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by Richard Deadwood
read Senate Bill 1618

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FOLLOW UP: Who's Got Your Mail?  or Why MAPS-RSS and ORBS Are A Bad Idea After writing the original article I had a friend, who is an email admin speak gently to me about the err of my ways. As a result I have altered my view, but only slightly.

Richard Deadwood

If you have ever had email disappear you know how frustrating, and possibly embarrassing, it can be (but I sent it to you last week). It's not your fault that your service provider had an open relay, or that they were blacklisted, but you are the one who suffers because of it. 

I still see this as an effort by LARGE ISPs to force small independent service providers out of the market. By blacklisting a provider and making it difficult, if not impossible, for their clients to exchange email with the rest of the world, the big guys can exert undue and undeserved pressure on the small guys to either "do it our way" or go out of business. I think that's the sort of thing Theodore Roosevelt busted the trusts for at the turn of the century. This is not too different a situation. 

Having said that I do understand WHY the big guys are taking this action. Partly because they can, but also because SPAM (Unauthorized use of email servers) has become an epidemic. In all fairness to the block lists they do not actually block traffic. They do however provide the mechanism by which traffic is blocked. It's more like guilt by association.  

In my first article I said, "these bandwidth terrorists have decided to decide for everyone that certain segments of the internet community don't deserve to have access, either because they engage in mass email marketing, or they relay any email that crosses their network. This "denial of service" is most often done without the consent or knowledge of the network users." While this is basically true I have decided to make a distinction, between mass email marketing and SPAM, that seems to elude most network administrators.

Before you say, "Hey that's cool! They're stopping junk e-mail." Take a moment to consider the damage they are causing you and everyone who participates in email marketing.

Theft of Service or Legitimate Usage?

There is a difference between stealing the use of a server to spew junk mail and sending email to potential clients. If a company decides to purchase the use of an email server to send out email to promote their product or service they have legitimately acquired use of the network and servers (ISPs do this all the time, they call it providing "information"). This is completely different from hijacking an unsuspecting company's email server to send junk using false header info, false return addresses, false to: addresses, non-functional remove lists, etc. 

However, ISPs and block lists do not make this distinction. If someone decides to complain about email they received, regardless of the legitimacy of the business sending it or that the email has valid headers, return, to, addresses and a valid remove mechanism, the address of the sending server may be added to the block list. I believe this is the error and weakness of block lists, they unfairly restrict legitimate email traffic and commerce based on possibly unsubstantiated accusations.

Culture of Openness - Finding the Right Information

There is an ever increasing number of small businesses that manage their own internet domains, who either don't have the resources or knowledge to police the email passing through their network. In addition, the information that's available on how to stop unwanted relays or to secure a server against hijacking, while plentiful, is not always helpful. My friend told me that he spent two months pouring over knowledge base articles, and help files trying to find the information he needed to secure his company's email servers. He's an experienced network admin and it took a long time for him to discover the fix, no wonder there are so many unsecured servers. 

I said before that blocking network traffic will mostly hurt the small guys, and I still believe this is the case. 

Lying Conmen and Rights to Passage - NOT!

The blockers would have you believe that everyone sending promotional email is trying to con you, this is not true. There are legitimate businesses that use email marketing to promote products and services, and as I said before, the ISPs do it all the time.  The problem comes in when some administrators, who were rightfully frustrated with the amount of time they had to devote to fighting unauthorized use of their servers, decided to invent a way to restrict traffic. Blocking open relays was their answer to a very complex problem. It does solve the problem of stopping unauthorized use of a network, but it just creates another problem, it prevents legitimate use of email by businesses with legitimate products and services. I think we can all agree at this point that email marketing isn't going to go away, and that there will ALWAYS be open relay servers available to spammers.  In my opinion the solution to the problem has been way over-reactionary. 

"Are there people who use the internet to con honest folks? Yes there are. Are their crazy people who drive like maniacs on the freeway? We've all had to deal with them. Do all criminals or idiots get caught? No. Blocking internet traffic hurts everyone, just like slamming on your brakes in the middle the freeway."

Commerce is Good

Maybe it's time to take another look at what might be done to accommodate the growing use of email as a legitimate marketing tool. Some have suggested licensing bulk email in the same way that the post office licenses regular bulk mail. You pay a fee and you're allowed to send unsolicited commercial email for a year.

 Establish bulk email rules and let the post office (or SPAM cops) police it. Then if a company doesn't want to receive bulk mail they can filter it based on the rules that have been set up for filtering it. At least this would allow the legitimate use of an incredible marketing medium by legitimate businesses. The post office has rules against mail fraud, there could be similar rules against email scams and such. Seems like a pretty fair way to do it to me. 

Censorship and Free Speech

This is really a non-issue. If someone wants to send you junk for whatever reason they can find a way around the legitimate use of a network and it's servers. Alternatively anyone can find servers outside the US that have no qualms about spoofing IP addresses or compromising your network to get the message through. Blocking legitimate email marketing isn't going to stop the SPAM!

Historical Context of Promotional Email

Originally selling anything on the internet was frowned on. BOY has that changed, although some administrators and academics are stuck in the good ole days. Email is good advertising, whether legitimate or not in it's origin. So rather than fight a rising tide that is sure to wash you away, doesn't it make sense to try and find some sort of anchor to help you manage the flood that is sure to come?

"Good advertising is any advertising that produces more revenue than it costs to generate it. In this regard email is an excellent way to advertise. Small entrepreneurs know it, big businesses know it. If there were no value to anyone in the promotional mail that was being sent the senders would quit sending. People just aren't going to keep pouring money into something that doesn't produce results."

The reason the use of promotional email (and SPAM) is increasing is because it WORKS. Why can't we all just find a way to get along?

Legality of Unsolicited Email - or Blocking It?

It is possible that eventually, various governments will enact laws which will make the sending of unsolicited email less commercially appealing. However, I suggest that it is equally likely that laws will be passed to make it illegal to block legitimate email traffic, commercial or not.

Legality of Black holing

In fairness the block lists do acknowledge that what they are doing may be illegal. They must be thinking about the Sherman Antitrust Act since their actions might be interpreted as a conspiracy in restraint of trade? 

They say they aren't worried because lots of people hate junk email. This may be true, but I suggest that if black holing isn't illegal it should be. Blacklisting was found to be illegal in the 50s and black holing should be illegal now.

The alternative is to find some way to license and police legitimate promotional email. We do need laws that provide penalties for unauthorized use of network resources, not unsolicited commercial email.

So-called remove lists

 They do exist, but it's getting harder and harder to determine if the email you get actually supports removal. I just don't bother and block the sender or add the primary keywords to my filter list. This works pretty well but if promotional emailers had to have some sort of code embedded in the email, or it had to be marked in some way, it would be a lot easier to figure out who the SPAMmers are.

Responsibility for Unsolicited Email

I stick by my previous statements about this. There is a responsibility to secure your network, there is also a responsibility to allow legitimate email to be delivered, regardless of the content. If you are not willing to take responsibility for ensuring the delivery of legitimate email to your users then you shouldn't be permitted to employ the use of block lists. 

What Can I Do?

I think a more responsible approach is to ask our legislators to enact some promotional email guidelines to lower the noise level. Here are a couple of suggestions:

Require any promotional mail to be marked as such. Some states already require this. A couple of states require that promotional email be marked with ADV: in the subject line of unsolicited email. This makes it easy to filter.

Require anyone who is sending bulk email to provide a functional REMOVE mechanism

Require that promotional email contain a legal mailing address and phone number

Require that the senders of promotional email display a registered business name or ID number

Require promotional e-mailers to obtain a bulk email permit similar to bulk-mail permits required by the postal service

I understand and agree that irresponsible and unsolicited email is bothersome, so is having your mail black holed because of someone else's bad behavior or arbitrary decision to do so.

The block lists goal is to shut down unsolicited e-mailers regardless of the content of their messages. This approach treats pleas for donations to charity the same as ads for weight-loss gimmicks. This approach isn't likely to work and the ones most likely to be hurt are the legitimate users. 

As one door shuts another opens. The internet is global, if you ban unsolicited email here the scammers will just move their activities to servers in Canada, or Ecuador, or India. In the mean time there is mass collateral damage to innocent email users whose mail is dumped, and charitable causes who are prohibited from using this tool in an appropriate manner.

It seems to me that enacting legislation to control mass e-mailers is a lot more likely to happen. Let's not forget a lot of these e-mailers are small businesses. Should we restrict their use of promotional email any more than we restrict the use of promotional email by the big companies? Should we put small businesses here in America at a disadvantage by outlawing unsolicited email while other countries permit their small businesses to operate unfettered by such restrictions?

Owning and operating your own business is an American dream that's getting harder and harder to realize. Big businesses always want to reserve the advantages for themselves. I guess that's what big businesses are suppose to do, but black holing email, especially the promotional email of small businesses, will do nothing to stop unscrupulous operators and will take away one more tool the little guy has to level the playing field with big business. 

 Do you really want to take away one of the best tools small businesses have to compete with the big guys? Do you really want to shut the door on your own opportunity to realize your dreams of having your own business someday? Do you really want to allow a few disgruntled techies to control YOUR email? Do you really want to black hole the American dream? I hope not, and if you think about it, trashing your junk email is a small price to pay.

Actually Senate Bill 1618 was never passed into LAW, it was killed before it reached the floor. Regardless, you should take the time to read it there are some good ideas in it. Write your congressman and ask them to help establish guidelines before YOUR mail gets black holed.