[MPlayer-dev-eng] to michael

[Rich Felker]

On Thu, May 25, 2006 at 06:02:53PM +0200, Dominik 'Rathann' Mierzejewski wrote:
> On Thursday, 25 May 2006 at 17:31, Romain Dolbeau wrote:
> > Dominik 'Rathann' Mierzejewski <dominik at rangers.eu.org> wrote:
> > 
> > > For you. Not for me. http://www.nanae.org/thank_the_spammers.html
> > 
> > Meaning, you accept the "guilty by proximity" rule. It's idiotic. I
> > fully agree spammers must be fought. But I will never, never, *never*,
> > *NEVER* accept collateral damages on the users. You don't wage a war
> > using the civilians as weapons and shields when you're civilized.
> 
> So you prefer to go out of business because spam will cost you more and
> more bandwith/server resources instead?

The cost argument is utter bullshit. All the significant cost of spam
is the work of the admins in trying to keep it down to acceptable
levels for users, not the bandwidth and storage. Storage is cheap and
as for bandwidth I get flooded with spam on my 600kbit (static IP,
reverse DNS, fully legit for mailserver but still blacklisted!!!!)
DSL and it's a bit annoying but doesn't really hamper performance. And
I'm also blocking it all with procmail which would in theory cost way
too much in cpu time, yet somehow my wimpy K6 handles it just fine..

Granted ISPs and businesses have more spam, but they have pipes,
storage, and cpus that are orders of magnitude better than mine...

> > > These days, they do and it is their business. Otherwise they're
> > > irresponsible.
> > 
> > IT IS NOT !
> > 
> > They sell IP connectivity ; whatever goes on those links is NONE OF
> > THEIR FREAKING BUSINESS ! Any law saying they're responsible is idiotic.
> 
> Who said there's a law?

Romain used the word law very loosely, meaning "a law in Dominik's
mind"... :)

> > They're no more responsible of the IP traffic than the highway owner are
> > of the car traffic.
> 
> Of course they're responsible for the traffic they're sending out into
> the Internet. There's no law that requires any ISP to accept traffic
> from any other ISP. These are all business deals. And, if my ISP decides
> your ISP sends too much spam, they can stop accepting all of your traffic.
> That's how it works, in case you didn't know.

And this is very wrong. Instead they should file charges and subpoena
the ISP to release the names of the spammers so they can be prosecuted
and sent to jail.

> > > > And anyone who blacklist may server is discriminating against me.
> > > 
> > > ROTFL.
> > 
> > What's so funny ? Please let me in on the joke where IP-based
> > discrimination (or any other) becomes funny. it may not seem important
> > to you, but dicrimination is important to some people.
> 
> The notion that this is discrimination is funny.

Stop laughing, it's not funny. Maybe you think it's ok for only a few
multinational telcom corps to control email, but the rest of us don't.

> > > If I block direct SMTP connections from dynamic IPs, I'm not preventing
> > > you from sending e-mail to me. You can still send via your provider's mail
> > > gateway.
> > 
> > On what ground do you discriminate against me ?
> 
> I'm not discriminating. It is up to me to decide who I let into my house,
> isn't it? Or are you claiming to have the right to enter my house any time
> you like over my objections?

No, we claim the right to email people receiving internet connectivity
from your business, people who want to receive our emails.

> > And why should I gateway
> > through the crappy, slow, unreliable no-TLS no-SSL server of my ISP ?
> 
> Get a real connection, then. You get what you pay for.

Due to the sort of crap you propose, there are no longer options in
many locations. Moreover sending email thru isp mailservers is not
acceptable because they log everything including message contents.

> > > You shouldn't send e-mail directly to MXs from a dynamic IP.
> > 
> > Says who ? Is that the eleventh commandment ? (incidentally, this is all
> > a matter of principles with me, as I only have fixed IPs anyway ;-) I
> > don't see why dynamic IP should be banned from running a SMTP server.
> > That's what (among other thing) dynamic DNS is for.
> 
> Says my experience. And many other administrators of much bigger networks.

Administrators who are not doing their job.

> > > Bad analogy. ISPs are hardly ever entirely listed because of a single spam
> > > incident.
> > 
> > As soon as you ban dynamic IP, you ban everyone using one because some
> > people are breaking he "law" (annoying as it is, I'm not even sure spam
> > is against the law...). That's a very good analogy. Most dynamic IP
> > users have never sent a spam in their lives.
> 
> They don't have to break any law. I am perfectly within my rights to refuse
> mail from any IP/e-mail address I choose. And on behalf of my users, if they
> choose to delegate spam filtering to me.

No you are not. If you refused mail from all Jewish isps you would be
in jail. :)

> > > IMHO it is efficient even if a small number of potentially wanted e-mail
> > > gets rejected.
> > 
> > BS. One legit mail rejected is unacceptable, and anyone claiming it is,
> > is notw orth the job description of administrator.
> 
> Making the company upgrade the uplink and server hardware every year
> just to cope with the influx of spam is what an administrator should do,
> apparently, yes?

They should do whatever is necessary to ensure that not one legitimate
email is ever lost. Anything less is not doing their job.

> > The job is to ensure *ALL* legit mails are made available to the
> > end-users, *not* make *its* life easy by using idiotic solutions. Spam
> > is the problem of the admin ; pushing the problem on the user by forcing
> > them to bypass idiotic countermeasures is the sign of someone most
> > definitely *not* doing his job.
> > 
> > If I thought acceptable to reject legit mails because it makes my life
> > easier, I would fully expect to get fired with no benefits for
> > incompetence.
> 
> Email isn't and never was a 100% reliable means of communication. The
> spammers have made it even less reliable. My view is that you either spend
> money on bandwith and faster servers or accept that some mail might get
> rejected. There is no third option. I try to strike a balance between the two,
> but I refuse to let spammers use my resources if I can prevent it.

Since when does it take more bandwidth anyway? The SMTP connection was
already made and you're already sending an error message.
Content-based filters should be able to detect spam after the first
few KB and close the connection; most spam is only a few KB anyway.
IMO the bandwidth argument is highly suspect...

Rich