Yay Jeremy (was Re: [plug] Spam sender sues)

[Peter Wright]

On 05/06 10:55:04, Simon Scott wrote:
> On Tuesday 04 June 2002 5:39 pm, Peter Wright wrote:
> > *shake of head* You see idiots like "t3 Direct" making ridiculous legal
> > threats all the time on news.admin.net-abuse.email about SPEWS: "SPEWS
> > blocked our email, waaaah!" Pathetic little children.
> 
> OK, can someone explain something to me?

Probably not, but I'll try.

(Hey, it's the law, dammit - you know it doesn't have to make sense :)

> What possible bitch could T3 have? I mean legally, how could they have a
> leg to stand on?

I think I'll maintain a diplomatic silence here.

> People *do not* have a right to pass packets through networks - it is a
> gift.

Well, not exactly a _gift_, but I think I know what you mean. The main idea
of the "internet", such as it is, is that machines/networks communicate
with each other, voluntarily exchanging network traffic.

However, for various reasons, some people may decide that they don't want
to receive any traffic from particular areas of the internet - generally
because those areas have behaved badly and abused their position (usually,
but not always, because of spamming). It's really just a high-tech form of
shunning - an ooooold technique of discouraging unacceptable behaviour by
some members of a community.

I suspect that t3Direct mostly (but not fully) understands what's happened.
They know that attempting to sue SPEWS would be utterly useless and a
complete waste of time[0], so they're attempting to sue a more accessible
target... purely in an attempt to get "someone else" to pay for their move
to a new set of IPs.

They may not realise this, of course, but moving to a new set of IPs will
do them absolutely no good. Their new IPs will be added to their SPEWS
record probably even before they start using them. This is the way SPEWS
works - they keep track of known and unrepentant spammers, wherever they
go. And very effective it is.

> If I owned the servers and infrastructure that *all* of Perth's email
> went through, wouldnt I have the right to drop packets on the floor as I
> see fit?

Absolutely. Assuming you didn't have any legal contracts with anyone to
provide a particular service, you could do whatever you liked. :)

> As far as I can tell, I would be perfectly within my rights to, say, drop
> all of Leon's mail because he beat me at poker.

Sounds like an excellent notion. :)

> Or drop all PLUG mail just cos I feel like it.

:)

> People buy bandwidth, not a guarantee that a packet entering network A
> will make it out the other end to Network B etc.

Well, perhaps not a guarantee - of course the administrator(s) of Network B
could just refuse everything from Network A if they felt like it. A person
living in Network A who doesn't have any legal link to Network B simply has
no grounds to force Network B to accept their traffic.

However, if B is refusing traffic from A _and_ makes it clear that they are
doing this because A is harbouring spammers - then I would think that the
"legitimate" clients of A would have some reasonable legal cause for
complaint.

It'll be interesting when such a case comes to court somewhere.

> If I purchased an email a/c off, say, iinet and they blocked it, I would
> be pissed cos its what I paid for - however my only recourse (I believe)
> would be a refund.
> 
> Yes? No?

Well, you didn't describe precisely what you meant by "they blocked it",
but in practise you might not have much option. You'd have to ask someone
who actually _knows_ something about WA law for an opinion there. :)

Pete.

[0] The SPEWS website is hosted in Russia. SPEWS members do not identify
themselves, ever. The whole point of this is so that they cannot be
harassed by hundreds (or thousands) of "annoyance" lawsuits - a favourite
tactic of spammers, especially in the US.
-- 
http://akira.apana.org.au/~pete/
Real programmers don't draw flowcharts.  Flowcharts are, after all, the
illiterate's form of documentation.  Cavemen drew flowcharts; look how
much good it did them.