John Von Essen on 17 Oct 2007 20:01:12 -0000


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Re: [PLUG] cultural ethics of email and spam


Read your Terms of Service for your broadband internet provider. 

Residential user's email originating at an MTA behind their home connection is considered spam by most remote systems because that activity is not allowed. And I have no sympathy for people who run MTA's behind Comcast, violate ToS, then complain that they "should" be allowed to do this and why is everyone unfairly blocking.

If you want to run a server, buy business-class cable or DSL. If you want to be cheap and break the rules to cheat the system, suffer the consequences.


-John

On Oct 17, 2007, at 3:47 PM, zuzu wrote:

On 10/17/07, John Von Essen <john@essenz.com> wrote:
Broadband users will always have difficulty sending email out to the
internet.

Either the ISP is blocking port 25 outbound - in which case it wont work at
all, or your email does get delivered, but is blocked as spam since you are
coming from a known dynamic IP used for broadband customers.

The DUL blacklists are very widely used, and are a staple in the war against
spam since legitimate email should not be originated from an MTA on a
residential broadband connection. Some orgs are more aggressive then others
with their blocking tactics for DUL email origination.

I forked this thread because I don't want to derail the useful
technical issues of the parent thread.

however, I'm still frustrated at the culture of email admins for the
following reasons:

1a.) blacklists are draconian and a form of "tiered internet".  if you
advocate for "net neutrality", start with your mail servers.
1b.) who are you (or anyone) to unilaterally decide "legitimate mail
should not originate from residential broadband"???  of course it
should!  the internet is a PEER network.  if the software didn't
happen to suck, everyone really should be hosting their own MTA on
their own home server.  centralization via concentration of hosts is
re-creating a censorable and controllable media vehicle; this is a Bad
Thing (tm).

2.) why on earth is spam being dealt with at a _network_ level???
(again, echos of tiered internet and violation of the End-to-End
Principle.)  let end-users MUAs handle spam, such as with bayesian
classification.

the hypocrisy between "net neutrality" advocates and "spam problem"
advocates (who are essentially the same people) astounds me.
___________________________________________________________________________
Philadelphia Linux Users Group         --        http://www.phillylinux.org

John Von Essen (john@essenz.com)

President, Essenz Consulting www.essenz.com





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