I believe that many people are looking at this in the wrong way...perhaps an
analogy would help:
We all sue Microsoft because of the Melissa virus, because
the virus was propagated through holes in their software.
Anyone want to guess whether or not this would fly?
ISP's, or server administrators, choose to use a software package. The intent
of the software is not the issue. Ted Kazinsky could have written his letter
bombs in Word, does that make the software liable?
SpamAssassin, and its creator(s), in and of themselves do not create intent.
And, as at least one person has stated somewhere in this discussion, it is the
administrators (mail server or ISP) that CHOOSE to use the software. As a
user, I can choose to include the MONSTERHUT rule or not. Therefore, if I do
include it, it is my choice and not the software's responsibility.
Any lawsuits arising from the use of SpamAssassin would have to attack the
responsibile parties (ie. admins). Care to guess whether or not spammers will
have enough money to go after us all? Should they win and I can no longer use
SpamAssaassin, there are a number of other products that can be implemented, or
I could just roll my own (heavily influenced by SA rules and procedures).
--
Michael Geier
CDM Sports, Inc. - Systems Administrator
email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
phone: 314.991.1511 x 6505
pager: 314.318.9414 || [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Quoting Craig Hughes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> Hey, if anyone sues, I'll just say it's Justin's fault, and they can try
> and track him down wherever he is in Asia...
>
> C
>
> On Tue, 2002-03-26 at 13:31, Matthew Cline wrote:
> > On Tuesday 26 March 2002 08:55 am, Jason Kohles wrote:
> > > On Tue, 2002-03-26 at 10:18, Smith, Rick wrote:
> > > > How long do you think it will be until users of SA face the same
> > > > consequences as the now infamous ORBZ case ?
> > > >
> > > > I'm sure that some lawyer out there could find a way to sue someone
> for
> > > > running this package.
> > >
> > > The problem with ORBZ didn't have anything to do with anti-spam in
> > > general, the problem was that the specific actions it used to determine
> > > if a mail server was an open relay would crash lotus notes mail
> > > servers.
> >
> > MAPS (Mail Abuse Prevention System) has been sued by several spammers, for
>
> > defemation/libel and restraint of trade (or something like that); see
> > http://mail-abuse.org/in-the-news.html
> >
> > Also, I believe that AOL was once sued by a spammer, and was forced to stop
>
> > filtering that spammers emails to AOL users.
> >
> > So theroetically spammers *could* sue SA if they are specifically listed in
>
> > SA rules. For instance, MonsterHut.com could sue us for defemation and/or
>
> > restraint of trade, and since, ulike MAPS, we have no legal defence fund,
>
> > we'd have to take them out. However, spam which matches our general
> > heuristics wouldn't have a legal leg to stand on, since in that case SA is
>
> > only saying that it *looks* like spam, and we acknowledge that it can lead
> to
> > false positives. A spammer might still be able to sue an individual ISP to
>
> > stop them from filtering spam, like happened with AOL.
> >
> > However, if a bunch of spammers co-operated, each of them could file a
> > seperate suit against SA in different jurisdictions, and more spammers
> could
> > bring up suits when the old ones were thrown out; you can use anyone for
> > anything, even if it ends up getting thrown out of court. If this happened
>
> > enough, we'd get sued out of existence.
> >
> > --
> > Visit http://dmoz.org, the world's | Give a man a match, and he'll be
> warm
> > largest human edited web directory. | for a minute, but set him on fire,
> and
> > | he'll be warm for the rest of his
> life.
> > [EMAIL PROTECTED] ICQ: 132152059 |
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Spamassassin-talk mailing list
> > [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/spamassassin-talk
> >
> >
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Spamassassin-talk mailing list
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/spamassassin-talk
>
>
-------------------------------------------------
This mail sent through CDM Sports Webmail.
_______________________________________________
Spamassassin-talk mailing list
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/spamassassin-talk
