[ppml] Last Call for Comment: Policy Proposal 2002-6 GETTING OFF BLOCKLISTS

[Dr. Jeffrey Race]

On Thu, 14 Nov 2002 18:50:11 -0800, Jill Kulpinski wrote:

>how do i take action against people who don't respond? 

You can't.   Mail servers are private property.   The owner of the
mail server can establish any rules for its use, so long as announced
to users of the service (for a public service).  LOTS of ISPs get
competitive advantage by using blocklists and telling potential
customers that they will not receive spam from polluted IP address
space (everywhere in China, Hinet in Taiwan etc)

 i am very pro-active in 
>making sure our resources are used appropriately, but how do you tell 
someone 
>they are not allowed to post a listing,

You can't tell someone not to post what he wants.  Many blocklists
are non-commercial, volunteer efforts.  This point recently was
ventilated in a thread on Spam-L (which you might like to join to
access the world's REAL experts on spam prevention and eradication).
The creator of the blocklist announces that it is his PRIVATE 
blocklist, which anyone is free to use.   It is legally unchallengeable.

 they need to change their listing, or also...
>force people to not use these blacklists? 

You can't for reasons stated above.

The only solution is to stop the pollution.   Then there is no
need for anti-pollution remedies.

All that said, most of the blocklists provide data on the offensive
activities and the managers will amend the list if evidence is shown
that the anti-social activities  have ceased definitively.  They 
would obviously wait a long time before believing claims of virtue
from serial offenders like C&W or UUNet (US side--the European side
of UU is very good).

Don't fight the blocklists; they are the only thing now allowing
e-mail to remain viable for many users.   Therefore they are a
Good Thing.   What we want is for responsible bodies (fill in name
of you favorite RIR) to act so
the blocklist fill trends to zero, or anyway epsilon.

Jeffrey Race