Date: Sat, 09 Jul 2005 14:07:54 +0200
From: Brian E Carpenter 
To: Dean Anderson 
Cc: Theodore Ts'o ,
     JORDI PALET MARTINEZ 
Subject: Re: I'm not going to listen to this any more.

Ted is talking about your logic, not your facts.

    Brian

Dean Anderson wrote:
> Ted, you still have your facts wrong.
>
> Your analysis is therefore incorrect as well.
>
>               --Dean
>
> On Wed, 6 Jul 2005, Theodore Ts'o wrote:
>
>
>>Dean,
>>
>>Let me try to break it down for you:
>>
>>X = "Many ISP's address blocks were labelled as spammers by
>>      a few spam-blocking lists (one in particular at issue for one
>>      particular defamation lawsuit) in an effort to pressure some ISP's
>>      to change their business practices"
>>
>>Y = "Open Relays are a source for much spam"
>>
>>You are asserting that:
>>
>>1)  One person lost a civil suit for X.
>>
>>2)  This person therefore asserted X falsely (and maliciously), and so
>>      is a "court-proven liar".
>>
>>3) This "court-proven liar" also believes Y.  (Which you've never
>>      proved, but OK, it seems likely).
>>
>>4) One or more people on the IETF list has also asserted Y.  (During
>>      the discussion of E-mail Submission Between Independent
>>      Networks I-D).
>>
>>5) These people must also believe X is a good thing, and are therefore
>>      in the set of "court-proven liars".
>>
>>6)  Therefore, Y is false.
>>
>>To see why your logical reasoning doesn't make any sense, try
>>replacing Y with "The sky is blue".
>>
>>In any case, you keep talking about IETF "associating with
>>court-proven liars", when at best all you can show is that there are
>>some people in the IETF that have made assertions that also happen to
>>align with statements made by various extreme elements of the
>>anti-SPAM crowd.  That is a very strange definition of "associating
>>with".  There are many people who are trying to prevent Spam on the
>>Internet, using a wide variety of tactics.  To say that all anti-spam
>>folks would condone the practices that were at issue at that
>>particular defamation lawsuit is not fair, not true, and not logical.
>>
>>But all of this is beside the point.  Your e-mail postings have
>>wandered so far afield from the original message chain regarding a
>>particular I-D, and far afield from the IETF mailing list charter,
>>which is why I issued you the warning.
>>
>>But I will suggest to you, outside of my scope as a mailing list
>>sargeant-at-arms, that if your goal is to convince people, that toning
>>down your rhetoric and attacking the position rather than the person,
>>then you will be much more effective at trying to pursuade people to
>>see your point of view.
>>
>>For example, if you had said that, "nonsense, I set up an open relay
>>and I didn't notice any spammers using the open relay", at least that
>>would be something that could be discussed in a rational fashion.  I
>>would have trouble beliving such a statement, given that my mailer
>>logs show a huge number of spammers constantly trying to "knock at the
>>door" and relay spam through my mailer (to non-existant e-mail
>>addresses, to mailing lists, and out-and-out attempts to relay mail to
>>users at other hosts), but at least we could have a technical
>>discussion about whether or not my experience was typical or not.
>>Instead, you go off on your riff about court-proven liars, which is
>>simply not helpful to anyone, least of all to the argument that you
>>were trying to make.
>>
>>Regards,
>>
>>                                              - Ted
>>
>>
>
>