Subject: Re: Black Holing Vixie/RB

From: Evan Miller <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 01 Dec 1998 21:09:36 -0600

Bob,

I respect your right to have an opinion.

Permit me to offer the perspective of a
small ISP in Texas.

Over the course of 1996, 1997, and
early 1998, Spam became our #1 business
problem.  We were losing customers and
expending an awful amount of labor
dealing with SPAM.  It was sucking
down bandwidth and filling up mailboxes.
People were getting adult content in their
mailboxes and sometimes even children
were seeing it. A response of  "Just delete it"
to an angry customer usually resulted in
my losing them.

We have been using Sendmail 8 with the
anti-spam features and the MAPS RBL
for most of this year.

Overall, we have been delighted with the
results.  We've cut SPAM by 90%.
Customers have spread the word that
you don't get much SPAM on our service,
and business has grown as a result.
We used to spend hours per month combatting
Spam, not counting the time wasted by our
customers.  Now we spend almost no time at
all on the problem, allowing us to keep our
rates low.

In 9 months on the RBL, we've had just
one complaint.

No one is forcing us to use the RBL, and
no one is forcing my customers to use us.
It is completely voluntary.  Therefore, there
is no freedom of speech limitation.

I hope you can see my perspective as
I intended.  Paul is performing a valuable
service to some people who choose to use it.

Regards,
Evan Miller
The Information Utility, Inc.

Paul A Vixie <[email-masked]> writes
+ The RBL team and I are kind of wondering what to do about some spam
+ we got. Because blackholing NSI would be of operational concern to a
+ lot of you, I've decided to ponder this question out loud:
+
+ >Technically, this is an opt-out customer-relationship spam.
+ >
+ > I think it is a special case, because _there is no where else to
go_.
+ >
+ > 208.226.58.70 should be RBL'ed, IMHO.  Help me.

 Mr. Vixie and his cohorts increasingly
 imagine themselves to be the final and
 ultimate arbiters in matters of Network
 integrity. Having them sit in judgement
 over the Black Holing of successive and
 alleged perpetrators violates numerous
 protections and freedoms all citizens

 It is my opinion that these activities
 have reached their zenith and something
 should be done to finally Black Hole
 Vixie/RBL should they continue on their
 renegade mission of uncontrolled and
 arbitrary censorship. Maybe it is time
 to pull the plug on the ultimate plug
 pullers & black hole the black holers!

 Bob Allisat

 Free Community Network _ [email-masked] . http://fcn.net
 http://fcn.net/allisat _ http://fcn.net/draft