Subject: Re: Principles of Spam-abatement (fwd)

From: "Dr. Jeffrey Race" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 14 Mar 2004 09:56:20 +0700

On Sat, 13 Mar 2004 17:03:14 -0500 (EST), Dean Anderson wrote:

>No such thing was ever found. And just the opposite was proved to you in
>Exactis V.  MAPS.  That lawsuit was settled out of court, 

Dean you have expressed your case well but in the end you must agree
none of this is persuasive because the case was never litigated on 
its merits.  We have only "he said, she said"; maybe MAPS folded for
lack of money or some other reason unrelated to the merits; happens
all the time.

I have been hoping for this issue to be litigated to a judgment but
this has not happened to my knowledge.   It may be significant (someone
who knows more correct me) that even though there is more blocking now
than then, no one affected has ever seen fit to sue on like grounds
since them.   Please correct me if I am wrong.

Jeffrey Race

---

From: Dean Anderson <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 14 Mar 2004 15:23:56 -0500 (EST)

On Sun, 14 Mar 2004, Dr. Jeffrey Race wrote:

> its merits.  

The principle defense was resolved before trial. MAPS only defense (First
Amendment Privilege) was rejected before trial. The Court in the Temporary
Restraining Order accepted the validity of the case presented by Exactis
if all the facts were true.  MAPS didn't contest any of the facts--they
were all true.  Another telling feature is the chastisement of MAPS
attorney.

With a set of uncontested facts, and no defense, what remains of that case
is purely procedure and final judgement, which must then involve the court
in the messy business of calculating awards and issuing injunctive orders.

> We have only "he said, she said"; maybe MAPS folded for

No, that isn't the case, as can be seen from the records and transcripts
in the Lawsuit.  It is true that one cannot cite a finding in Exactis V.
MAPS, because a _judgement_ was not made, and so will not appear in any
legal record, however, it is not the case that we don't have any clue
about the merits of the argument.  There were definite legal decisions
made, and the unusual act of chastising MAPS lawyer.

> this has not happened to my knowledge.   

Only 1% of cases filed are ever brought to trial. Lawyers are expected to 
resolve frivolous disputes.  Truly frivolous claims do not even make it to 
a filing in most cases.

Most disputes are resolved this way:
http://info.av8.net/spamstuff/verio-demand.pdf

Followed by a post by Mr. Guilmette:
http://info.av8.net/spamstuff/RFG-Verio-Email

> It may be significant (someone who knows more correct me) that even
> though there is more blocking now than then, no one affected has ever
> seen fit to sue on like grounds since them.  Please correct me if I am
> wrong.

There is substantially less blocking now by "respectable" blacklists. MAPS
has not blocked any commercial entity since this lawsuit.  Even the
current complaint about Vixie doesn't involve MAPS, but Vixie's _personal_
blacklist.  Vixie is offering SORBS service via ISC.ORG, while trying to
pretend that he has no association with SORBS.  SORBS is ostensibly
located in Australia, by Matthew Sullivan, and adminstrator with the
University of Queensland.  Sullivan claims to have no assets.

Indeed, the blacklist proponents have taken to trying to create "lawsuit
free", or "lawsuit difficult" sites by locating them in remote countries,
and by having poor people who have no assets assume legal responsibility
for them.  Of course, as Joe Praad (attorney who has represented AOL in
spam suits) has shown, this is no protection from the law.

But Mr. Guilmette then goes on in another message to say that the law is
not going to be on the side of blacklists (quite obviously)

=========================
	"MAPS has proven that the legal threat (against DNSbls) cannot be con-
fronted directly or frontally.  Any half-way competent General in this
battle should take from this the obvious lesson that flanking maneuvers
are clearly better than frontal assults in such contexts.  Meanwhile,
my encounter with Verio Corporate Counsel has illustrated, I believe,
that it is possible to generate negative PR for lawsuit-happy companies
whose total costs will exceed the costs of just fixing their spam prob-
lems.  This is a profoundly Good Thing, because in the long run, costs
(as measured in dollars, yen, rubles, sheckels, rupies, whatever) are
the _only_ thing that most corporations care about, and as the case of
Verio illustrates[2], it doesn't take them long to understand that they
cannot win the game when it is played this way."
=========================

The whole message at http://info.av8.net/spamstuff/RFG-Law-no-good-email 
pretty much lays out what the current strategy of the radicals has been.  
They hope that by having poor people assume legal responsibility for the 
illegal behavior, that they can impose costs on corporations who will have 
to pursue the unlawful behavior, but will be unable to recover their costs 
from poor people.

The radical anti-spammer are nothing but a pack of liars and hypocrits
promoting lies and conducting mailbombing attacks. It is not a far stretch
to suspect that they are also the ones responsible for the viruses that
are mailbombing millions of people with billions of messages.

Dean Anderson
CEO
Av8 Internet, Inc