[brlug-general] Blocking port 25 does not cure spam problems.

[willhill]

Personal insults don't contribute anything useful, Dustin, and you should know 
better.  I sound the way I do because I care about freedom, which is the 
primary attraction of free software.

Your arguments for blocking port 25 are interesting (indeed, I have subscribed 
to your newsletter), but they are your own.  Cox uses other reasons, mostly 
based on the inadequate security of Microsoft operating systems:

http://tinyurl.com/ytjer4

If Cox has greed as a motivator, they don't mention it and I don't think it's 
paid off for them.

Charging different amounts for different bits on the same pipe is both 
technically and morally wrong.  The legal theory of common carriers is 
explained in nauseating detail here:

http://www.cybertelecom.org/notes/common_carrier.htm

but you don't have to delve into laws made for railroads and shipping to 
understand the issues.  When I pay for bandwith, I should be able to use it 
as I chose.  One bit is not different than another.  Cox's business plans 
cost twice as much to start and provide less bandwith than residential plans.  

http://www.coxbusiness.com/pdfs/cbi_gl3p.pdf

Keeping me from using bits that I pay for is just wrong and I don't think it's 
been a commercial success either.  You have showed me cheaper hosting options 
that have better bandwith.

Non free networks will eventually destroy free software because it inhibits 
people's ability to cooperate and share their changes.  If the big ISPs get 
away with this on home networks, it's only a matter of time before they do so 
elsewhere.

Arguments about ISP choice are spurious in the heavily regulated duopoly 
system that's been set up.  The choices are equally non free and Cox, from 
what I've read, is one of the better providers.  The people who set it up did 
not really care about user freedom and the result is something that's 
lurching back to the bad old Ma Bell days.  There are few actual choices here 
in Baton Rouge and fewer in other places.

From a technical standpoint, networks of unequal peers are more expensive and 
less reliable than the internet is designed to be.  

http://www.isen.com/papers/Dawnstupid.html

You really can't have government regulation both ways.  If the public 
servitude is regulated, it needs to serve the public not just the interests 
of a few companies.  As the US falls further behind the rest of the world in 
network performance, it's more apparent that the recent regulatory framework 
has not delivered what it should.  Even Cringely noticed

http://www.newnetworks.com/BroadbandScandalIntro.htm
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070810_002683.html

Freedom, not performance is the metric by which networks need to be judged 
anyway.  A fancy network that does not do what you want is a bad deal at any 
price.  

Others have claimed that packets and frequency hopping obsolete ground lines 
all together and that there's really enough radio frequency spectrum to meet 
everyone's needs if it were not wastefully allocated to ancient broadcast 
methods.

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/06/02/1251233&mode=thread&tid=95

Finally, I would not have a problem with the inadequacies of other people's 
spam filters if I was allowed to run my own mail server.  It may be a tough 
nut for you, Microsoft, AOL and Yahoo to crack, but the free software world 
is bigger than all of that.  Yahoo has a button that promisses to whitelist 
individual senders, but I don't need their help.   This is something most 
modern mail clients can do, with or without some "smart" hosts help.  Don't 
those filters violate your belief in separating services and servers?  Even 
if there is no solution and the internet will never be any better than the M$ 
botnet swamp it is, the freedom to run my own mail server will save me from 
someone else's "tough nut", "I know better than you do" censorship of my 
mail.

If you tell me again that it's right for others to filter my internet 
connection and email, I will tell you the above again.  The more I learn, the 
more the story is the same.

On Sunday 23 September 2007 4:53 pm, Dustin Puryear wrote:
> 2. On the argument that port blocking is similar to censorship or is in
> someway wrong, I disagree. Cox and others offer a business class service
> for more money that does not have these restrictions. I have no issue
> with segmentation of service levels based on price. It's like paying
> more for a car with leather seats. Don't like Cox? Go with AT&T. Don't
> like AT&T? Go with Broadband IP. Don't like Broadband IP? Go with
> <insert the several other choices you do have>.
>
> 3. On the argument that provider-controlled spam filtering is
> censorship, well, frankly, that's just silly. For one thing, offering
> per-user spam filtering control down to the training level is expensive
> in terms of implementation and day-to-day management cost. I HELPED
> BUILD a spam filtering appliance for a vendor as part of a development
> consulting project. Trust me, this is a difficult nut to crack, and a
> generalized spam filter goes a long way toward reducing spam and keeping
> a provider's cost down.