[PLUG] Communities (was Covad DSL?)

[Derek Loree]

On Sat, 2003-07-19 at 08:52, Ed Sawicki wrote:
> On Fri, 2003-07-18 at 21:39, Carla Schroder wrote:
> 
> > How is that a problem for your client? If he is using public DNSBLs, such as 
> <snip>
> >  Why would anyone block huge ip blocks? Of the thousands of messages I've ever 
> > received from China, for one example, not one was a legitimate message.
> <snip>
> > Thank the spammers for ruining one of the greatest innovations of all time. 
> > Don't blame the people who take strong measures to protect their systems.
> 
> 
> Spam aside, there's a basic belief about the Internet that
> most people on the net have - that the Internet SHOULD
> allow anyone on the net to communicate with anyone else -
> that insulating yourself from a segment of the net
> population is wrong. Perhaps this larger issue should be
> discussed before we declared spam-fighting strategies as
> right or wrong.

When I first saw AOL in action, I realized that only allowing a small
window to the whole internet was a bad thing.  Of course this only
affects people that already know what is out there, AOL customers don't
know any better, but they are still missing out.

I'm not denying that spam is a problem, but blocking out huge blocks of
addresses is similar to what AOL is doing with the whole internet.  Once
your filters are in place, how would you know if someone from China or
Brazil has tried to send you legitimate email?

I'm not blaming anyone, I'm just looking for the reasoning that would
lead someone to implement such aggressive blocking.  Every time I
explain to my clients what filtering will do, they all opt to live with
the spam.  I know this won't last too much longer, which means I need to
figure out a filtering scheme that my clients will go for.

Thanks for the discussion.

Derek Loree