Subject: [Asrg] user-level blacklisting patented

From: "Peter Kay" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 16 Mar 2005 04:31:36 -1000

Well, after nearly 6 years and lots of hand wringing, we finally were
awarded US patent 6,868,498 for our user-level blacklisting as long-ago
disclosed to the ASRG in
http://www.shaftek.org/publications/asrg-ipr.html#4.2 .  
 
USPTO link: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2
<http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=/ne
tahtml/search-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=ptxt&s1=6,868,498.WKU.&OS=PN/
6,868,498&RS=PN/6,868,498>
&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=/netahtml/search-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=ptxt&s
1=6,868,498.WKU.&OS=PN/6,868,498&RS=PN/6,868,498
 
We even got a little bit of coverage from our local press
<BLOCKED::http://www.bizjournals.com/pacific/stories/2005/03/14/daily22.html
?f=et71>
http://www.bizjournals.com/pacific/stories/2005/03/14/daily22.html?f=et71

 We take the mail-from/rcpt-to pair to decide whether to return an error
before the DATA command is accepted. 
 
We've taken this core technology and developed and entire suite of
applications around it, including challenge/response, programmable email
addresses (PEAs), and greylisting.  Works extremely well and we've got >
8000 end-users on it with > 2M emails/day passing through our software. 
 
Now before everyone goes off and rants about the incompetency of the US
patent office and the existence of prior art, keep in mind we invented this
technique in Jan of 2000. Back then the only thing around was lousy
keyword-based content filtering.
 
While many on this list will undoubtedly rant about how what we do sucks, I
can tell you end-users that employ our suite simply don't get any spam at
all and they don't have a quarantine folder to review either. And because we
kill the session before DATA, we also do our little part in saving the
Internet because this approach conserves bandwith across the network and
reclaims wasted infrastructure.
 
We certainly can't claim to have solved the spam problem, but our users will
certainly tell you they love it and don't get any spam at all. 
 
Peter
 
_______________________________________________
Asrg mailing list
[email-masked]
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/asrg

---

From: John Levine <[email-masked]>
Date: 16 Mar 2005 19:04:33 -0000

>awarded US patent 6,868,498 for our user-level blacklisting

Interesting patent.  Could you please do the world a favor now and sue
as many of the C/R systems as possible out of existence?  I think that
Earthlink's happens at SMTP time.  Unfortunately TMDA doesn't.

Fortunately, you were very explicit that the whitelist is per-recipient
so it's easy to work around by using a shared whitelist.

Regards,
John Levine, [email-masked], Taughannock Networks, Trumansburg NY
http://www.taugh.com

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 16 Mar 2005 11:31:47 -0800

>  so it's easy to work around by using a shared whitelist.

now they'll just file for continuation (or whatever it is called)...

  d/
  ---
  Dave Crocker
  Brandenburg InternetWorking
  +1.408.246.8253
  dcrocker  a t ...
  WE'VE MOVED to:  www.bbiw.net

---

From: "Peter Kay" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 16 Mar 2005 09:56:13 -1000

> 
> Interesting patent.  Could you please do the world a favor 
> now and sue as many of the C/R systems as possible out of 
> existence?  

Well like I said before the business model is not to sue infringers,
although I've yet to come across an SMTP-level C/R system that kills the txn
before the DATA.

>I think that Earthlink's happens at SMTP time.  

Though if Earthlink does it at SMTP time that might be a cool topic to open
a dialog with. :)

> Fortunately, you were very explicit that the whitelist is 
> per-recipient so it's easy to work around by using a shared whitelist.
> 

We fully recognized (and disclosed) that server-level white/blacklisting was
prior art. We were purposely explicit in that this is a user-level or
user-controlled black/whitelist process which according to our research was
nonexistent before Jan 2000.

---

From: James Baldwin <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 16 Mar 2005 15:30:01 -0500

> nonexistent before Jan 2000.

No mail clients rejected/filtered mail based on address book contents 
prior to Jan 2000? Or is that not covered by this patent? I've only 
given it a brief perusal in the past 10 minutes plus IANAL.

---
James Baldwin
hkp://pgp.mit.edu/[email-masked]
_______________________________________________
Asrg mailing list
[email-masked]
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/asrg

---

From: Devdas Bhagat <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Mar 2005 02:55:32 +0530

> given it a brief perusal in the past 10 minutes plus IANAL.

This is on the MTA, not the MUA.

Devdas Bhagat

---

From: John Levine <[email-masked]>
Date: 16 Mar 2005 23:23:37 -0000

> We take the mail-from/rcpt-to pair to decide whether to return an
> error before the DATA command is accepted.

I was reminded that the obtuse SMTP daemon was doing this in 1997.
Should be good prior art to bust this patent if anyone cares.

>all and they don't have a quarantine folder to review either.

Right, your C/R certainly worked well to keep my response to your mail
out of your mailbox, so since there's no quarantine, my mail just
disappeared.  Way to go.

It's easy to build aggressive systems that keep all the spam out of
your mailbox.  What's hard is to build systems that do so while
getting the real mail through.  I realize that in some circles it's
acceptable to blame other people for mail lost when they don't jump
through your hoops, but I'm not interested in going there, or you're
going to have to face my Turing test.

Regards,

---

From: "Peter Kay" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 16 Mar 2005 14:21:12 -1000

> Should be good prior art to bust this patent if anyone cares.

Pls send me links/references on this published prior to Jan 2000. I, more
than anyone else (at least right now) have more motiviation to continually
test the patent against prior art.

> Right, your C/R certainly worked well to keep my response to 
> your mail out of your mailbox, so since there's no 
> quarantine, my mail just disappeared.  Way to go.
> 

I didn't disappear. It bounced.  I'm purposely using a C/R email for this
list. I don't use it for all my email correspondence but I certainly use it
on a list that gets publicizied all over the place and the email addreses
present get harvested by countless spammers.

> It's easy to build aggressive systems that keep all the spam 
> out of your mailbox.  What's hard is to build systems that do 
> so while getting the real mail through.  I realize that in 
> some circles it's acceptable to blame other people for mail 
> lost when they don't jump through your hoops, but I'm not 
> interested in going there, or you're going to have to face my 
> Turing test.
> 

It's not a blame. It's a conscious decision. My philosophy is that the user
should be in control.  So for example, a "KeyMail" address like
[email-masked] accepts mail from any sender without CR and
auto-creates a whitelist based on senders.

The problem I've seen w/ most anti-spam approaches (and why I personally
believe they all fail) is that they treat all inbox content with the
identical ruleset when in fact not all email is the same. By using a twist
on the disposable email approach I can apply different rulesets to different
email addresses which ultimately all dump into a single inbox. 

One thing I've learned from being on this list for > 2 yrs is that the
there's nearly no consensus on anything important related to spam, hence the
fact  that the only thing this group has been able to successfully do is
slam anyone that comes up with a new idea. That practically spells out the
fact that each user has different wants/needs and  should be empowered to
implement/enforce their own email acceptance policies from a cocktail menu.

Best,
Peter

---

From: John Levine <[email-masked]>
Date: 17 Mar 2005 03:07:58 -0000

>test the patent against prior art.

I think it's a little late to ask people to do the prior art searches
that you should have done five years ago.

Anyone who's sued under this patent will of course get the references
on request.

R's,
John

---

From: John Levine <[email-masked]>
Date: 17 Mar 2005 03:43:29 -0000

>> I was reminded that the Obtuse SMTP daemon was doing this in 1997.

To follow myself up, it took about five minutes to find a copy of the
obtuse daemon 2.0, released in 1997 and not changed since then, and
verify that among its features is a file of accept/deny info that
includes To and From addresses, either literal or patterns, used
to control what the SMTP daemon does.

Considering how popular the Obtuse daemon was in the late 1990s, it's
hard to see how even a cursory search would have missed it.  It was
famous for its goofy status messages, e.g.:

220 SMTP ready, Who are you gonna pretend to be today?
500 Bloody Amateur! Proper forging of mail requires recognizable SMTP commands!

R's,
John

---

From: "Jon Kyme" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Mar 2005 10:35:02 +0000

> US patent 6,868,498 for our user-level blacklisting 

Did I see a claim about something "which can only be performed by a human"?
Does this let me off the hook? I can't prove that this is true for my
challenges.
Equally, I'm having trouble proving that humans aren't machines.

---

From: Troy Rollo <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 18 Mar 2005 07:33:27 +1100

> before the DATA command is accepted.

If anybody needs to challenge this, I can provide evidence of both obviousness 
and prior art. And when I say obvious, it's obvious like 1 + 1 = 2 is 
obvious. I've been using such things since around 1996, and it took me all of 
about 2 seconds after starting to do block lists to realise this would be a 
useful thing to do.

It's not as if we needed more evidence that a software patent is more likely 
to be filed by an ignorant person who only thinks they're being clever than 
by a genuinely inventive person.
--
Troy Rollo
[email-masked]   Executive Director, iCAUCE

---

From: "Peter Kay" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Mar 2005 16:00:41 -1000

> 
> I think it's a little late to ask people to do the prior art 
> searches that you should have done five years ago.
> 

I'm not asking you to do a prior art search, I'm asking you to defend your
own claim. We already declared server-wide blacklisting as prior art, of
which Obtuse does.  I was giving you the benefit of the doubt that perhaps
you found something that we did not.

---

From: "Peter Kay" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Mar 2005 16:20:01 -1000

> 
> If anybody needs to challenge this, I can provide evidence of 
> both obviousness and prior art. 

Are you well versed in patent law? How many previous patents have you
challenged for obviousnes/prior art and won?

> And when I say obvious, it's 
> obvious like 1 + 1 = 2 is obvious. I've been using such 
> things since around 1996, and it took me all of about 2 
> seconds after starting to do block lists to realise this 
> would be a useful thing to do.
> 

You guys are still focusing on server-wide blacklisting which I've said was
prior art.

Our patent gives each end-user their own list that gets applied at the MTA.

Did you back in 2000 have a feature to maintain whitelists for individual
users and then allow those whitelists to be manipulated by a variety of
methods include C/R, outbound mail, or web interfaces specifically on
per-user basis? 

If this was so "obvious", then how many products have been created that
employ our claims? As of about a year ago, we couldn't find any.  

> It's not as if we needed more evidence that a software patent 
> is more likely to be filed by an ignorant person who only 
> thinks they're being clever than by a genuinely inventive person.

I was wondering how long it would take before the holier-than-thou spirit of
this list would come through.    I pray you will demonstrate your lack of
patent law ignorance by outlining your experience in this field.

---

From: Claus Assmann <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Mar 2005 18:39:52 -0800

> Our patent gives each end-user their own list that gets applied at the MTA.

That stuff has been done for sendmail 8.9 (released 1998) by Jan
Krueger via custom rulesets ("check_local"). Try your favorite
search engine...

---

From: der Mouse <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Mar 2005 21:39:09 -0500 (EST)

> If this was so "obvious", then how many products have been created
> that employ our claims?

Existence of products based on FOO is not necessary for FOO to be
obvious.  (It's not sufficient, either.)

>> [...]
> I was wondering how long it would take before the holier-than-thou
> spirit of this list would come through.

If that's the way you feel about this list, why are you here?  Just to
taunt us with your patent?

> I pray you will demonstrate your lack of patent law ignorance by
> outlining your experience in this field.

I didn't write what this was in response to, but I feel no compulsion
whatever to answer challenges from anyone who thinks software patents
are sane, except perhaps across a courtroom.

/~\ The ASCII				der Mouse
\ / Ribbon Campaign
 X  Against HTML	       [email-masked]
/ \ Email!	     7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39  4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B

---

From: John Levine <[email-masked]>
Date: 18 Mar 2005 03:22:04 -0000

>you found something that we did not.

I sent you details of the per-user whitelist/blacklist that was
present in Obtuse in 1997, but your ever vigilant C/R made sure you
never got it.  As before, way to go.  If you want someone to do you a
favor, don't demand that he jump through your hoops.

R's,
John

---

From: "Peter Kay" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Mar 2005 17:54:37 -1000

> 
> I sent you details of the per-user whitelist/blacklist that 
> was present in Obtuse in 1997, but your ever vigilant C/R 
> made sure you never got it.  As before, way to go.  If you 
> want someone to do you a favor, don't demand that he jump 
> through your hoops.
> 

I appreciate the fact that you attempted to send it and I'm sorry my CR
bounced it.

---

From: Jim Witte <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Mar 2005 23:05:44 -0500

> employ our claims? As of about a year ago, we couldn't find any.

   To reference a totally and completely un-related thing that has 
popped up (relatively) recently - how "obvious" was the idea of 
Thefacebook?  The idea of large databases of personal information has 
been around forever (AOL et al probably pretty much invented it), the 
idea of social network theory has been around for a while, and the idea 
of using such a web-database to analyze and use such a graph in various 
ways would be "obvious" to anyone who thought of it (I thought of using 
it somewhat like in Thefacebook does about 6 years ago).  So I'd say 
that the pieces of Thefacebook are basically "obvious".  So why didn't 
it exist until last year?  Who knows.  But just because putting 
together "obvious" pieces may not have happened yet, does that mean 
that putting them together is something "unobvious", worthy of being 
called real "innovation", and thus worthy of a patent?  That's a 
philosophical question more suited to the CNI-Copyright list I think..

Jim (back to lurk-dom..)

---

From: Troy Rollo <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 18 Mar 2005 18:48:13 +1100

On Friday 18 March 2005 13:20, Peter Kay wrote:

> Are you well versed in patent law?

Yes.

> You guys are still focusing on server-wide blacklisting which I've said was

No. What I am saying is that when we started implementing block lists, it was 
immediately obvious that having *per-user* block lists would be useful, and 
that is what I have been doing since around '96.

As for the C/R stuff, Ron Guilmette and I had a conversation on that in the 
'96 era too, but others managed to point out (correctly) that C/R was bad for 
the net so I dropped the idea entirely, and I think Ron mostly dropped it 
too.

> employ our claims? As of about a year ago, we couldn't find any.

Many products had the capability to be configured to do so, but advertising 
something so specific simply wasn't something they would do, any more than 
they would advertise their discovery that 1+1=2. Nor would most people who 
implement it advertise it, since it is all fairly trivial stuff to do as long 
as you know the products.

But presence of a packaged feature in a product is relevant to prior art, not 
to obviousness. They're different tests, and you only need to show EITHER 
obviousness OR prior art to defeat a patent. But since you seem to think 
you're so knowledgable about patent law you obviously already knew that.
--
Troy Rollo
[email-masked]   Executive Director, iCAUCE

---

From: "Peter Kay" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 18 Mar 2005 04:15:09 -1000

> > Are you well versed in patent law?

That's very cool. I'd be interested in knowing how many patents you've
successfully published and how many you've struck down due to prior
art/obviousness. I have great respect for experts in that field after what
we've been through. 

> But since you seem to think you're so 
> knowledgable about patent law you obviously already knew that.

I never claimed to be knowledgable about patent law. I only have one patent
(so far) and only have the knowledge from that 6 year experience. Every time
a patent issue comes up (not just mine) I've seen so many comments from so
many people who know absolutely nothing about patents that I try to separate
the wheat from the chaff.

So if you're an expert in this field please accept my apology for
challenging you on it.

Peter

---

From: "Peter Kay" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 18 Mar 2005 04:33:42 -1000

I appreciate everyone's responses and time spent on this thread. My interest
is to have a valuable patent that withstands the tests of prior art and
obviousness, not a bogus claim. 

You've raised some good points that we'll be looking into and if relevant,
submitting to the patent office as prior art.  There is no value or honor in
holding on to an invalid claim.  

We've reviewed countless anti-spam software, did many, many searches, and
spent nearly a year w/ the Patent office procescuting it's own prior art
claims.  This topic was even brought before this group nearly 2 yrs ago as
shown by the link in this thread's original post and no one brought up the
points that you all did, so we really appreciate it.   

I'll report back when I get more info. The intent of my original post was to
put a feather in the cap of the fight against spam and cheer a victory in
company of others pursuing the same goal. While this group's comments get
pretty acrimonious, it is composed of some very bright people and we are
honored by their inputs.

Be back soon.

Peter

---

From: [email-masked] (Justin Mason)
Date: Fri, 18 Mar 2005 11:20:47 -0800

> pretty acrimonious, it is composed of some very bright people and we are

How does saying "I've got a patent" in any way "put a feather in the cap
of the fight against spam and cheer a victory"?

If anything, it ring-fences off a little bit of the potential solution
space, and ensures the general community cannot use that idea without
paying your licensing tax.  Great.  Way to go with the feathers and the
cheering,

- --j.

---

From: mathew <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 26 Mar 2005 17:17:42 -0600

Troy Rollo wrote:

> No. What I am saying is that when we started implementing block lists, 
> it was immediately obvious that having *per-user* block lists would be 
> useful, and that is what I have been doing since around '96.

Let's not forget that procmail allowed per-user block lists in December 
1990. Certainly by 1994 I was using it to return an SMTP error to 
someone who mailbombed me, by passing an error code back to sendmail 
from my .forward file.

So not only is the patented technique obvious, it has a good decade of 
prior art through common usage.

Sadly that isn't enough to stop a software patent being issued and 
upheld. It amazes me that anyone would think that per-user block lists 
are actually an ingenious invention that deserves a patent.

mathew

---

From: Daniel Feenberg <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 27 Mar 2005 06:59:55 -0500 (EST)

On Sat, 26 Mar 2005, mathew wrote:

> Troy Rollo wrote:
>
>
> Let's not forget that procmail allowed per-user block lists in December 1990. 
> Certainly by 1994 I was using it to return an SMTP error to someone who 
> mailbombed me, by passing an error code back to sendmail from my .forward 
> file.
>

How do you pass an error back to sendmail from the .forward file? Several 
years ago I wanted to do this and couldn't find any way to do so. Does it 
cause a rejection, or generate a DSN? I feel the former is the best way to
handle spam, so that no mail is lost.

Daniel Feenberg
feenberg isat nber dotte org

---

From: Craig Cockburn <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 27 Mar 2005 19:58:19 +0100

In message <[email-masked]>, mathew <[email-masked]> writes
>Troy Rollo wrote:
>
>> No. What I am saying is that when we started implementing block 
>>lists,  it was immediately obvious that having *per-user* block lists 
>>would be useful, and that is what I have been doing since around '96.
>

DELIVER on VAX/VMS had user based rejection based on the from field in 
the late 1980's as I recall using it then. Downloadable of DELIVER are 
here:
http://h71000.www7.hp.com/freeware/freeware40/deliver/

Reference to DELIVER in 1989 here:
http://www.decus.org/libcatalog/cd-abs.html

I also built a GUI front end to procmail and mention an "auto delete" 
feature based on certain rules. This thesis was written in  late 
1993/early 1994 and subsequently published by SIGS in Object Currents 
magazine. 10 years later I know that students were still referring to 
the thesis, so I guess there are citations in other theses which could 
be checked. My thesis is available online here:
http://www.siliconglen.com/craig/cv.html and has been available on the 
web since Jan 1996.

-- 
Craig Cockburn ("coburn"). SiliconGlen.com Ltd. http://SiliconGlen.com
Home to the first online guide to Scotland, founded 1994.
Scottish FAQ, wedding info, website design, stop spam and more!

---

From: John Levine <[email-masked]>
Date: 27 Mar 2005 19:26:22 -0000

I think we've established that there is plenty of prior art to bust
this particular patent, including some that the patent holder said
here that he had looked at but evidently didn't understand.

Your list mom thinks we've beaten this topic to death.  Let's talk
about somethinge else now, please.

Regards,

---

From: "Peter Kay" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 28 Mar 2005 07:16:04 -1000

Prior art not yet established.

> 
> I think we've established that there is plenty of prior art
> to bust this particular patent, including some that the 
> patent holder said here that he had looked at but evidently 
> didn't understand.
> 

Since my last post, I've contacted both authors of Obtuse & check_local.
Current status: neither has been able to confirm prior art.  

Also, none of you (last posts included) have been able to demonstrate prior
art. Yes there have been blocklists, but I've yet to find prior art showing
"end-users managing their own personal white/black lists that are enforced
in the mail-from/rcpt-to  (envelope) part of the smtp transaction."

I invite all of you to go through the test-drive features  here:
http://www.titankey.com/testdrive/spammerCantSend.asp 

Follow the process so that you'll clearly understand what we've done and
then if you can point to published prior art, by all means please do. As
I've said before, my interest is in having a strong, valid patent.

Many of you claim obviousness and that's fine.  As I've said before, we've
already disclosed this prior art to USPTO and they did raise the obviousness
issue. What I'm interested in is prior art and I've yet to see it.

I find it quite interesting that I've presented Titan Key's technology to
many, many ISPs, sysadmins, and respected professionals like the Chief
Architect of Microsoft Exchange, and the Lead Engineer for consumer
anti-spam products at Symantec, and until this recent set of posts, I've
never had anyone raise prior art or even a semblance of "been there done
that". So I must say I've got a lot more respect for this group as a
cream-of-the-crop regarding email.  

Excerpt with Jan Krueger:

Peter: what I'm wondering is if check_local lets end-users setup their own
personal white/black lists that are enforced in the mail-from/rcpt-to  part
of the smtp transaction.

Jan: Things like that have been implemented based on check_local.
Nevertheless this is not a particular feature of the check_local software,
it can be implemented in several simple ways, mainly based on the unix
toolbox what is much older than Jan 2000.

Excerpt with Obtuse:

-----Original Message-----
From: Peter Kay 
Sent: Friday, March 25, 2005 12:09 PM
To: 'Bob Beck'
Subject: RE: authors of the obtuse smtpd?

> 	Yes, we are the original authors.
> 
> 	Why are you asking?
> 
> 	-Bob

I'm asking because I'm trying to do some patent-related, prior-art research.
I've looked high and dry all over the Net for published documentation and/or
implementations using Obtuse prior to Jan 2000 and all I could find was some
install files that lacked any substantial docs.

What I would really, really appreciate is if you could point me toward some
docs from back then. What I'm trying to find out is if Obtuse had an
end-user controlled blacklist/whitelist feature whereby the end-user would
maintain/update a database of their own and this db would be used to enforce
black/whitelisting at the MTA, before the DATA command.  What I really need
to look @ is the docs that were published prior to Jan 2000.

Any help you can provide would be great.

Peter Kay
www.titankey.com

---

From: J C Lawrence <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 28 Mar 2005 09:49:23 -0800

On Mon, 28 Mar 2005 07:16:04 -1000
Peter Kay <[email-masked]> wrote:

> Also, none of you (last posts included) have been able to demonstrate
> prior art. Yes there have been blocklists, but I've yet to find prior
> art showing "end-users managing their own personal white/black lists
> that are enforced in the mail-from/rcpt-to (envelope) part of the smtp
> transaction."

Procmail's `formail` will process SMTP envelope data.  Certainly I've
had the following recipe in my procmailrc since at least 1997 if not
earlier:

  :0 Whf
  | formail -z -R 'From ' X-Envelope-From:

Use of the X-Envelope-To header can be easily documented via Google back
into 1995.  eg:

  http://www.repgrid.com/pcp/archives/1995Q4/0021.html

Documented use in procmail recipies for filters seems to date back to at
least 1998 with simple Google searches (I didn't look very hard -- I bet
you could push it back further):

  http://finnell.org/.procmailrc.txt

Note that the recipe that uses X-Envelope-From at the above URL uses it
to filter against a private blacklist of addresses.  A similar set of
searches for 'net documentation on X-Envelope-To (the matching header
for the other side of the envelope) gives similar results.

Procmail is an end-user tool.

--
J C Lawrence
---------(*)                Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas.
[email-masked]               He lived as a devil, eh?
http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/  Evil is a name of a foeman, as I live.

---

From: John Levine <[email-masked]>
Date: 29 Mar 2005 02:10:34 -0000

>Current status: neither has been able to confirm prior art.  

Considering that the prior art we've been referring to is in the
Obtuse daemon, and the author of the Obtuse daemon hasn't answered
your question yet, that claim is at best disingenuous.  I have a copy
of the 1997 Obtuse daemon and have personally verified the SMTP time
per-user whitelist and blacklist.  If your broken C/R didn't reject
all my mail, you'd have read my mail to you about it.

> I find it quite interesting that I've presented Titan Key's
> technology to many, many ISPs, sysadmins, and respected
> professionals like the Chief Architect of Microsoft Exchange, and
> the Lead Engineer for consumer anti-spam products at Symantec, and
> until this recent set of posts, I've ...

Why would anyone expect a bunch of corporate Windows guys to know or
care anything about Unix freeware like Obtuse?

In any event, I see no benefit to anyone other than perhaps Titankey
of continuing this argument, so like I said, it's over.

Regards,
John Levine, [email-masked], Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://www.johnlevine.com, Mayor
"More Wiener schnitzel, please", said Tom, revealingly.

---

From: Tony Finch <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Mar 2005 15:59:56 +0100

Daniel Feenberg <[email-masked]> wrote:
>years ago I wanted to do this and couldn't find any way to do so.

You can do this with Exim. The default configuration doesn't run .forward
files when verifying deliverability of an address, but it's easy to change
this. However the .forward file must be readable by the unprivileged exim
user and must not try to do anything that requires it to be run with the
user's privilege (e.g. writing to a log file).

Tony.
-- 
f.a.n.finch  <[email-masked]>  http://dotat.at/
SOUTHEAST ICELAND: SOUTHEAST VEERING SOUTHWEST 4 OR 5. RAIN LATER. MODERATE OR
GOOD.

---

From: mathew <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Mar 2005 09:57:36 -0600

Peter Kay wrote:

> As I've said before, my interest is in having a strong, valid patent.

Then I respectfully submit that this is the wrong forum in which to 
pursue that interest.

This forum is for discussing how to solve the spam problem. I personally 
believe that assisting in the patenting of anti-spam techniques is 
diametrically opposed to that purpose, and I'm sure I'm not the only one 
who feels that way.

To put it more bluntly: if your business is patenting obvious anti-spam 
techniques as effectively as possible, then you are part of the problem, 
not part of the solution, so please go away, or at least stop asking 
people to assist you.

I also personally believe that if your business is implementing C/R 
systems then you are part of the problem; but I'm not going to re-hash 
that debate now. For anyone who's interested, I've been writing a series 
of posts on my web site summarizing my position on the spam problem, 
based on what I've learned from this list and elsewhere, and trying to 
assemble a concise argument for my conclusion that the only viable 
solution will be some kind of "sender pays".

mathew

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Mar 2005 08:14:00 -0800

>  In any event, I see no benefit to anyone other than perhaps Titankey of
>  continuing this argument, so like I said, it's over.

not 'perhaps'.

at this point, the benefit to the patent holder is to learn of the arguments 
against the patent.  that helps their lawyers plan their case.

  d/
  ---
  Dave Crocker

---

From: "Ian Rogers" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Mar 2005 17:36:15 +0100 (BST)

Is there any kind of central resource that attempts to compare all the
anti-spam techniques and/or algorithms in one place?

I know many people have their own websites arguing for/against their
favourite/most-hated scheme, but has there ever been an attempt to bring
all the arguments together *dis*-passionately?

Regards,

Ian.

---

From: "Jed Margolin" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Mar 2005 10:43:44 -0800

> against the patent.  that helps their lawyers plan their case.

What case are you referring to?

Issued U.S. patents are presumed to be valid and "The burden of establishing
invalidity of a patent or any claim thereof shall rest on the party
asserting such invalidity." (35 U.S.C. 282).

Many patent holders, when presented with solid, relevent prior art will
decide not to assert their patent.

By telling Peter about prior art, it's possible that:

    1. He will save time and money by not suing you.

    2. You will save time and money by not getting sued.

    3. The rest of use will learn sometime about the arcane and byzantine
art of email protocols.

Philip made the argument:

> It also means that they may be able to gather information
> with which they might attempt to discredit any of us who
> might be called as an actual or expert witness in the case.
>
> Since the most likely persons to be called as a witness are
> in this thread I think it a very bad idea to continue the conversation.

One of the requirements for being an expert witness is that you do not have
a financial interest in the outcome of the case. Theoretically, the expert
witness is there to educate the Court, not to advocate one side or the
other.

If it is likely that you will be sued if the patent is upheld, then it
sounds to me like you have a financial interest in the case. (It's too bad,
expert witnesses can get $500/hour!)

A better reason for Peter to discontinue the discussion is that most
engineers seem to be against patents and think people (and small companies)
who have patents are parasites looking for a free ride, and that all he
seems to be getting here is abuse.

I am not associated with Peter or Titankey.

I am not an attorney (patent or otherwise, so this is not legal advice) but
I have some patents of my own and I have faced the same hostility that has
been shown to Peter.

I really hate Spam and I think all email should contain the GPS coordinates
of the User who sent it so a cruise missile can be dispatched to that
location. (Hmmm, maybe I should patent that.)

Jed Margolin