Re: spamcop
"Seth Goodman" <sethg@GoodmanAssociates.com> writes:
> You are responsible for everything that comes
> out of your server, intentional or not.
Sure, but sending a few pieces of mail to a spamtrap pretty clearly
isn't causing any actual harm. Rather, it's being used as "evidence"
that the sender is a spammer, and cases such as Debian show that indeed,
such evidence is sometimes wrong.
So what exactly is the harm that debian is responsible for? Does it
justify the reaction?
What if I dial a wrong-number which is an FBI trap for terrorists (or
whatever ;-), and the FBI subsequently throws me in jail for months
until I'm cleared. I'm "responsible" for the mis-dial, but it's at
worst an utterly minor transgression. The FBI, on the other hand, has
arguably done something much worse. [We sometimes excuse police
agencies of such acts if the potential risk they are defending against
is _extremely_ grave, but I don't think it's reasonable to claim spam
falls into that category.]
> One can manipulate legitimate servers into abusing innocent third
> parties, or to falsely incriminating themselves as spammers. When
> that happens, it is incumbent on the owner of the server to take
> action. That's part of the responsibility of running an server on the
> net.
Indeed -- so what is the "action" that spamcop would like?
> Mistakes will occur from both ends and both parties have to cooperate.
>From reading this list, I can see there's a fairly clear set of things
debian would like spamcop to do (mainly have some sort of white list,
either for machines or pattern matching of messages reaching spamtraps).
I've never seen any indication that spamcop has said anything
constructive about the issue (maybe they have of course), and the
impression I've gotten is that they really don't want to enter a
dialogue at all, just prescribe standard generic solutions (which may
not apply).
> Thumbing our noses at a DNSBL that many people consider worthwhile is
> not good policy.
Probably not.
[Of course if the DNSBL proves itself to be a bunch of clueless bozos
who are completely unwilling to listen to outside criticism (and there
certainly are such), there may not be much choice... Mind you, I have
no idea whether spamcop has reached this level.]
-Miles
--
"1971 pickup truck; will trade for guns"
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