Re: [anti-spam-wg] Any suggestions about how to deal with non co-operative ISP's and RIR's ?

[furio ercolessi furio+as@localhost]

On Tue, Apr 03, 2007 at 11:33:50AM +0100, Michele Neylon :: Blacknight wrote:
> Jørgen Hovland wrote:
> >> I do believe that only if every responsible organisation on the net
> > cooperate on hacking, spam and other abuse issues - we will be able
> > to do anything about - otherwise .... 
> > 
> > 
> > And by spam you mean what you decide is spam, or do you mean that the
> > spam is illegal by law in the country of the ISP and/or the
> > destination country? Just curious.. 
> > 
> 
> And that, of course, is the key issue.
> 
> Spam's legal definition varies significantly from country to country.

That should be the key issue for law enforcement officers and the
justice system.  But why should it be a key issue for network operators?

As far as network operators are concerned, spam should be defined
in the traditional way: unsolicited bulk mail.  For an ISP, using 
spamtraps makes it rather easy to identify spam defined in this way.  
Blocking it does not and should not constitute a judgement about its 
illegality - an ISP should not have to make such decisions.  The same
applies for, say, SBL listings, as SBL adopts a similar criterion.

A key issue is, rather, making the customer aware of the spam filtering 
policy in the contractual terms - so that he explicitly agrees that
the ISP will do its best to ensure that unsolicited bulk mail 
directed to his address will be rejected.  This protects the ISP 
against legal actions by spammers; while claiming that their spam is
illegal can open a can of worms.

furio