Sincerely,
----- Original Message ----- From: "Russell Coker" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Jason Lim" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: <debian-isp@lists.debian.org>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Sunday, August 18, 2002 10:20 PM Subject: Re: failure notice (about relays.osirusoft.com) > On Sun, 18 Aug 2002 14:02, Jason Lim wrote: > > As I said in a previous email: > > > > ------------------------- > > It was once said that it is better to let off 10 criminals than to put 1 > > innocent man in jail. > > > > You, on the other hand, suggest it is better to put 10 innocent men in > > jail for 1 criminal. > > > > Interesting thought. > > ------------------------- > > That only applies for criminal law where guilt has to be proven "beyond > reasonable doubt". > > In civil law it's the "balance of probabilities", so if it's "most likely" > that you did it then you'll be punished. > > If you sue a group of 10 people who are associated and you can prove that you > have a valid case against at least 9 of them (and not one of them can prove > themselves to be less guilty than the rest), then it's most likely that > you'll get a judgement against all 10 of them. > > Having your email blocked by an anti-spam service does not compare to being > locked in a cell with a group of sex-starved bikers... It doesn't even > compare with the penalties you may face under civil law if you get sued. That would be debatable... how about loss of business due to hindering/halting/imparing/interferring/your-own-word here business communications? You are only looking at a personal level... okay... if you can't get email from your best friend that lives in Asia, the loss is only to you, and to the other people that can't get their communications to/from Asia properly. How about if a large multinational firm suddenly loses communications with a large portion of it's customers living in Asia, because a militant RBL suddenly decides to block it's upstream or the country (not them sending spam)? True... the blocks can be worked around (relaying the mail through other mail servers not in Asia, etc.), but it still takes time, during which the loss of business could be pretty big. I'm just trying to put the "other" side of the argument in. I get spam.. i certainly get my fair share of it every day. But justifying everything by saying "it's collateral damage, deal with it" just isn't an acceptable solution. By using a non-militant or not-so-militant list, okay... you may get a bit more spam... but the question is... do you think it is more acceptable to lose an email, rather than get a spam message a day? Personally, I would probably accept 2 or 3 spams more by using a non-militant and less "aggressive" list, to make sure I have nearly 99-100% of my legit email. Then again... some people will be willing to lose legit email to block nearly all spam. It's a trade-off... and both personally and business-wise, I don't think I'm willing to sacrifice legitimate email for the sake of deleting some spams in return by using less aggressive lists.
