Date: Fri, 8 Jul 2005 10:02:01 -0400 (EDT)
From: Dean Anderson 
To: Theodore Ts'o 
Cc: Brian E Carpenter ,
     JORDI PALET MARTINEZ 
Subject: Re: I'm not going to listen to this any more.

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
>
>

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