stories/Grabowski-010324.html

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Sat, 24 Mar 2001 21:21:12 GMT
To: Darren Grabowski cc: John Gilmore , nospam@eff.org, bill@billstclair.com Date: 24 March, 2001 Subject: toad.com

Mr. Grabowski,

I read today at Cryptome about Verio's decision to cut off John Gilmore's T1 line, toad.com. Shame on you. I realize that Mr. Gilmore's open mail relay violates Verio's acceptable use policy. I've read it. You implemented a solution to that supposed problem on March 14 by filtering all out-going email from toad.com. Why do you now claim that you "have no choice but to terminate" Mr. Gilmore's services? Nonsense. You have lots of choices.

The most logical choice would be to change your policy about open mail relays. Open mail relays are not the problem. Spam is the problem. Mr. Gilmore does not send spam. Shutting down open mail relays does as much good at ending spam as spraying defoliant on coca farms does at ending cocaine distribution. None. Nada. Zilch. The reason that spammers continue to send spam is the same reason that junk mailers continue to deliver tons of paper to snail mailboxes. It works. People respond. If you want to end spam, you need to convince people to ignore it. As soon as the response rate drops to zero, the spammers will stop. Until then, nothing else can do anything but harm the innocent.

Mr. Gilmore pays Verio for a million bits a second of bandwidth. If he wastes that bandwidth by allowing spammers to use his sendmail port, that's his problem, not yours.

Bill St. Clair bill@billstclair.com

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