On 11 Dec 98, at 14:32, Ross Wilcock wrote:

> There is a
> conspiracy afoot to stop people communicating - so I wondered if this was
> another aspect of it. This is of course a serious human rights violation -
> apart from the obvious crime involved.
>
> So actually I am relieved that there is a simpler explanation for this List
> problem.

Well, you see, that's the problem with these terrorist tactics. For all you
know, it _could_ be part of the conspiracy. If I were an evil dictator scum
and wanted to cut off email access to a section of the Internet, all I
would need to do is send spam from there and voila, blacklisters all over
the world will take care of isolating your little piece of the Internet for
you. Because these blocks do not block only the originator of the spam,
they block everyone who shares the same network, guilty and innocent
alike, and usually there are more innocents than guilties.

Here is an actual quote from the RBL site: "While we try to limit that
connectivity loss to only networks which are friendly or neutral toward
spam, sometimes a spammer hides in and amongst nonspammers so
as to share a more positive fate with those nonspammers. What
actually happens is that the nonspammers share an unpleasant and
negative fate with spammers in that case. In other words, if you are not
willing to occasionally throw out a baby with the bathwater (figuratively
speaking of course), then the MAPS RBL is  not for you."

They're thinking that it's worth keeping [log in to unmask] from emailing her
mom in order to prevent [log in to unmask] from sending spam. Big deal,
pick up the phone and call your mom. But what if [log in to unmask] has a
baby dying of cancer and her doctor suggests a controversial procedure,
so she tries to write to the ped-onc list to find out if anyone else has
tried that procedure? What if there's a block between her and the one
other person on the list who can help her? Is that really worth it? The
arrogance of cutting off all of Chechnya because a spam originated from
Warsaw -- and feeling justified about it, no less -- makes me want to
vomit.

At the bottom of many of the RBL pages, it says "Loss of connectivity
hurts us all. Spam hurts us all even more." I say they've got it
backwards.

If someone can find a way to reliably cut off ONLY the spammers, then
I'm all for it. Otherwise, I'll handle one spammer at a time, without
punishing large groups of people for the sins of a few.

Francoise