tommyj27
Not really Banned
Disclaimer: I do not endorse, appreciate, commit, or justify spamming.
Just before bed last night I sent a short email to a friend of mine at his school address. There was nothing offensive about the email, I wasn't trying to sell him penis pills or a rolex replica, or even a mail-order bride from the former Soviet Union (though I may have had a sale there). It was just a question regarding accomodations for a friend's upcoming wedding. I went to bed and watched dodgeball (which is better than other recent comedy fare), oblivious to the fact that my message had been needlessly struck from its path to greatness by the whim of SORBS (http://www.dnsbl.us.sorbs.net), an Australian organization that I'd never heard of before this morning.
Somehow they've co-opted the University of MN: Duluth into their scheme to eliminate spam by blocking services that may (or may not) have been exploited by spammers at the expense of the huge number of people who use the thoses services daily for legitimate uses. But it gets better, you can buy your freedom from their crap. By giving into their proxy-extortion and paying a 'fine' of $50AU for every email sent to one of their monitoring accounts from the blocked host. These 'fines' can be paid to ANY charity or good cause, that SORBS has endorsed. Currently, the endorsed charities are limited to the Royal Childrens Hospital and a legal defense fund for some Aussie who got sued for something involving spam. The information given by Matthew Sullivan, the founder of SORBS, regarding the second 'charity' is nothing more than a link to a low-quality .pdf of a court document so confusing that I on the first read I thought I was paying the legal fees for the defense of a spammer.
SORBS is an okay idea for battling spam, battling spam by blocking individual hosts that have been zombified by spammers won't stop but will at least cull the flow of spam. What irks me is that this twit blocks hosts (gmail in my case) that are not controlled by spammers and are used overwhelmingly by legitimate users, and then leaves it to those users to pay his fines. And why are the only endorsed charities Australian? In all likelihood my email message probably never even left the continental United States, so why should I be obligated to pay the Royal Children's Hospital? Granted, it's a good cause, and I don't want to sound xenophobic or anything. But there are plenty of deserving charities that do their work right here in the good old US of A.
Not that it seems to matter what anyone thinks, because Sullivan has decided that his scheme is flawless and apparently refuses to hear any dissenting opinions. Not to mention that he has gotten organizations to buy into his tripe, but I would expect as much from the the U of MN.
Anyways, it would appear that Mr. Sullivan is not particularly well-liked by others in the Internet community (real spammers need not apply), here's one of the threads I found googling.
http://archives.neohapsis.com/archives/postfix/2004-11/0005.html
Just before bed last night I sent a short email to a friend of mine at his school address. There was nothing offensive about the email, I wasn't trying to sell him penis pills or a rolex replica, or even a mail-order bride from the former Soviet Union (though I may have had a sale there). It was just a question regarding accomodations for a friend's upcoming wedding. I went to bed and watched dodgeball (which is better than other recent comedy fare), oblivious to the fact that my message had been needlessly struck from its path to greatness by the whim of SORBS (http://www.dnsbl.us.sorbs.net), an Australian organization that I'd never heard of before this morning.
Somehow they've co-opted the University of MN: Duluth into their scheme to eliminate spam by blocking services that may (or may not) have been exploited by spammers at the expense of the huge number of people who use the thoses services daily for legitimate uses. But it gets better, you can buy your freedom from their crap. By giving into their proxy-extortion and paying a 'fine' of $50AU for every email sent to one of their monitoring accounts from the blocked host. These 'fines' can be paid to ANY charity or good cause, that SORBS has endorsed. Currently, the endorsed charities are limited to the Royal Childrens Hospital and a legal defense fund for some Aussie who got sued for something involving spam. The information given by Matthew Sullivan, the founder of SORBS, regarding the second 'charity' is nothing more than a link to a low-quality .pdf of a court document so confusing that I on the first read I thought I was paying the legal fees for the defense of a spammer.
SORBS is an okay idea for battling spam, battling spam by blocking individual hosts that have been zombified by spammers won't stop but will at least cull the flow of spam. What irks me is that this twit blocks hosts (gmail in my case) that are not controlled by spammers and are used overwhelmingly by legitimate users, and then leaves it to those users to pay his fines. And why are the only endorsed charities Australian? In all likelihood my email message probably never even left the continental United States, so why should I be obligated to pay the Royal Children's Hospital? Granted, it's a good cause, and I don't want to sound xenophobic or anything. But there are plenty of deserving charities that do their work right here in the good old US of A.
Not that it seems to matter what anyone thinks, because Sullivan has decided that his scheme is flawless and apparently refuses to hear any dissenting opinions. Not to mention that he has gotten organizations to buy into his tripe, but I would expect as much from the the U of MN.
Anyways, it would appear that Mr. Sullivan is not particularly well-liked by others in the Internet community (real spammers need not apply), here's one of the threads I found googling.
http://archives.neohapsis.com/archives/postfix/2004-11/0005.html
