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19 Dec 2010
The Holomaxx case grinds on to its inevitable conclusion, as Microsoft files a motion to dismiss all claims, and a crushing brief explaining why all of Holomaxx's claims are unsupported by facts, specifically contrary to law, internally contradictory, and in a few cases, just stupid. (Those are my words, not theirs, but what else can you call a complaint that Microsoft wasn't authorized to access their own mail servers?) They make reference to many familiar cases, particularly E360 vs. Comcast, which had very similar facts, and which they cite in the first paragraph: As a federal judge recently described a similar e-mail marketing service, "[s]ome, perhaps even a majority in this country, would call it a spammer." I won't go through the brief in detail, but if you're looking for a comprehensive 33 page description of why spam filtering is absolutely, definitely, unarguably, without question, 100% legal, here it is. posted at: 21:42 :: permanent link to this entry :: 1 comments Trackback link is http://www.jl.ly/Email/holo3.trackback 15 Dec 2010
In early November, a hitherto obscure company called Holomaxx filed two lawsuits against Yahoo and Microsoft/Hotmail, complaining that they weren't delivering mail from Holomaxx, and against Return Path and Cisco/Ironport, claiming that they were were falsely defaming Holomaxx as a spammer. As I said at the time, regardless of whether Holomaxx is sending spam, this case is devoid of merit for a variety of reasons. Earlier this week, Holomaxx retreated a little, dismissing the charges against Return Path and Ironport. The court filings are uninformative, one sentence dismissing each defendant without predjudice, which means that they could (in theory at least) sue them again later. Ken Magill noted this first, with a comment from Return Path just saying that they're pleased to be out of the case. Microsoft is supposed to respond on Friday, so assuming they do I'll see if they say anything interesting. posted at: 23:50 :: permanent link to this entry :: 0 comments Trackback link is http://www.jl.ly/Email/holo2.trackback 03 Dec 2010
posted at: 22:23 :: permanent link to this entry :: 4 comments Trackback link is http://www.jl.ly/Internet/donottrack2.trackback 01 Dec 2010
An article in the New York Times reports on FCC Chair Julius Genachowski's plan to regulate ISPs to be "neutral." The text of his speech says: Thus, the proposed framework would prohibit the blocking of lawful content, ... He probably didn't intend to require that all CAN SPAM compliant spam be delivered, but that's what his words mean, since that variety of spam is legal in the U.S. I can't see how the FCC can do this, since there is specific statute law that says that spam blocking is allowed, but it sure will create headaches for ISPs as spammers complain to the FCC about blocking their junk. The Republicans in Congress (not usually my heros) will probably shoot this down, but if it shows any chances of going somewhere, it'll be bad. posted at: 19:22 :: permanent link to this entry :: 2 comments Trackback link is http://www.jl.ly/Internet/genach.trackback 29 Nov 2010
All effective spam filters use DNS blacklists or blocklists, known as DNSBLs. They provide an efficient way to publish sets of IP addresses from which the publisher recommends that mail systems not accept mail. A well run DNSBL can be very effective; the Spamhaus lists typically catch upwards of 80% of incoming spam with a very low error rate. DNSBLs take advantage of the existing DNS infrastructure to do fast, efficient lookups. A DNS lookup typically goes through three computers, like this:  posted at: 00:10 :: permanent link to this entry :: 3 comments Trackback link is http://www.jl.ly/Email/v6bl.trackback 17 Nov 2010
Last week I blogged about Melaleuca v. Hansen, a CAN SPAM case that was recently decided by an Idaho court. This week, they're back with a new case that is almost identical to the last one. Last time, the court decided, among other things, that Melaleuca didn't have standing to sue because it contracts its mail service to an ISP called IP Applications, the ISP assigned its CAN SPAM clains to Melaleuca, but not until after filing suit, which the judge said was too late. This time, the claims are assigned before the suit started, so that particular defect is fixed, but all the other problems with the suit remain, most notably the absurd 9th Circuit rule that plaintiffs show specific harm from the specific messages they're suing about. The only interesting bit of this case is the question whether the ISP can assign its CAN SPAM claims to someone else, which I believe has never come up before. I fear this may be another Gordon, a case with lousy facts that sets a precedent putting yet another needless hurdle in the way of subsequent reasonable CAN SPAM cases. Venkat has a longer take on this suit, with comments about the procedural as well as substantive problems this suit has. posted at: 17:08 :: permanent link to this entry :: 0 comments Trackback link is http://www.jl.ly/Email/mela2.trackback 09 Nov 2010
posted at: 22:47 :: permanent link to this entry :: 5 comments Trackback link is http://www.jl.ly/Email/equispam.trackback 08 Nov 2010
posted at: 23:43 :: permanent link to this entry :: 1 comments Trackback link is http://www.jl.ly/Email/melaleuca.trackback 05 Nov 2010
posted at: 00:29 :: permanent link to this entry :: 0 comments Trackback link is http://www.jl.ly/Email/holomaxx.trackback 02 Nov 2010
Today's post on the CAUCE website lays out the reasons that spam is a real problem. It's not the annoyance of unwanted mail, it's the serious crime of which that mail is only a part. (Kudos to Neil Schwartzman and JD Falk for writing it so clearly.) posted at: 11:30 :: permanent link to this entry :: 0 comments Trackback link is http://www.jl.ly/Email/whyspamisbad.trackback 27 Oct 2010
posted at: 23:35 :: permanent link to this entry :: 0 comments Trackback link is http://www.jl.ly/Email/epend.trackback 20 Oct 2010
About a month ago I reported a domain to ICANN which has the most completely bogus WHOIS non-information I've ever seen. On Monday they sent me this message. Take a look at the WHOIS info in the message, which is exactly the same as it was when I reported it. I realize that doing a good job of compliance is hard, but really, we have computers. If Knujon can recognize obviously wrong WHOIS info, why can't ICANN?posted at: 22:53 :: permanent link to this entry :: 3 comments Trackback link is http://www.jl.ly/ICANN/notcompliant.trackback 09 Oct 2010
posted at: 17:00 :: permanent link to this entry :: 0 comments Trackback link is http://www.jl.ly/ICANN/vblue.trackback 03 Oct 2010
posted at: 00:16 :: permanent link to this entry :: 1 comments Trackback link is http://www.jl.ly/Email/lawyermail.trackback 27 Sep 2010
For several months I have been working with the Spamhaus project on a whitelist, which we announced to the public today. While this is hardly the first mail whitelist, our goals are somewhat different from other whitelists. Think of e-mail as ranging from inky black to pearly white, like this:  posted at: 15:22 :: permanent link to this entry :: 0 comments Trackback link is http://www.jl.ly/Email/whitelist.trackback 17 Sep 2010
I'm working on a project to build a high quality online spam law archive. Finding the statutes is easy enough, but in the US you need case law as well. So what are the most important spam related court decisions? Ones that occur to me include:
What else should I include? posted at: 22:18 :: permanent link to this entry :: 4 comments Trackback link is http://www.jl.ly/Email/spamcases.trackback 13 Sep 2010
posted at: 15:19 :: permanent link to this entry :: 0 comments Trackback link is http://www.jl.ly/Copyright_Law/not1st.trackback 01 Sep 2010
When a user of a large mail system such as AOL, Yahoo, or Hotmail reports a message as junk or spam, one of the things the system does is to look at the source of the message and see if the source is one that has a feedback loop (FBL) agreement with the mail system. If so, it sends a copy of the message back to the source, so they can take appropriate action, for some version of appropriate. For several years, ARF, Abuse Reporting Format, has been the de-facto standard form that large mail systems use to exchange FBL reports about user mail complaints. Until now, the only documentation for ARF was a draft spec originally written Yakov Shafranovich in 2005, and occasionally updated originally by him and later by other people including myself. Earlier this year, the IETF chartered a working group called MARF which took that draft, brought the references up to date, stripped out a lot of options that seemed useful five years ago but in practice nobody ever used, and this week it was finally published as RFC 5965.posted at: 11:06 :: permanent link to this entry :: 2 comments Trackback link is http://www.jl.ly/Email/arfstd.trackback 29 Aug 2010
Here's the body of a phish purporting to tell me about a $386 refund from the Canada Revenue Agency. Even disregarding the signature that says Internal Revenue Service, check out that alt text and file name for the image. After the last annual calculations of your fiscal activity we have determined that you are eligible to receive a tax refund of $386.00 Please submit the tax refund request and allow us 6-9 days in order to process it. <br /> <br /> A refund can be delayed for a variety of reasons. For example submitting invalid records or applying after the deadline. <br /> <img height="340" alt="Fake CRA site" src="http://video.itworldcanada.com/ITBUimages/Jan19/fake_cra.jpg" width="450" /><br /> To access the form for your tax refund, please <U><a href="URL of phish site">click here</a></U> <br /> <br /> Regards, <br /> Internal Revenue Service posted at: 18:55 :: permanent link to this entry :: 1 comments Trackback link is http://www.jl.ly/Email/truespam.trackback 09 Aug 2010
posted at: 23:48 :: permanent link to this entry :: 1 comments Trackback link is http://www.jl.ly/Email/googvz.trackback 01 Aug 2010
In a recent article, I read about increasingly intrusive tracking of online users, which has lead to a proposal at the FTC FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz said the system would be similar to the Do-Not-Call registry that enables consumers to shield their phone numbers from telemarketers.Maybe I'm dense, but even if this weren't a fundamentally bad idea for policy reasons, I don't see how it could work. posted at: 19:26 :: permanent link to this entry :: 1 comments Trackback link is http://www.jl.ly/donottrack.trackback 27 Jul 2010
posted at: 22:58 :: permanent link to this entry :: 0 comments Trackback link is http://www.jl.ly/Copyright_Law/jailbreak.trackback 14 Jul 2010
posted at: 23:37 :: permanent link to this entry :: 4 comments Trackback link is http://www.jl.ly/Email/she360again.trackback 12 Jul 2010
A friend of mine wrote to ask: The Supreme Court overturned the Jaynes conviction on First Amendment grounds, yes? I'm wondering what that could mean from the spam filtering perspective.Spam filters, and in particular DNS blacklists are intended to prevent e-mail from being delivered. Doesn't the First Amendment make it illegal to block speech? The short answer is no, but of course it's slightly more complicated than that in practice. posted at: 03:07 :: permanent link to this entry :: 0 comments Trackback link is http://www.jl.ly/Email/filter1st.trackback 26 Jun 2010
At Friday's meeting of the ICANN board in Brussels, they voted, probably for the last time, to approve the 2004 application for the .XXX domain. Purely on the merits, there is of course no need for a top level domain for porn. This isn't about the merits, this is about whether ICANN follows its own rules. Despite overheated press reports, .XXX will not make porn any more available online than it already is (how could it?), there is no chance of all porn being forced into .XXX (that's a non-starter under US law), and .XXX will have no effect on the net other than perhaps being a place to put legal but socially marginal porn far away from any accidental visitors.posted at: 01:50 :: permanent link to this entry :: 1 comments Trackback link is http://www.jl.ly/ICANN/xxxok.trackback 06 Jun 2010
Affiliate marketing is a popular way to advertise on the Net. A company signs up affiliates, or more often an intermediary that signs up the affiliates, and pays for each lead or each sale. Web affiliate marketing is fairly respectable (check out my Amazon affiliate store and the links on my airline ticket web site) but mail affiliates, particularly mail affiliates through intermediaries, are a cesspit. While there are doubtless mail affiliates that behave themselves, there are far too many of them that sign up and spam like crazy on the somewhat accurate theory that the more spam they send, the more responses they will get and the more leads they'll have to sell, with the only downside being that they might have a cheap hosting account cancelled. The marketers and intermediaries invariably make the affiliates promise not to spam, but since they don't know what addresses the affiliates are mailing to, and see only the leads and (maybe) the occasional complaint from recipients of the ads, it's extremely difficult to monitor what the affiliates are doing. Moreover, it is very hard to build a substantial true opt-in mailing list, and if you have a good list, its value for your own business is too great to be worth annoying the people on it by sending third-party ads. Hence affiliates have to use lousy lists, such as purchased lists of dubious provenance, addresses mechanically scraped off web sites. It's an open secret in the business that the business is full of sleazeballs who will cheerfully do things like using a suppression list provided by marketer A as a prospect list for marketer B. With this in mind, does a marketer bear responsibility under CAN SPAM for mail that affiliates send? The answer, both from the wording of CAN SPAM and from simple logic, should be of course it does, but the sad tale of ASIS vs. Azoogle suggests that judges think it doesn't, at least not in the Ninth Circuit.posted at: 00:52 :: permanent link to this entry :: 0 comments Trackback link is http://www.jl.ly/Email/asisaff.trackback 22 May 2010
posted at: 01:02 :: permanent link to this entry :: 0 comments Trackback link is http://www.jl.ly/Internet/vrsnssl.trackback 16 May 2010
posted at: 01:29 :: permanent link to this entry :: 0 comments Trackback link is http://www.jl.ly/Copyright_Law/pileon.trackback 15 May 2010
posted at: 01:44 :: permanent link to this entry :: 7 comments Trackback link is http://www.jl.ly/Email/consumer.trackback 14 May 2010
In our last installment we learned that most of the cost of a paper book is in spent the editorial process, not the physical printing and binding, so even though e-books cost nothing to produce physically, the cost to the publisher is nearly the same, so they can't afford to sell them for much less than paper books. Today we'll look at the reasons that, even though they have some undeniable advantages, e-books are worth a lot less to book buyers than paper books. Assuming you already have a reading device like a Kindle, an iPad, or a Sony reader, you can store hundreds of e-books in it. In some cases you can share the books, along with your bookmarks and notes between devices, e.g., a Kindle and an iTouch or Blackberry running the Kindle app. The problem is that the "book" you buy to read on your device is not really a book, it's what publishers wish books were.posted at: 01:19 :: permanent link to this entry :: 0 comments Trackback link is http://www.jl.ly/Copyright_Law/ebook2.trackback 11 May 2010
For us authors who have been writing paper books, e-books are the savior of the industry, or a a disastrous pact with the devil, or maybe both at the same time. The splashy launch of the Apple iPad, of which there are now over a million in users' hands, has coincided with a power struggle among Amazon, whose Kindle makes them the dominant retailer of e-books, Apple, who wants to muscle in using the iPad, and the major book publishers. Google also plans to enter the market this summer through their Google Editions store, selling copies of many of the books they've scanned in Google Books. There are two main problems with the e-book market--e-books are not much cheaper for a publisher to produce than paper books, but they are for the buyer a far inferior product.posted at: 00:15 :: permanent link to this entry :: 0 comments Trackback link is http://www.jl.ly/Copyright_Law/ebook.trackback 08 May 2010
Way back in 2004, ICANN invited applications for a round of new TLDs. They got quite a few. Some were uncontroversial, such as .JOBS for the HR industry. Some were uncontroversial but took a long time, such as .POST which took five years of negotiation, entirely due to the legal peculiarities of the registry being part of the UN. But one was really controversial, .XXX. By 2005, the applicant, ICM registry, had satisfied all the criteria that ICANN set out in the 2004 round to get .XXX approved, and ICANN has been stalling them ever since, including an ICANN board vote against approval in 2007. Most recently, ICM used a reconsideration process specified in ICANN's bylaws to review the board's actions, and the report not surprisingly said that ICM had followed all the rules, and the board had not. Before discussing what the issue with .XXX is, here are some things that the issue isn't.posted at: 01:30 :: permanent link to this entry :: 0 comments Trackback link is http://www.jl.ly/ICANN/dotxxx.trackback 06 May 2010
posted at: 01:30 :: permanent link to this entry :: 3 comments Trackback link is http://www.jl.ly/Email/spamsuits.trackback 21 Apr 2010
posted at: 00:40 :: permanent link to this entry :: 3 comments Trackback link is http://www.jl.ly/Email/moreport.trackback 14 Apr 2010
posted at: 01:14 :: permanent link to this entry :: 0 comments Trackback link is http://www.jl.ly/Email/peacespam.trackback 22 Mar 2010
posted at: 15:53 :: permanent link to this entry :: 1 comments Trackback link is http://www.jl.ly/Email/infousa.trackback 06 Mar 2010
posted at: 01:02 :: permanent link to this entry :: 2 comments Trackback link is http://www.jl.ly/Email/mailport.trackback 25 Feb 2010
A recent online article in BtoB magazine about Sending e-mail when you don't have an opt-in has caused quite a stir in the online marketing and anti-spam community, but perhaps not for the reasons the author hoped. The article is about a company called Netprospex which sells and trades contact lists, for the specific purpose of marketing. Other people have noted that buying a list from them and mailing to it is a quick route to getting yourself booted off your provider, but I was idly wondering, since single messages to real people are generally OK, if their individual contacts were useful.posted at: 20:56 :: permanent link to this entry :: 1 comments Trackback link is http://www.jl.ly/Email/oojunk.trackback 16 Feb 2010
Law and policy professor David Post's book In Search of Jefferson's Moose looks at the growth of the Internet, using some aspects of the early history of the American republic as a metaphor. It received a lot of positive reviews when it came out last year. I read it, and was surprised to find that the reviews all missed a critical detail: most of what he says about the Internet is just plain factually wrong, which discredits all his conclusions. You can read my full review here with the dismaying details. posted at: 19:26 :: permanent link to this entry :: 3 comments Trackback link is http://www.jl.ly/ICANN/moose.trackback 15 Feb 2010
For the past couple of months, I've been trying an experiment in which I deposit "payment checks" from my credit card in my savings account, then pay off the account when the bill comes so I collect the savings interest. But not any more. On Feb 4th, I paid the balance from last time, and on Feb 5th, Capital One's web site said my balance was zero and I had lots of credit. So on the 8th, the next time I was at the bank, I deposited this month's payment check. On the 11th Capital One bounced it. Huh?posted at: 17:54 :: permanent link to this entry :: 3 comments Trackback link is http://www.jl.ly/Money/freelast.trackback 28 Jan 2010
Capital One sent me some "payment checks" which give a grace period just like a credit card charge, so I deposited a couple in my savings account to collect the interest. Earlier this month I paid my bill electronically the day before the due date, and once I saw it had posted on their site, I wrote myself another check and deposited it in the bank. Payment and deposit posted at the bank on the same day, so I'm earning my 1.35% APY uninterrupted. When this month's bill arrived, there were three more payment checks in the envelope with it, and in the same day's mail was a little booklet with three more, just in case. I guess they really want to lend me money at 0% interest. In the meantime, I've been pondering how to best pay my taxes. Since I'm self-employed my income varies a lot from year to year, and this year I'll have a large payment due in April. I could write them a check, but what fun would that be? You can pay your taxes with plastic through three providers who have arrangements with the IRS. Since the IRS won't pay a merchant fee, they all charge extra. If you use a credit card, they charge 1.95% or 2.35%, much more than any plausible card rebate. But if you pay with a debit card, there's a flat fee of about $4. One bank I use now offers reward points on debit card payments. It's not a lot, one point per $2 with a point being worth about a penny, but a payment of $800 would earn more than $4 of points, and my tax bill will be considerably more than that. Hmmn. posted at: 01:13 :: permanent link to this entry :: 2 comments Trackback link is http://www.jl.ly/Money/freejan.trackback 01 Jan 2010
For the benefit of trademark owners, ICANN has something called the UDRP (Uniform Dispute Resolution Process) that allows the owner to file a complaint against an allegedly infringing domain name, to be resolved by one of a small set of arbitrators. About 90% of UDRP cases that proceeed to a decision are decided in favor of the complainant; opnions differ as to whether that's because of the merit of the complaints or the institutional bias of the arbitrators. Google files lots of UDRP complaints. One arbitrator is the World International Property Organization in Geneva. In 2009 they decided all of their Google cases in Google's favor: googlemapsargentina.com, googleinstores.com, adsgoogle.net, google4people.net, googblog.com, mygooglemoney.com, and googlehrd.com.posted at: 22:51 :: permanent link to this entry :: 1 comments Trackback link is http://www.jl.ly/ICANN/groovle.trackback |
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