Jonathan Kamens and Osirusoft spam blacklist
I just saw a fascinating thread about "Jonathan Kamens and osirusoft".
It seems that Jonathan Kamens remains personally spam-blacklisted, on relays.osirusoft.com and spamsources.relays.osirusoft.com. This started from when he was working for an employer with bad e-mail practices (worldwinner.com), but he no longer works for them. Yet the blacklisting continues.
Amazing commentary:
By Seth Finkelstein | posted in spam | on July 05, 2003 11:58 PM (Infothought permalink) | FollowupsI used to maintain exactly the position that you're maintaining -- that the block-list maintainers are reasonable people and that entries in block-lists are usually removed quickly when they are shown to be in error or when the blocked parties show that they have taken steps to address the problems. When I heard people complain about being blocked inappropriately, I'd tell them to go make their case in news.admin.net-abuse.email and, if they were right, the problem would be solved. I no longer believe that.
A couple of comments. First, people extrapolate from this one incident to make generalizations about blocking lists. If so, they'd be drawing very wrong conclusions about lists such as SBL or Blitzed OPM.
Second, from reading the linked news articles, I'm having difficulty working up a lot of indignation. Seems like a bunch of people were acting like dicks here.
Finally, I hope you recognize the right of people to publish (non-defamatory) information, regardless of its stupidity. I think Joe can do whatever he wants to do with his block list. I can (and do) choose not to use it. (I do think it's a good idea to publicize questionable list policies so that people can better make those decisions.)
Some time back, I blogged an article on the topic of bad block list policies.
It's relevant that he contacted Joe Jared from his
personal address
after finding his work address blacklisted. The response was to
blacklist his personal address as a "nitwit spammer"! What is someone
to do?
This isn't one of the one-spammer-poisons-a-netblock cases. Rather,
it seems just plain spiteful. And months later, after he's left the
company, how can it be justified?
It's not about whether it's legal to be spiteful with
blacklists. What bothers me in part is the process of how it happens,
and the easy to abuse power placed in someone's hands.