If you're one of the many many innocent people affected by SPEWS, or even if you're just an anti-SPEWS fanatic, you should visit http://www.antispews.org and register.
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If you're one of the many many innocent people affected by SPEWS, or even if you're just an anti-SPEWS fanatic, you should visit http://www.antispews.org and register.
regged :)
Why do I have a feeling this is Bummer undercover? :D
How droll. There's already a thread marked humor about this site in nanae, in fact.
"Soon, AntiSPEWS will be offering e-mail hosting services..."
Nice of them to announce it so the more diehard people can make plans to dump these puppies into the local denies.
Any sucker who donates money to this newly created, likely unregistered "not-for-profit", please let the rest of us know. There are some 419 spammers who would love to meet you.
Great site!
The following are suggested donations, depending on who you are:
A consumer or average e-mail user:
$10 or more
A small business that is not an ISP:
$100
A medium to large business that is not an ISP:
$500 or more
A small local ISP:
$1,000 or more
A large, national or international ISP:
$10,000 or more
:eek: :eek: :eek:
I too dislike SPEWS and its methods, but I must admit sueing them is rediculous. Do you even know who to sue? What are their names? Maybe you actually do have some names. Even so, what are you going to sue them for? What laws did they break? Again, I agree with your opinions...but I really hope nobody wastes their money on your "legal fees." Please, turn your site into an educational resource, not a hopeless cause.
accepting people's money is not a worthless cause.
Just ask Shawn J White of Cyberwings fame. Although, it would seem that energy is mounting against him legalwise.
-WC-
Also, about the email hosting services - since they are suggesting that they will attempt to work around the bans that SPEWS sets up, wouldn't they then blacklist the Anti-spews mail servers since they are attempting to circumvent previous blacklists?
I agree with no1v2, stick to educating. I think you have a good thing there where people can input their email address, receiver's email address and you send the parties an educational email on why to not use Spews.
As long as the word gets out there about your site anyways.
Good luck-
-Wc-
If this site wishes to be effective, the idea should be to create a list of isps and businesses that use the Spews list. And urge people not to do business with them.
...or if one wishes to remain postive, a list of hosts that do not use it and recommend those hosts.
I suspect that the operator of the work around site intends to prevent being blacklisted through legal challenges. Thus the need for donations to support a legal effort.
Actually, not a bad strategy when you think about it.
If they provide email service to non-spamming hosts who find their IPs blocked by spews' overzealous tactics, there should be no reason to get blocked.Quote:
Originally posted by WildCard
Also, about the email hosting services - since they are suggesting that they will attempt to work around the bans that SPEWS sets up, wouldn't they then blacklist the Anti-spews mail servers since they are attempting to circumvent previous blacklists?
As for bringing legal action against spews, the thought actually has a lot of merit. Their main argument is that they only maintain a list of spamming IP blocks and don't do the actual blocking. A similar type of argument was used by Napster and didn't work very well. Hosts who get listed unfairly and can document monetary losses could possibly sue for actual as well as punitive damages (defamation, etc). The people running Spews are not as immune to legal action as they think.
AntiSPEWS here...thanks for all the feedback and suggestions...let me comment on some of the issues brought up here.
First, why we are asking for donations...this is primarily for ADVERTISING. For example, go to Google and search for "spammers". SPEWS as the premium sponsored link that appears ABOVE the search results. Google offers TWO ads as premium sponsored links, so one of our first goals is to fill that second spot, so that underneath the SPEWS ad will appear our ad, something to the effect of: "Don't use SPEWS - click here to find out why."
We also want to buy keywords through Overture such that when companies/ISPs are looking for methods to fight spam and type in words like "antispam" or "block spam" or "spam fighting", we make sure we leave them with a sickening feeling about SPEWS.
As for legal means, that is a secondary goal right now. We've talked to several lawyers, but we haven't quite found the right one yet. The right one has to be young, energetic, knowledgeable of the problem from technical and business standpoints, and has to be willing to work on contingency. The selling point for the attorney will be that if he/she can help us bring down SPEWS, then he/she will likely gain some fame, and/or notoriety.
So while we say that part of the donations will go towards legal efforts, that's not our primary cause right now.
As for the AntiSPEWS e-mail service...hilda has it right about our plans there.
I like the idea of providing a list of ISPs that use SPEWS so people can avoid those.
For those of you that support us, PLEASE PLEASE register with us just so we know who you are and keep in touch with you:
http://www.antispews.org/donate.asp
This is likely going to be a long, hard, uphill battle, and we need as much support (emotional, financial, psychological, metaphysical...you name it) as we can get. Especially with those bastards flaming us like hell on NANAE.
keep on fighting the good fight, I agree that we should fight agains't spam, but I think we should also fight people who abuse the right to fight spam by nameing every mail that seems out of place, spam
I dont get why spews is so bad? and i dont see what suing them is gunna do?
I don't see how you could sue someone for running a list of what they believe to be spammers. It isn't like they are blocking emails to other people, the people running mail servers are the ones that have the option to block the people on the list or not.
How can they be sued? Quite simply. SPEWS states:
"SPEWS identifies known spammers and spam operations, listing them as soon as they start, sometimes even before they start spamming."
Therefore, the implication is that if you are listed by SPEWS you are a spammer. Nowhere could I find a statement by SPEWS that their list is potentially unreliable, which we all know is absolutely the case.
If someone wants to pursue it, there is legal ground there.