FYI -- above.net and RBL. References: In-Reply-To: dattier@ripco.com's message of "Thu, 15 Jun 2000 14:12:02 -0500 (CDT)" From: Russ Allbery Organization: The Eyrie Date: 15 Jun 2000 14:24:16 -0700 Message-ID: Lines: 19 User-Agent: Gnus/5.0802 (Gnus v5.8.2) XEmacs/21.1 (Biscayne) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk David W Tamkin writes: > I made the same suggestion to Paul Vixie concerning contact from admins > of sites that wanted to get off (by proving that they'd been listed > incorrectly or that they'd closed their open relay), and he dismissed it > by saying that such an address "would just get spammed." To be fair to Paul's position there, the spam in question would be more like mailbombing. If there were a significant public contact address for the RBL team, don't you think that every vindictive spammer in existence would forge it as their return address, mailbomb it, mailbomb it by proxy from test autoresponders, put it on every address list, etc.? The ones who are doing this out of spite more than to make money in particular. I'd be very surprised if such an address stayed particularly useable for long. -- Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu) From list-managers-owner Thu Jun 15 15:06:00 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id OAA19870; Thu, 15 Jun 2000 14:38:53 -0700 (PDT) Received: from public.lists.apple.com (public.lists.apple.com [17.254.0.151]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id OAA19863 for ; Thu, 15 Jun 2000 14:38:48 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [17.216.27.193] (A17-216-27-193.apple.com [17.216.27.193]) by public.lists.apple.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id OAA38692 ; Thu, 15 Jun 2000 14:43:00 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Sender: chuqui@newboy.plaidworks.com Message-Id: In-Reply-To: References: Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2000 14:34:42 -0700 To: Paul Hoffman / IMC , Chuq Von Rospach , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: FYI -- above.net and RBL. Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk >Another excellent service from the MAPS folks. See >. > thanks! Now I remember. Yes, that's a good one. -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar and say 'Man, what are you doing here?'" From list-managers-owner Thu Jun 15 15:19:46 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id OAA19767; Thu, 15 Jun 2000 14:30:22 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ns.secondary.com (ns.secondary.com [208.184.76.39]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id OAA19752 for ; Thu, 15 Jun 2000 14:30:13 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [165.227.249.13] (ip13.proper.com [165.227.249.13]) by ns.secondary.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id OAA04370; Thu, 15 Jun 2000 14:33:10 -0700 (PDT) Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Sender: phoffman@mail.imc.org Message-Id: In-Reply-To: References: Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2000 14:32:48 -0700 To: Chuq Von Rospach , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Paul Hoffman / IMC Subject: Re: FYI -- above.net and RBL. Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 10:35 AM -0700 6/15/00, Chuq Von Rospach wrote: >>I also note that, being at above.net hasn't caused that much less >>spam from getting to IMC mailing lists. When we added DULS checking >>to our sendmail setup, the spam dropped noticeably, but we still >>get enough on some mailing lists to elicit complaints. > >DULS? I know I know that acronym, but I'm hitting a blank. Another excellent service from the MAPS folks. See . --Paul Hoffman, Director --Internet Mail Consortium From list-managers-owner Thu Jun 15 15:34:44 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id PAA20300; Thu, 15 Jun 2000 15:10:29 -0700 (PDT) Received: from hostigos.otherwhen.com ([63.103.205.3]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id PAA20287 for ; Thu, 15 Jun 2000 15:10:18 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mail.otherwhen.com ([63.103.205.4]) by hostigos.otherwhen.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id QAA01725 for ; Thu, 15 Jun 2000 16:12:55 -0600 (MDT) (envelope-from mavery@mail.otherwhen.com) Received: from PORKY/SpoolDir by mail.otherwhen.com (Mercury 1.48); 15 Jun 00 16:12:54 -0600 Received: from SpoolDir by PORKY (Mercury 1.48); 15 Jun 00 16:12:26 -0600 From: "Mike Avery" To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2000 16:12:24 -0600 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Re: FYI -- above.net and RBL. Reply-to: mavery@mail.otherwhen.com Message-ID: <39490067.18302.7AD2B@localhost> In-reply-to: References: <20000615101026.A14248@gsp.org> from "Rich Kulawiec" at Jun 15, 2000 10:10:26 AM X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.12c) Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On 15 Jun 2000, at 14:12, David W. Tamkin wrote: > Rich Kulawiec wrote, > | I do wish, though, that they would provide an always-accessible | > email address so that it's not necessary to call them. (Voice | > communications are difficult for those of us with hearing problems.) > I made the same suggestion to Paul Vixie concerning contact from > admins of sites that wanted to get off (by proving that they'd been > listed incorrectly or that they'd closed their open relay), and he > dismissed it by saying that such an address "would just get spammed." It's not a REAL problem, just a REAL nuisance. There are a number of shops on the net that provide free email. One that I've liked has been mailandnews.com You can use them with POP3, IMAP, or web interfaces, and they are anti-spam. So... if you're stuck, surf over to www.mailandnews.com and setup an account. Mike -- Mike Avery MAvery@mail.otherwhen.com (970)-642-0282 ICQ: 16241692 * Spam is for lusers who can't get business any other way * A Randomly Selected Thought For The Day: Elvis isn't dead he's waiting for COMPSURF to finish! From list-managers-owner Thu Jun 15 15:49:06 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id OAA19735; Thu, 15 Jun 2000 14:29:08 -0700 (PDT) Received: from windlord.stanford.edu (windlord.Stanford.EDU [171.64.12.23]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id OAA19728 for ; Thu, 15 Jun 2000 14:29:04 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 19917 invoked by uid 50); 15 Jun 2000 21:31:42 -0000 To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: FYI -- above.net and RBL. References: In-Reply-To: Chuq Von Rospach's message of "Thu, 15 Jun 2000 10:35:19 -0700" From: Russ Allbery Organization: The Eyrie Date: 15 Jun 2000 14:31:42 -0700 Message-ID: Lines: 45 User-Agent: Gnus/5.0802 (Gnus v5.8.2) XEmacs/21.1 (Biscayne) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Chuq Von Rospach writes: > And, like Paul, if it's cutting down my spam, I sure don't notice. So > much spam is being relayed from offshore now it's not funny, and there > are so many open relays out there... The RBL really doesn't cut down day-to-day spam. RSS or DUL are much better for that. The RBL is the big stick that's used to *keep* major organizations from spamming. It's real impact is far more preventative. I think it's been fairly effective at that, helped a lot by the large sites that use the BGP feed. Note that nearly all spammers are still bottom-feeding sorts of scum, get-rich-quick schemes bounced off off-shore relays. I really do believe that without the RBL, at least a few major US corporations would have tried their hand at large-scale spamming as marketing by now, and that really hasn't happened to any particularly significant degree. > Since it's been around for such a long time without me realizing it > before now, that pretty much means that in practice, it's not a > significant issue, so I won't worry about it, at least for now. Yeah, that's what I'd definitely recommend. > I still think blocking ALL IP is overkill and could create problems, but > at this point, I'll define it as net-neutral and keep an eye on it. It makes sense when you realize that the purpose of the RBL isn't to filter spam. It's not just another way to "press delete"; it's intended to do punative damage to the originating site. That's part of what makes it effective at stopping problems from starting rather than just cleaning up after them. > DULS? I know I know that acronym, but I'm hitting a blank. The DUL is an RBL-style black list that lists the dialup blocks of major providers. It's used to prevent direct spamming from trial or throwaway dialup accounts. (It also prevents people from sending mail directly from their Linux boxes at home, so some people, including me, who aren't fond of the new requirement that everyone who isn't an ISP has to use a relay mail server are not particularly fond of it, but it is effective at stopping a fairly large class of spam.) -- Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu) From list-managers-owner Thu Jun 15 16:34:21 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id QAA20956; Thu, 15 Jun 2000 16:11:50 -0700 (PDT) Received: from castro.queernet.org (castro.queernet.org [209.157.101.253]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id QAA20949 for ; Thu, 15 Jun 2000 16:11:46 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (rogerk@localhost) by castro.queernet.org (8.10.0.Beta6/8.10.0.Beta6) with ESMTP id e5FNEIw04517 Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2000 16:14:17 -0700 (PDT) From: "Roger B.A. Klorese" To: John R Levine cc: Chuq Von Rospach , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: FYI -- above.net and RBL. In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Thu, 15 Jun 2000, John R Levine wrote: > But Chuq, blocking all IPs is SUPPOSED to create problems, and gives the RBL > much of its effectiveness. This is particularly true for places like iBill > who provide credit card service for porngraphers (an entirely legit service > for the many legit pornographers) but would never have kicked off spamming > customers without the pressure from loss of connectivity to their web site. Why is this any of their business, other than as a personal moral concern? Should we next start blocking mail from supermarkets that sell food to spammers? -- ROGER B.A. KLORESE rogerk@QueerNet.ORG urgent: rogerk-page@QueerNet.ORG PO Box 14309 San Francisco, CA 94114 +1 415 ALL-ARFF "There is only one real blasphemy -- the refusal of joy!" -- Paul Rudnick From list-managers-owner Thu Jun 15 16:48:30 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id PAA20732; Thu, 15 Jun 2000 15:59:21 -0700 (PDT) Received: from smtp2.vnet.net (smtp2.vnet.net [166.82.1.32]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id PAA20724 for ; Thu, 15 Jun 2000 15:59:15 -0700 (PDT) Received: from katie.vnet.net (katie.vnet.net [166.82.1.7]) by smtp2.vnet.net (8.10.1/8.10.1) with ESMTP id e5FN1rI04047 for ; Thu, 15 Jun 2000 19:01:53 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost (murr@localhost) by katie.vnet.net (8.9.3+Sun/8.9.1) with ESMTP id TAA20099 for ; Thu, 15 Jun 2000 19:01:53 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2000 19:01:53 -0400 (EDT) From: murr rhame To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: FYI -- above.net and RBL. In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Thu, 15 Jun 2000, Chuq Von Rospach wrote: > Ya know, I get ripped here at times for not doing the > mailback-validate on every piece of email in the universe -- > but on *my* systems, there's always a human being available > to resolve problems that come up. You excel at producing pure hyperbole. No one has suggested that you validate "every piece of email in the universe." One simple validation per $ubscription request will suffice. Validation can be done automatically by most mailing list management programs. I'm glad that human beings are available on *your* systems to handle problems. Note that human assistance is available on *most* mailing lists. However, most mailing lists don't actively solicit the problems caused by unvalidated $ubscriptions. > where's the moral high ground here? If my system screws up > (and what system is perfect), there's a body there to fix it. > And the impact of my system screwing up is a lot less than > the RBL's. If you make no effort to validate, your system is screwed up by design. You choose not to fix the problem therefore you have no claim to the high moral ground. - murr - From list-managers-owner Thu Jun 15 18:48:33 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id SAA22678; Thu, 15 Jun 2000 18:29:18 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mail.xnet.com (quake.xnet.com [198.147.221.67]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id SAA22671 for ; Thu, 15 Jun 2000 18:29:13 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [205.243.156.212] (adamb.xnet.com [205.243.156.212]) by mail.xnet.com (8.9.3+Sun/XNet-3.0R) with SMTP id UAA27165 for ; Thu, 15 Jun 2000 20:31:53 -0500 (CDT) Message-Id: <200006160131.UAA27165@mail.xnet.com> Subject: Re: FYI -- above.net and RBL. Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2000 20:31:54 -0500 x-mailer: Claris Emailer 2.0v3, January 22, 1998 From: Adam Bailey To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On 6/15/00 9:10 AM, Rich Kulawiec wrote... >Y'know, it's not often that I agree with Ron -- and I've toasted him >more than once on Spam-L when I didn't. But this time I have to >agree with him: there is NO acceptable excuse for running any kind >of mailing list that doesn't employ verification. Must we start this again? From list-managers-owner Thu Jun 15 19:04:00 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id SAA22688; Thu, 15 Jun 2000 18:29:31 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ripco.com (pop2b.ripco.com [209.100.227.27]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id SAA22680 for ; Thu, 15 Jun 2000 18:29:25 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ripco.com (root@foley.ripco.com [209.100.227.6]) by ripco.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id UAA11397 for ; Thu, 15 Jun 2000 20:33:13 -0500 (CDT) Received: by ripco.com (Smail #1) id m132l0b-000Ko7C; Thu, 15 Jun 2000 20:33:21 -0500 (CDT) Message-Id: From: dattier@ripco.com (David W. Tamkin) Subject: Re: FYI -- above.net and RBL Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2000 20:33:20 -0500 (CDT) Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM In-Reply-To: <39490067.18302.7AD2B@localhost> from "Mike Avery" at Jun 15, 2000 04:12:24 PM X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.5 PL2] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Russ Allbery wrote, | To be fair to Paul's position there, the spam in question would be more | like mailbombing. If there were a significant public contact address for | the RBL team, don't you think that every vindictive spammer in existence | would forge it as their return address, mailbomb it, mailbomb it by proxy | from test autoresponders, put it on every address list, etc.? The ones | who are doing this out of spite more than to make money in particular. | I'd be very surprised if such an address stayed particularly useable for | long. Very good point, Russ, and good follow-through. Vixie said, however, that such an address "would just get spammed," not that it would get mailbombed, so I highly doubt that he thought it through as far as you did. The feeling I got from his wording was that nothing in the universe was worth letting a single slice of spam sully his server. Mike Avery wrote, > There are a number of shops on the net that provide free email. One that > I've liked has been mailandnews.com. You can use them with POP3, IMAP, or > web interfaces, and they are anti-spam. > So... if you're stuck, surf over to www.mailandnews.com and setup > an account. Mike, you're giving a year 2000 answer to a 1995 problem. When this corres- pondence took place, there were few such things as public webmail providers. I personally knew of none, and I had no HTTP access anyway (except by dialing into a shell account and using Lynx; ever try to use webmail through a text- only browser?). "Surf over"? I couldn't get to the beach then, much less out on the surf. Also, at the time I had no POP3 nor SMTP capability on my own machine, so public popmail providers, if any existed, would have been no help either. But didn't you notice that I somehow managed to correspond with the RBL people regardless? What helped was the account I had on another shell provider, who wasn't on the RBL. From list-managers-owner Thu Jun 15 21:19:47 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id VAA24435; Thu, 15 Jun 2000 21:06:12 -0700 (PDT) Received: from newboy.plaidworks.com (a203.plaidworks.com [209.239.169.203]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id VAA24428 for ; Thu, 15 Jun 2000 21:06:07 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [209.239.169.197] (a197.plaidworks.com [209.239.169.197]) by newboy.plaidworks.com (8.10.1/8.10.1) with ESMTP id e5G48do29593 for ; Thu, 15 Jun 2000 21:08:39 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Sender: chuqui@newboy.plaidworks.com Message-Id: Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2000 21:08:07 -0700 To: list-managers@greatcircle.com From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: what timing... Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Interesting timing.... The fact that the test was run by the group that came out on top makes me immediately wonder, but... -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar and say 'Man, what are you doing here?'" From list-managers-owner Thu Jun 15 21:33:37 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id VAA24360; Thu, 15 Jun 2000 21:00:33 -0700 (PDT) Received: from newboy.plaidworks.com (a203.plaidworks.com [209.239.169.203]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id UAA24298 for ; Thu, 15 Jun 2000 20:59:59 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [209.239.169.197] (a197.plaidworks.com [209.239.169.197]) by newboy.plaidworks.com (8.10.1/8.10.1) with ESMTP id e5G42So29569; Thu, 15 Jun 2000 21:02:28 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Sender: chuqui@newboy.plaidworks.com Message-Id: In-Reply-To: References: Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2000 20:52:47 -0700 To: murr rhame , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: FYI -- above.net and RBL. Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk >You excel at producing pure hyperbole. And results, too. But we'll ignore that. Off back under my rock, I guess. -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar and say 'Man, what are you doing here?'" From list-managers-owner Thu Jun 15 21:49:24 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id VAA24385; Thu, 15 Jun 2000 21:00:38 -0700 (PDT) Received: from newboy.plaidworks.com (a203.plaidworks.com [209.239.169.203]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id VAA24318 for ; Thu, 15 Jun 2000 21:00:03 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [209.239.169.197] (a197.plaidworks.com [209.239.169.197]) by newboy.plaidworks.com (8.10.1/8.10.1) with ESMTP id e5G42To29572; Thu, 15 Jun 2000 21:02:29 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Sender: chuqui@newboy.plaidworks.com Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <200006160131.UAA27165@mail.xnet.com> References: <200006160131.UAA27165@mail.xnet.com> Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2000 20:59:36 -0700 To: Adam Bailey , From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: FYI -- above.net and RBL. Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 8:31 PM -0500 6/15/2000, Adam Bailey wrote: >Must we start this again? You can if you must, but count me out... Other than to say it's too bad some folks decided llong ago that one solution was the only possible solution, and haven't noticed that there have been many changes to reality since then that mimght make rethinking such overly-simplistic ideas worthwhile. But this is clearly not the forum where it can be rethought. -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar and say 'Man, what are you doing here?'" From list-managers-owner Fri Jun 16 00:49:02 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id AAA26405; Fri, 16 Jun 2000 00:30:31 -0700 (PDT) Received: from windlord.stanford.edu (windlord.Stanford.EDU [171.64.12.23]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id AAA26393 for ; Fri, 16 Jun 2000 00:30:23 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 21426 invoked by uid 50); 16 Jun 2000 07:33:06 -0000 To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: what timing... References: In-Reply-To: Chuq Von Rospach's message of "Thu, 15 Jun 2000 21:08:07 -0700" From: Russ Allbery Organization: The Eyrie Date: 16 Jun 2000 00:33:06 -0700 Message-ID: Lines: 27 User-Agent: Gnus/5.0802 (Gnus v5.8.2) XEmacs/21.1 (Biscayne) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Chuq Von Rospach writes: > Interesting timing.... > > The fact that the test was run by the group that came out on top makes > me immediately wonder, but... Brightmail is odd. I've never gotten a particularly good vibe from them. I'm in general very leery of commercial filtering services because in order to compete commercially they're pretty much out of necessity keeping their precise techniques secret, and that opens up more false positive risks and other related problems than I'd be comfortable with. Say what you want about MAPS, RSS, or even ORBS, at least they make very public exactly who they're blocking and for the most part why. I can go look at their databases and figure out whether or not a mail message would be blocked. They're also, from that article, again missing the point of the RBL. It would have been interesting to see RSS on that list, or ORBS, and it would also have been interesting to find out how they were generating the spam. Were they using real spam, or where they inventing it? -- Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu) From list-managers-owner Fri Jun 16 03:03:35 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id CAA28725; Fri, 16 Jun 2000 02:47:51 -0700 (PDT) Received: from smtp2.vnet.net (smtp2.vnet.net [166.82.1.32]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id CAA28718 for ; Fri, 16 Jun 2000 02:47:42 -0700 (PDT) Received: from katie.vnet.net (katie.vnet.net [166.82.1.7]) by smtp2.vnet.net (8.10.1/8.10.1) with ESMTP id e5G9oOg18948; Fri, 16 Jun 2000 05:50:25 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost (murr@localhost) by katie.vnet.net (8.9.3+Sun/8.9.1) with ESMTP id FAA04925; Fri, 16 Jun 2000 05:50:24 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2000 05:50:24 -0400 (EDT) From: murr rhame To: Chuq Von Rospach cc: Adam Bailey , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: FYI -- above.net and RBL. In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Thu, 15 Jun 2000, Chuq Von Rospach wrote: > You can if you must, but count me out... Other than to say > it's too bad some folks decided llong ago that one solution > was the only possible solution, and haven't noticed that > there have been many changes to reality since then that > mimght make rethinking such overly-simplistic ideas > worthwhile. > > But this is clearly not the forum where it can be rethought. I'll bite. What are your new solutions to the problem of forged and other unwanted subscriptions? The quantity of abuse has grown worse with time. Your solution appears to be apologize and minimize after the damage is done then just wait for the next victim. If I've misread or misrepresented your unwanted subscription management strategy, please illuminate. - murr - From list-managers-owner Fri Jun 16 09:40:29 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id JAA05156; Fri, 16 Jun 2000 09:39:54 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ns.secondary.com (ns.secondary.com [208.184.76.39]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id JAA05148 for ; Fri, 16 Jun 2000 09:39:48 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [165.227.249.13] (ip13.proper.com [165.227.249.13]) by ns.secondary.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id JAA18484 for ; Fri, 16 Jun 2000 09:42:49 -0700 (PDT) Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Sender: phoffman@mail.imc.org Message-Id: In-Reply-To: References: Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2000 09:29:08 -0700 To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Paul Hoffman / IMC Subject: Re: what timing... Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 12:33 AM -0700 6/16/00, Russ Allbery wrote: >Brightmail is odd. I've never gotten a particularly good vibe from them. >I'm in general very leery of commercial filtering services because in >order to compete commercially they're pretty much out of necessity keeping >their precise techniques secret, They describe their techniques in detail on their web site. See . > and that opens up more false positive >risks and other related problems than I'd be comfortable with. Brightmail puts all trapped spam in an easily-accessible folder so that the user (an end user or a sysadmin) can go through and look for false positives. --Paul Hoffman, Director --Internet Mail Consortium From list-managers-owner Fri Jun 16 10:10:29 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id JAA05319; Fri, 16 Jun 2000 09:59:28 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ivan.iecc.com (ivan.iecc.com [208.31.42.33]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id JAA05312 for ; Fri, 16 Jun 2000 09:59:22 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 15465 invoked by uid 100); 16 Jun 2000 13:02:09 -0400 Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2000 13:02:09 -0400 (EDT) From: John R Levine To: Russ Allbery cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: what timing... In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > Brightmail is odd. I've never gotten a particularly good vibe from them. > I'm in general very leery of commercial filtering services because in > order to compete commercially they're pretty much out of necessity keeping > their precise techniques secret, and that opens up more false positive > risks and other related problems than I'd be comfortable with. There's nothing particularly secret about Brightmail's approach -- they have a network of thousands of spam trap addresses feeding spam to live people on duty 24/7 tweaking their spam filters in real time. It's a fantastically expensive and labor-intensive approach to spam filtering, and the fact that it's economically viable should remind us of how serious the spam problem is. > They're also, from that article, again missing the point of the RBL. Right. As recently mentioned, the point of the RBL isn't to block today's spam, it's to prevent tomorrow's spam. Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://iecc.com/johnl, Sewer Commissioner Finger for PGP key, f'print = 3A 5B D0 3F D9 A0 6A A4 2D AC 1E 9E A6 36 A3 47 From list-managers-owner Fri Jun 16 14:22:20 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id OAA08021; Fri, 16 Jun 2000 14:06:13 -0700 (PDT) Received: from windlord.stanford.edu (windlord.Stanford.EDU [171.64.12.23]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id OAA08014 for ; Fri, 16 Jun 2000 14:06:07 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 24136 invoked by uid 50); 16 Jun 2000 21:08:56 -0000 To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: what timing... References: In-Reply-To: Paul Hoffman / IMC's message of "Fri, 16 Jun 2000 09:29:08 -0700" From: Russ Allbery Organization: The Eyrie Date: 16 Jun 2000 14:08:56 -0700 Message-ID: Lines: 37 User-Agent: Gnus/5.0802 (Gnus v5.8.2) XEmacs/21.1 (Biscayne) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Paul Hoffman / IMC writes: > At 12:33 AM -0700 6/16/00, Russ Allbery wrote: >> Brightmail is odd. I've never gotten a particularly good vibe from >> them. I'm in general very leery of commercial filtering services >> because in order to compete commercially they're pretty much out of >> necessity keeping their precise techniques secret, > They describe their techniques in detail on their web site. See > . I beg to differ. Their web site says, essentially, that they look at spam and write rules to block it. Well, yes. Duh. What rules do they write? Can I get a full list of all of their current rules? I've not asked them for this, so perhaps I'm wrong, but it would really surprise me if they were willing to post such a list on their web site. I can get all the rules used by, say, MAPS. > Brightmail puts all trapped spam in an easily-accessible folder so that > the user (an end user or a sysadmin) can go through and look for false > positives. Yes, all the commercial spam filters do this (to my knowledge). But I think this is fundamentally a bit of a cop-out; if I have to sort through all the trapped spam, I may as well just get all the spam in my mailbox in the first place. :) If there's any real utility to the filtering, then stuff that gets filtered out is going to be "less seen" in some fashion than stuff that isn't, which raises the possibility of false positives. But then, I personally am pretty paranoid about false positives; I know that a lot of average computer users seem to routinely put up with levels of e-mail loss that I'd consider completely unacceptable. -- Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu) From list-managers-owner Sat Jun 17 04:10:42 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id EAA17944; Sat, 17 Jun 2000 04:01:05 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mail44.fg.online.no (mail44-s.fg.online.no [148.122.161.44]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id EAA17937 for ; Sat, 17 Jun 2000 04:00:59 -0700 (PDT) Received: from a2 (ti08a21-0119.dialup.online.no [130.67.34.119]) by mail44.fg.online.no (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id NAA27868 for ; Sat, 17 Jun 2000 13:03:50 +0200 (MET DST) Message-Id: <200006171103.NAA27868@mail44.fg.online.no> From: "Annie" Organization: Geocities To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2000 13:17:09 +0200 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Spam from my own address Reply-to: nacelebs@online.no X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.12b) Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Hi guys, I received a piece of spam today that was addressed FROM my own address! I'm hoping they have software that puts the from address to the current addressee, and not my address on every piece of spam!!!!!! Any ideas on what they're doing and why? It's an old Geocities address that's about to expire, but even so... Regards From list-managers-owner Sat Jun 17 14:06:05 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id NAA23249; Sat, 17 Jun 2000 13:45:44 -0700 (PDT) Received: from windlord.stanford.edu (windlord.Stanford.EDU [171.64.12.23]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id NAA23242 for ; Sat, 17 Jun 2000 13:45:38 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 920 invoked by uid 50); 17 Jun 2000 20:48:37 -0000 To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Spam from my own address References: <200006171103.NAA27868@mail44.fg.online.no> In-Reply-To: "Annie"'s message of "Sat, 17 Jun 2000 13:17:09 +0200" From: Russ Allbery Organization: The Eyrie Date: 17 Jun 2000 13:48:37 -0700 Message-ID: Lines: 18 User-Agent: Gnus/5.0802 (Gnus v5.8.2) XEmacs/21.1 (Biscayne) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Annie writes: > I received a piece of spam today that was addressed FROM my own address! > I'm hoping they have software that puts the from address to the current > addressee, and not my address on every piece of spam!!!!!! Chances are high that it's the former. It's a not-uncommon technique. > Any ideas on what they're doing and why? It's an old Geocities address > that's about to expire, but even so... It's intended to get around spam filters that do weak envelope or From header filtering; the spammer is guaranteed that the address to which they're sending mail will be seen by the recipient system as a valid and resolving e-mail address. -- Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu) From list-managers-owner Tue Jun 20 21:24:27 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id VAA11088; Tue, 20 Jun 2000 21:06:22 -0700 (PDT) Received: from server.postmodern.com (server.postmodern.com [216.240.39.3]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id VAA11080 for ; Tue, 20 Jun 2000 21:06:17 -0700 (PDT) Received: from gsp.org (rsk.tidalwave.com [208.211.3.21]) by server.postmodern.com (8.8.5/mcb-980201) with ESMTP id DAA11585 for ; Tue, 20 Jun 2000 03:30:38 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from rsk@localhost) by gsp.org (8.9.3/8.9.3) id GAA07507 for list-managers@GreatCircle.COM; Tue, 20 Jun 2000 06:30:24 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2000 06:30:22 -0400 From: Rich Kulawiec To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: FYI -- above.net and RBL. Message-ID: <20000620063021.A7502@gsp.org> References: <200006160131.UAA27165@mail.xnet.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2i In-Reply-To: ; from chuqui@plaidworks.com on Thu, Jun 15, 2000 at 08:59:36PM -0700 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Thu, Jun 15, 2000 at 08:59:36PM -0700, Chuq Von Rospach wrote: > You can if you must, but count me out... Other than to say it's too > bad some folks decided llong ago that one solution was the only > possible solution, and haven't noticed that there have been many > changes to reality since then that mimght make rethinking such > overly-simplistic ideas worthwhile. And it's too bad that you can't address the idea itself, but instead paint its proponents as antiquated thinkers. Confirmation *works*. It works well. It scales. [*] It prevents some (but obviously not all) abuses. And at least with the s/w that I use to run mailing lists, it's trivial to implement. I also think taking "reasonable and customary" steps to prevent the resources I manage from being used to harrass other people is part of my responsibility. I don't believe that I can blithely shrug it off as if it isn't. ---Rsk Rich Kulawiec rsk@gsp.org [*] Lack of confirmation does not scale. Consider what happens if jerk A decides to harrass user B by subscribing B to every mailing list A can find which lacks an acceptable confirmation mechanism. Oh, sure, site C may only have one mailing list which then begins shipping traffic to B; but site C may be only one of thousands with whom B must now correspond to straighten things out. This is, regretably, NOT a hypothetical case. From list-managers-owner Tue Jun 20 22:45:45 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id WAA13178; Tue, 20 Jun 2000 22:36:20 -0700 (PDT) Received: from newboy.plaidworks.com (a203.plaidworks.com [209.239.169.203]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id WAA13169 for ; Tue, 20 Jun 2000 22:36:14 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [209.239.169.197] (a197.plaidworks.com [209.239.169.197]) by newboy.plaidworks.com (8.10.1/8.10.1) with ESMTP id e5L5dKo15438; Tue, 20 Jun 2000 22:39:20 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Sender: chuqui@newboy.plaidworks.com Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <20000620063021.A7502@gsp.org> References: <200006160131.UAA27165@mail.xnet.com> <20000620063021.A7502@gsp.org> Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2000 22:39:29 -0700 To: Rich Kulawiec , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: FYI -- above.net and RBL. Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 6:30 AM -0400 6/20/2000, Rich Kulawiec wrote: >And it's too bad that you can't address the idea itself, but instead >paint its proponents as antiquated thinkers. I've tried, Rich.I really have. But I can't have a conversation with people who won't talk to me. Instead, all I get back in return are lectures. >Confirmation *works*. It works well. It scales. [*] It prevents >some (but obviously not all) abuses. And at least with the >s/w that I use to run mailing lists, it's trivial to implement. and where have I ever said that's not true? If you accuse me of painting people as antiquated thinkers, what about those who insist on trying to define my arguments for me and then ripping me for how they interpret what I think? Frankly, I'm tired of trying. I decided that a couple of days ago, but I'll say more on that later. >I also think taking "reasonable and customary" steps to prevent >the resources I manage from being used to harrass other people is >part of my responsibility. I don't believe that I can blithely >shrug it off as if it isn't. So do I. >[*] Lack of confirmation does not scale. Baloney. But more on that later, too. I don't feel like flying off the handle on this issue now, and if I'm going to discuss this, I'm going to discuss it rationally and with thought. >This is, regretably, NOT a hypothetical case. No, it's not. and depending on the list, confirmation is a very appropriate response to the problem. But there are other alternatives that also work. But more on that later, when I have a chance to gather my thoughts and lay it out one final time. Not that i expect it to do anything more than start up the same old kneejerks again. (but here's a hint. The answer is not "confirmation". The answer is "well run mailing lists". confirmation is *a* tool, not *the* tool. And confirmation does you nothing if the mailing list is run badly. The trick is not to use confirmation, but to run mailing lists well. And confirmation is one tool in the arsenal, and not necessarily the right tool. It's definitely not the only tool) More later. but thanks for confirming my thoughts as correct. chuq -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar and say 'Man, what are you doing here?'" From list-managers-owner Wed Jun 21 08:42:22 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id IAA22201; Wed, 21 Jun 2000 08:22:51 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ncar.UCAR.EDU (ncar.ucar.edu [192.52.106.6]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id IAA22194 for ; Wed, 21 Jun 2000 08:22:45 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <200006211526.JAA07207@ncar.ucar.EDU> Received: (from woods@localhost) by ncar.UCAR.EDU (8.9.1a/) id JAA07207 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Wed, 21 Jun 2000 09:26:24 -0600 (MDT) Subject: spam packet routing To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Date: Wed, 21 Jun 2000 09:26:24 -0600 (MDT) From: woods@ucar.edu (Greg Woods) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL25] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk What's a "spam packet"? Very good question. About once a month or so, I get a complaint from someone about a spam, I look at the headers, and the message clearly did not originate from and never passed through any of our mail servers. So I write back to the complainant pointing this out, and the response is something like "well, I did a traceroute to the source and it passed through one of your routers". Ignoring for the moment the fact that routing on the Internet is dynamic and sometimes asymmetric, and this by itself doesn't prove that the spam packets actually did pass through our router, I'm curious to know how people on this list view this situation. Are we really expected to police every packet that goes through our routers just because we happen to be an interconnection point for several different networks, and therefore we route some IP traffic that neither originates nor terminates with us? What do these complainants really expect us to do? Do they think we should threaten to block all IP traffic from a given source just because they originated a spam? If so, is that a reasonable expectation even for the most radical anti-spammers? Are there any active blacklists out there that would put us on their list for this sort of thing? To me, this is like expecting the phone company to prevent illegal use of the phone system. I don't think this is a reasonable approach, and I would hate the kind of Internet that would be created if people were expected to do this kind of monitoring and traffic restriction at the IP level. What do the rest of you think? Anybody else in a similar position? --Greg From list-managers-owner Wed Jun 21 11:26:49 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id LAA24008; Wed, 21 Jun 2000 11:03:15 -0700 (PDT) Received: from monkeys.com ([63.92.26.236]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id LAA23999 for ; Wed, 21 Jun 2000 11:03:08 -0700 (PDT) Received: from monkeys.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by monkeys.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id LAA55350; Wed, 21 Jun 2000 11:01:44 -0700 (PDT) To: woods@ucar.edu (Greg Woods) cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: spam packet routing In-reply-to: Your message of Wed, 21 Jun 2000 09:26:24 -0600. <200006211526.JAA07207@ncar.ucar.EDU> Date: Wed, 21 Jun 2000 11:01:44 -0700 Message-ID: <55348.961610504@monkeys.com> From: "Ronald F. Guilmette" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk In message <200006211526.JAA07207@ncar.ucar.EDU>, woods@ucar.edu (Greg Woods) wrote: >What's a "spam packet"? Very good question. > >About once a month or so, I get a complaint from someone about a spam, >I look at the headers, and the message clearly did not originate from >and never passed through any of our mail servers. So I write back to >the complainant pointing this out, and the response is something like >"well, I did a traceroute to the source and it passed through one of >your routers". Was that true? What was the source IP, exactly? Let's not talk in vague generalities. Let's talk specifics. Post the IP so that the rest of us can try doing traceroutes also. It may be enlightening. (I for one wasn't aware that NCAR gave connectivity to anybody except NCAR.) >Ignoring for the moment the fact that routing on the >Internet is dynamic and sometimes asymmetric, and this by itself >doesn't prove that the spam packets actually did pass through our >router, I'm curious to know how people on this list view this >situation. Are we really expected to police every packet that goes >through our routers just because we happen to be an interconnection >point for several different networks, and therefore we route some IP >traffic that neither originates nor terminates with us? Expected? Well, yes and no. Some people may ``expect'' that, but I personally only hope for it. Let's just say that it would be a Better World if everyone who provides bandwidth to spam sources would be somewhat more pro-active about its elimination. >What do these >complainants really expect us to do? Do they think we should threaten >to block all IP traffic from a given source just because they >originated a spam? Well... ummm... yea. That would be nice. NCAR is taxpayer supported. I are a taxpayer. I do not wish to have even 1/100th of 1% of my federal tax dollars spent in providing bandwidth to spammers. >If so, is that a reasonable expectation even for the >most radical anti-spammers? Expectation? No. Hope? Yes. >Are there any active blacklists out there >that would put us on their list for this sort of thing? The MAPS RBL has "blackholed" some fairly large organizations because they were repeatedly and persistantly providing connectivity to spammers. >To me, this is like expecting the phone company to prevent illegal use >of the phone system. No, that is a seriously flawed analogy. It is more like expecting the Village Elders to take a stick and whack the Village Idiot over the head when he gets drunk on a Saturday Night and then goes around trashing other nearby villiages. It's a tough job, but somebody's got to do it. (In case you haven't noticed, there are quite a lot of "Village Idiots" on the net these days.) >I don't think this is a reasonable approach, and I >would hate the kind of Internet that would be created if people were expected >to do this kind of monitoring and traffic restriction at the IP level. So you would prefer the kind of Internet where numerous Village Idiots are left to run rampant with no restraints whatsoever?? Yea! That's the ticket! And I guess we shouldn't whack the Idiots who try to plug their end of their cablemodem lines into a nearby 120V outlet either, right? After all, its a free country, right? The net only works when people behave themselves, when they follow the RFCs, etc., etc. When they don't, somebody has to be there to cut the wire. From list-managers-owner Wed Jun 21 16:12:00 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id PAA27230; Wed, 21 Jun 2000 15:43:15 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ncar.UCAR.EDU (ncar.ucar.edu [192.52.106.6]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id PAA27223 for ; Wed, 21 Jun 2000 15:43:09 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <200006212246.QAA21883@ncar.ucar.EDU> Received: (from woods@localhost) by ncar.UCAR.EDU (8.9.1a/) id QAA21883; Wed, 21 Jun 2000 16:46:48 -0600 (MDT) Subject: Re: spam packet routing To: rfg@monkeys.com (Ronald F. Guilmette) Date: Wed, 21 Jun 2000 16:46:48 -0600 (MDT) Cc: woods@ucar.edu, list-managers@GreatCircle.COM In-Reply-To: <55348.961610504@monkeys.com> from "Ronald F. Guilmette" at Jun 21, 0 11:01:44 am From: woods@ucar.edu (Greg Woods) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL25] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > >"well, I did a traceroute to the source and it passed through one of > >your routers". > > Was that true? I have no idea, I only have the complainant's word for it. But I was assuming here that his traceroute to the spam source did indeed show a router within our domain. > Post > the IP so that the rest of us can try doing traceroutes also. I no longer have it. I'm not sure I *ever* had it. All I had was the headers from the offending spam that the complainant sent me. They didn't show any of our servers, so it was clear to me that there wasn't anything I could reasonably do about it. > (I for one wasn't aware that NCAR gave connectivity > to anybody except NCAR.) We belong to a number of cooperative research networks, such as Abilene, the vBNS, Front Range GigaPop (FRGP), etc. The purpose of these is either to provide high speed connectivity between academic and research institutions, or to share the cost of a high bandwidth commodity Internet hookup. Because NCAR was the first in the area to start this process, most of the links in to these various networks go through us. But a number of these links and routers are not even owned by us, they are owned collectively by organizations such as FRGP (and yes, I'm sure the FRGP has an acceptable use policy that would not permit any of its members to be spam houses). In addition to that, most of the links are redundant links, which means that even if we did block someone's access, it would hurt only us, by damaging our credibility with the other institutions we are cooperating with. It wouldn't even succeed in cutting off the source. > Let's just say that it would be a Better World if everyone who provides > bandwidth to spam sources would be somewhat more pro-active about its > elimination. This is an arguable point. I think it is conceivable that, if