Battleangel

A while back I considered what the new so called child porn filters would accomplish and what the real motives behind them may be. See Self-proclaimed censors … [#828 2004-01-30] and Censorphilia [#1453 2005-05-05] …

Now it came to my attention that the US Federal Trade Commission has moved on spam and so called Zombie machines. Sound good doesn’t it? Well, not really, and here is why …

One of the prime targets for the worm makers nowadays is to get malicious code installed on vulnerable systems to get them under control. This way they manage to convert thousands of workstations around the world as zombie computers which can be used to do anything and that includes sending out spam mails and increasing the traffic on the network clogging the Internet.

However, the latest news in is that the United States Federal Trade Commission is now targeting these machines to get off the Internet to retain sanity on the net. They want the ISPs to disconnect systems infected by these worms from their networks until the time the users fix their computers. For this, they have conveyed their message to around 3000 ISPs around the world!

They have also suggested the ISPs to get the users to send mails through their own mail servers so that they can install the required applications on the gateways itself to check for suspicious activities. This would however not be liked by many users on their networks.

Source: TechWhack News

Seems foolish to argue against that doesn’t it? It’s a bit like making a case against fluffy bunnies, fresh air, sunshine and desserts. But like child pornography it does little to solve the problem, if it is indeed a problem. Spam probably is. But there surely are ways around spam. Instead of just disconnecting users that may or may not be zombie machines.

The most recent story of how the efforts to stop spam spill over on regular, honest users comes from Shel Holtz … and what he calls the Irrational Blacklisting of Blogs by Unaccountable Entities:

Neville and I were copied on an email from Steve O’Keefe over at the IAOC in which he said he tried sending out the association’s newsletter but it kept bouncing back.

The reason, he learned, was the URL for our podcast, “For Immediate Release.” The URL was in the body of the message, but the mail server at the IAOC’s Internet Service Provider wouldn’t let the email go through as long as our URL was included. We were, it turns out, on a couple of blacklists.

Source: Webpronews

It should be noted that even after sorting out the issue, which took a “flurry” of emails, the owner of SURBL said that “he’d feel better about whitelisting us if we had spam policies on our sites.” Here it’s quite easy to see the desired effects of SPAM policy. Namely to break up the informal social network that exists between blogs.

“For Immediate Release” went on to add an email policy, which they formulated like this:

Our email policy is simple. We send no email, so you’ll never receive any from us. Not spam, not a personal note, nothing. We receive listener comments at this domain, but we both use our personal email accounts when we reply. The only thing to subscribe to here is the RSS feed. Visit our site without worry. We’re email free.

But they deplore that sites and blogs should be penalized for something in which they have no part. The possibilities for crippling dissent and censoring the internet are endless. And that is precisely why such measures are being touted. Sure, they could think of something else. But it’s not just SPAM they want to undercut, but free speech.

SPAM block lookup in case anyone is wondering:
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