ORBS sucked into a black hole!

Sampo Syreeni decoy at iki.fi
Tue Jun 12 04:52:54 PDT 2001


On Tue, 12 Jun 2001, Jim Choate wrote:

>What ORBS and their ilk do is collect scans of IP's across the Internet,
>some do it directly, some do it through independent 3rd parties, and
>direct complaints.

Yes, if you participate in an open forum like the Internet, you can expect
people to form an opinion about you. Or about your contribution to the
infrastructure, as the case may be. Do you expect movie critics to stop
going to new movies unless invited?

>The only way ORBS will remove you from the database is if you allow(!)
>them to re-scan your MTA and verify to their satisfaction you are not in
>any way running an Open Relay.

Yep, building trust is hard work. Do you expect movie critics to retract
their comments unless they see that the movie (or the theater) has actually
changed for the better?

>They then make this database (usually for some sort of fee) available to
>other groups who then actively filter submissions to their sites.

This would indeed be the definition of criticism. Do you expect movie
critics to only write positive reviews, or to write for free, or the
theaters to disregard comments made by critics they trust and possibly waste
their money showing a crappy movie?

>In other words if I have a friend who I want to exchange private mail
>with, ORBS's uses their trumped excuse for justification to inject their
>belief system into that.

Who's injecting what? If you and your friend are your own ISP's, ORBS never
interferes with your business. If you're not, you're trying to impose your
beliefs over how SMTP should be done on the relay operator. The ISP chose to
use ORBS, not the other way around. It seems ORBS is deemed useful and
trustworthy, a commendable achievement for a critic. Now the question is,
why doesn't the ISP trust you over ORBS? Perhaps you haven't earned the
trust?

>Truly heinous.

Au contraire - finally something that works, and quite without any
legislative intervention. Are you saying critics are a heinous invention? I
always thought they were a real blessing for cultural progress. So did
someone else, apparently, judging by the fact that critics are paid for
their effort.

>Since when did I have any sort of obligation to help them in their
>particular crusade?

You don't. It's just that you're placing yourself in a minority without any
good reason. Configuring your relay as you want *is* your right, but
exercising it means you have to be ready to deal with the consequences. Do
you expect movie theaters and distributors to intentionally help spread
garbage? To deal with studios that produce it?

>There is no technical or legal standard to back their actions. There is no
>'authority' for them to decide who may configure their software how (and
>the fact that they tell a private citizen is particularly irksome, more
>angels among men I guess).

But they do have every right to be dissatisfied with you, and broadcast
their views to anyone who is willing to listen. If people decide, based on
ORBS data, that your behavior is not ok and that ORBS is likely to correctly
represent your actions, they have absolutely no obligation to deal with you.
It's true that your clients will suffer, but you are the one that brought it
on them, placing them in a minority without asking them. It's all parts of a
whole, really. Are you saying movie critics have to follow your standards
when they appraise a work? Do you expect the critic to praise the movie as a
whole when the soundtrack totally sucks?

(While I once argued that shunning isn't always ok and should sometimes be
viewed as comparable to initiation of force, that argument *certainly* does
not extend to today's version of cyberspace. Neither life nor liberty is at
stake when someone refuses to relay some email.)

>Just another fascist bastard.
>
>Freedom for me, but not for thee...

So you're saying you should have the freedom to operate a relay that could
well be used to transmit spam, yet other people have no right to protect
themselves? What you're seeing with ORBS is a nice idea by an enterprising
individual, and lots of enlightened self-interest on behalf of a bunch of
ISPs. Clear signs of successful market self-organization. You on the other
hand are trying to stamp that out so that your views may prevail, making you
the fascist by a wide margin.

Sampo Syreeni, aka decoy, mailto:decoy at iki.fi, gsm: +358-50-5756111
student/math+cs/helsinki university, http://www.iki.fi/~decoy/front





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