[MPlayer-dev-eng] to michael

[Romain Dolbeau]

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.

> 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.
They're no more responsible of the IP traffic than the highway owner are
of the car traffic.

The only solutions to spam is educating the end users. I know it's not
going to happen anytime soon, but as soon as you deny the users a
service on account of spams, the spammers have won and control the
internet. I'm not willing to concede them the war yet.

> > 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.

> 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 ? And why should I gateway
through the crappy, slow, unreliable no-TLS no-SSL server of my ISP ?

> 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.

> 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.

> 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.

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.

> Even that is much better than /dev/null'ing legitimate mail because
> spamassassin classified it wrong. In the latter case, the sender has no
> way of knowing that the mail didn't reach you. In the former, he at least
> has the bounce.

Well, I fully agree that /dev/null'ing is idiotic, and only passing and
bouncing is OK. That's not the point.

-- 
Romain Dolbeau
<romain at dolbeau.org>