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Just back from the peat bogs with a fresh supply of fuel for his steam
turbine, Donovan White  quotes me as having said:

>>         Scripts are available for users to automatically filter their
>> incoming mail and throw away mail from those sites before it reaches
>> their in-boxes.
>
>That seems a reasonable response, although too much on a service-wide
>scale. I'd think the ability for users to create custom filters and to
>download headers before bodies would have been a better solution.
>
        People have always been free to tinker with filter rules, although
it puts the burden on them to determine which sites are "troubled" --
usually by having to receive N letters from a given site and keeping track
of repeats.
        The point Panix was making was that *any* mail from bigprofits.com,
businesslink.net, bulk-e-mail.com or bbbiiizzz.com is by definition spam.
They are rogue sites created specifically to service bulk emailers. A global
filter is exactly what's most appropriate to deal with them, and the
individual is perfectly free not to use it.

>> As an option, Panix will even send mail to
>> postmaster@offending_site informing them that a Panix user (without
>> providing the user's email address) was automatically discarding all mail
>> from their site.
>
>And here it seems that Panix went and started picking fights. With the
>filter, there isn't any offense, so why raise a stink?
>
        I haven't seen the message that Panix sends to rogue sites, but I
would be surprised if it had a "nyah nyah" tone. People spam because they
think it's an effective marketing technique, God help them, and the intent
of the return message was simply to _tell_ them that it's not.

>> [...] It's the worst
>> sustained, targetted denial-of-service attack I've ever heard of.
>
>It may be the worst, but it seems it was asked for. Panix probably would
>have best served its interests if it had just set up its filters and gone
>on about its business. 
>
        Excuse me? If I hang up in the middle of a telephone-solicitation
spiel I should expect that my house to be firebombed?

>>         There could be a zillion "motives" for someone to do this, but
>> conspiracy theorists (and there are many on Panix) are discussing the
>> possibility that it's a retaliatory attack by someone who doesn't like
>> creative -- and effective -- measures against e-mail spam.
>
>A measure that results in a complete shutdown in service isn't what I'd
>call either creative or effective. It's rather more in the grand, old AOL
>tradition of upgrading systems.

        I see. So someone who testifies before a racketeering grand jury and
winds up in cement boots near the Ambrose Lighthouse "shot himself in the
foot" and was stupid enough to get what he asked for.

        Sorry, Donovan. Commercial email spammers are the bottomfeeders of
the Internet. Panix thought up and implemented a creative, voluntary means
by which its customers could deal with their offal, and to register a (mild)
protest against it in the bargain.
        There's no way on God's green earth that what's happening to Panix
is in any way justified by what they did, or that they somehow brought it on
themselves.

==========================================================================
Gordon T. Thompson                                      gordy@nytimes.com
Manager, Internet Services                              212 556 1386
The New York Times                                      fax: 212 556 1636
  The Times and I have an arrangement: Neither of us speaks for the other.

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