* [dawson@world.std.com: TBTF for 2000-07-20: Many fathers]
2000-12-30 6:08 [dawson@world.std.com: TBTF for 2000-07-20: Many fathers] Jason Molenda
@ 2000-07-20 18:22 ` Jason Molenda
0 siblings, 0 replies; 2+ messages in thread
From: Jason Molenda @ 2000-07-20 18:22 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: overseers
No more facts than anywhere else, but it's better than anything
else I'd seen about the MAPS vs ORBS row.
According to the rbl check logfile on sourceware, there have been
no ORBS denials since the 16th, so it sounds like ORBS really is
off-line right now.
J
----- Forwarded message from Keith Dawson <dawson@world.std.com> -----
From: dawson@world.std.com (Keith Dawson)
Subject: TBTF for 2000-07-20: Many fathers
Reply-To: tbtf-approval@tbtf.com
To: tbtf@tbtf.com
TBTF for 2000-07-20: Many fathers
T a s t y B i t s f r o m t h e T e c h n o l o g y F r o n t
Timely news of the bellwethers in computer and communications
technology that will affect electronic commerce -- since 1994
Your Host: Keith Dawson
ISSN: 1524-9948
This issue: < http://tbtf.com/archive/2000-07-20.html >
[...]
..Spam fighters duke it out
Reasonable men may disagree
You probably won't see this story on mainstream news sites, because
the details are just too propeller-headed and the facts too difficult
to come by.
A long-running and bitter dispute between two spam-fighting organi-
zations broke out into the open after one of them suspended oper-
ations. ORBS [21] (the Open Relay Behaviour-modification System) shut
down its list of spam-friendly "open relays" earlier this week be-
cause it claims the other organization, MAPS (the Mail Abuse Preven-
tion System) [22], had influenced a major ISP to drop ORBS into an
Internet black hole.
The upshot: because ORBS was (a) loved by many because it probed ev-
erywhere, and (b) hated by many because it probed everywhere, some
folks are crying, some are dancing.
This forum on Kuro5hin [23] first brought the dispute to the notice
of those outside the community of the newsgroup news.admin.net-
abuse.email (called NANAE). (Note an error in the leadoff post in
this forum: the proprietor of ORBS is Alan Brown, not Alan Cox.)
The feud between ORBS and MAPS has been simmering for over a year on
NANAE, reminiscent of the underground coal fire burning for the past
38 years in Centralia, PA [24]. The following historical summary,
courtesy of deja.com, suggests why it is so difficult to plumb the
facts of this dispute. Most readers of the newsgroup have long since
tuned it out, and many of those remaining are parisans for one
side or the other.
Number of postings in news.admin.net-abuse.email containing "ORBS
in MAPS":
99q1 99q2 99q3 99q4 00q1 00q2 00july
0 190 324 128 165 500+ 1300+
Here's what has happened, as best I can reconstruct from my own re-
search and the help of unnamed knowledgeable sources. Last August
Paul Vixie, chairman of MAPS, lost his temper over ORBS probing of
the MAPS network and placed ORBS on the blackhole list. He did so
against MAPS's established procedures, then quickly cooled off and
rescinded the action. ORBS has retaliated by listing MAPS's main
server on its list of open relays, and then removing the listing a
day later, on several occasions, according to Vixie [25].
Sometime more recently -- I have not been able to pin down when --
Above.net, a tier-1 ISP upstream of both MAPS and ORBS, blocked
ORBS's open-relay probes. Now, the principals of MAPS are both ex-
ecutives at Above.net. ORBS claims that Above.net has gone farther
and is now discarding all traffic intended for ORBS at exchange
points in London and Austria -- a practice which would be illegal
in those locales, according to ORBS [26]. Paul Vixie has confirmed
[27] that his MAPS partner Dave Rand, also CTO of Above.net, indeed
blocked ORBS from inside the ISP. In consequence ORBS has taken
offline its DNS zone file, the resource by which ISPs identify
spam to block.
ORBS claims that MAPS simply wants to shut down its (competing)
free service, and hints that MAPS plans to begin charging for its
own currently free services. Paul Vixie denies this [28].
For further background, details, and opinion on MAPS and ORBS, see
this sidebar [29]. If you have opinions of your own, please join
this Quick Topic forum [30].
[21] http://www.orbs.org/
[22] http://www.mailabuse.org/
[23] http://www.kuro5hin.org/?op=displaystory&sid=2000/7/18/05335/5018
[24] http://www.offroaders.com/album/centralia/study/ESL201Paper.htm
[25] http://x72.deja.com/[ST_rn=ps]/getdoc.xp?AN=647222588
[26] http://www.orbs.org/hallofshame.html
[27] http://x57.deja.com/[ST_rn=ps]/getdoc.xp?AN=647117259
[28] http://x57.deja.com/[ST_rn=ap]/getdoc.xp?AN=647050377
[29] http://tbtf.com/resource/maps-orbs.html
[30] http://www.quicktopic.com/tbtf/H/ODRAov1pBeWbefcT5Be
____________
..MAPS RBL finally gets sued
Fighting spam and dangling lawyer-bait
This is the MAPS story the media has picked up [31]. MAPS sports an
explicit strategy of attracting lawsuits from the spamming industry.
The idea is to establish judicial precedent against spam through a
lengthy appeal process all the way to the Supreme Court. This re-
strained taunt appears on their "How to Sue MAPS" page [32]:
> Don't waste our time with threats. We get all kinds of threats.
> If you intend to sue us, then get on with it. If you don't,
> then don't waste our time or yours telling us how actionable
> our activities are.
Over the weekend, news leaked out [33] that Yesmail had become the
first email marketer to take them up on the offer. In fact Yesmail
had won a temporary restraining order in Illinois federal court
(most probably with no MAPS lawyer in attendance) preventing MAPS
from adding Yesmail to the Realtime Blackhole List. Slashdot dis-
cussed the case [34] on Saturday. A preliminary hearing is scheduled
for 25 July.
Yesmail claims to be a "good guy" marketer that only deals in opt-in
mailing lists. What got them on the wrong side of MAPS is that sub-
scribing to their lists does not require a confirmation by email. That
is, Yesmail could very well load up a mailing list with thousands of
Web-harvested email addresses from a spammer's CD-ROM and claim that
each of those individuals had opted in. They must have, they're on
the list, right?
The fact that MAPS is now blackholing email lists that don't offer a
double opt-in process is indicative of how far they have expanded
their anti-spam crusade beyond the initial elegance of the MAPS RBL.
My guess is that this "mission creep" is part of a deliberate escal-
ation strategy intended to insure that, eventually, some spammer
will sue them. It's a dangerous strategy. Judges are conservative;
courts can take decades to catch up with the changes that new tech-
nologies bring. I just hope that MAPS hasn't become so provocative
that the courts hand down a spam-friendly ruling under which we will
all suffer for a generation.
[31] http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,37621,00.html
[32] http://www.mailabuse.org/lawsuit/
[33] http://www.directmag.com/content/newsline/main.html#81
[34] http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/07/15/225232
____________
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 2+ messages in thread
* [dawson@world.std.com: TBTF for 2000-07-20: Many fathers]
@ 2000-12-30 6:08 Jason Molenda
2000-07-20 18:22 ` Jason Molenda
0 siblings, 1 reply; 2+ messages in thread
From: Jason Molenda @ 2000-12-30 6:08 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: overseers
No more facts than anywhere else, but it's better than anything
else I'd seen about the MAPS vs ORBS row.
According to the rbl check logfile on sourceware, there have been
no ORBS denials since the 16th, so it sounds like ORBS really is
off-line right now.
J
----- Forwarded message from Keith Dawson <dawson@world.std.com> -----
From: dawson@world.std.com (Keith Dawson)
Subject: TBTF for 2000-07-20: Many fathers
Reply-To: tbtf-approval@tbtf.com
To: tbtf@tbtf.com
TBTF for 2000-07-20: Many fathers
T a s t y B i t s f r o m t h e T e c h n o l o g y F r o n t
Timely news of the bellwethers in computer and communications
technology that will affect electronic commerce -- since 1994
Your Host: Keith Dawson
ISSN: 1524-9948
This issue: < http://tbtf.com/archive/2000-07-20.html >
[...]
..Spam fighters duke it out
Reasonable men may disagree
You probably won't see this story on mainstream news sites, because
the details are just too propeller-headed and the facts too difficult
to come by.
A long-running and bitter dispute between two spam-fighting organi-
zations broke out into the open after one of them suspended oper-
ations. ORBS [21] (the Open Relay Behaviour-modification System) shut
down its list of spam-friendly "open relays" earlier this week be-
cause it claims the other organization, MAPS (the Mail Abuse Preven-
tion System) [22], had influenced a major ISP to drop ORBS into an
Internet black hole.
The upshot: because ORBS was (a) loved by many because it probed ev-
erywhere, and (b) hated by many because it probed everywhere, some
folks are crying, some are dancing.
This forum on Kuro5hin [23] first brought the dispute to the notice
of those outside the community of the newsgroup news.admin.net-
abuse.email (called NANAE). (Note an error in the leadoff post in
this forum: the proprietor of ORBS is Alan Brown, not Alan Cox.)
The feud between ORBS and MAPS has been simmering for over a year on
NANAE, reminiscent of the underground coal fire burning for the past
38 years in Centralia, PA [24]. The following historical summary,
courtesy of deja.com, suggests why it is so difficult to plumb the
facts of this dispute. Most readers of the newsgroup have long since
tuned it out, and many of those remaining are parisans for one
side or the other.
Number of postings in news.admin.net-abuse.email containing "ORBS
in MAPS":
99q1 99q2 99q3 99q4 00q1 00q2 00july
0 190 324 128 165 500+ 1300+
Here's what has happened, as best I can reconstruct from my own re-
search and the help of unnamed knowledgeable sources. Last August
Paul Vixie, chairman of MAPS, lost his temper over ORBS probing of
the MAPS network and placed ORBS on the blackhole list. He did so
against MAPS's established procedures, then quickly cooled off and
rescinded the action. ORBS has retaliated by listing MAPS's main
server on its list of open relays, and then removing the listing a
day later, on several occasions, according to Vixie [25].
Sometime more recently -- I have not been able to pin down when --
Above.net, a tier-1 ISP upstream of both MAPS and ORBS, blocked
ORBS's open-relay probes. Now, the principals of MAPS are both ex-
ecutives at Above.net. ORBS claims that Above.net has gone farther
and is now discarding all traffic intended for ORBS at exchange
points in London and Austria -- a practice which would be illegal
in those locales, according to ORBS [26]. Paul Vixie has confirmed
[27] that his MAPS partner Dave Rand, also CTO of Above.net, indeed
blocked ORBS from inside the ISP. In consequence ORBS has taken
offline its DNS zone file, the resource by which ISPs identify
spam to block.
ORBS claims that MAPS simply wants to shut down its (competing)
free service, and hints that MAPS plans to begin charging for its
own currently free services. Paul Vixie denies this [28].
For further background, details, and opinion on MAPS and ORBS, see
this sidebar [29]. If you have opinions of your own, please join
this Quick Topic forum [30].
[21] http://www.orbs.org/
[22] http://www.mailabuse.org/
[23] http://www.kuro5hin.org/?op=displaystory&sid=2000/7/18/05335/5018
[24] http://www.offroaders.com/album/centralia/study/ESL201Paper.htm
[25] http://x72.deja.com/[ST_rn=ps]/getdoc.xp?AN=647222588
[26] http://www.orbs.org/hallofshame.html
[27] http://x57.deja.com/[ST_rn=ps]/getdoc.xp?AN=647117259
[28] http://x57.deja.com/[ST_rn=ap]/getdoc.xp?AN=647050377
[29] http://tbtf.com/resource/maps-orbs.html
[30] http://www.quicktopic.com/tbtf/H/ODRAov1pBeWbefcT5Be
____________
..MAPS RBL finally gets sued
Fighting spam and dangling lawyer-bait
This is the MAPS story the media has picked up [31]. MAPS sports an
explicit strategy of attracting lawsuits from the spamming industry.
The idea is to establish judicial precedent against spam through a
lengthy appeal process all the way to the Supreme Court. This re-
strained taunt appears on their "How to Sue MAPS" page [32]:
> Don't waste our time with threats. We get all kinds of threats.
> If you intend to sue us, then get on with it. If you don't,
> then don't waste our time or yours telling us how actionable
> our activities are.
Over the weekend, news leaked out [33] that Yesmail had become the
first email marketer to take them up on the offer. In fact Yesmail
had won a temporary restraining order in Illinois federal court
(most probably with no MAPS lawyer in attendance) preventing MAPS
from adding Yesmail to the Realtime Blackhole List. Slashdot dis-
cussed the case [34] on Saturday. A preliminary hearing is scheduled
for 25 July.
Yesmail claims to be a "good guy" marketer that only deals in opt-in
mailing lists. What got them on the wrong side of MAPS is that sub-
scribing to their lists does not require a confirmation by email. That
is, Yesmail could very well load up a mailing list with thousands of
Web-harvested email addresses from a spammer's CD-ROM and claim that
each of those individuals had opted in. They must have, they're on
the list, right?
The fact that MAPS is now blackholing email lists that don't offer a
double opt-in process is indicative of how far they have expanded
their anti-spam crusade beyond the initial elegance of the MAPS RBL.
My guess is that this "mission creep" is part of a deliberate escal-
ation strategy intended to insure that, eventually, some spammer
will sue them. It's a dangerous strategy. Judges are conservative;
courts can take decades to catch up with the changes that new tech-
nologies bring. I just hope that MAPS hasn't become so provocative
that the courts hand down a spam-friendly ruling under which we will
all suffer for a generation.
[31] http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,37621,00.html
[32] http://www.mailabuse.org/lawsuit/
[33] http://www.directmag.com/content/newsline/main.html#81
[34] http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/07/15/225232
____________
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2000-12-30 6:08 [dawson@world.std.com: TBTF for 2000-07-20: Many fathers] Jason Molenda
2000-07-20 18:22 ` Jason Molenda
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