Erin Joyce butchered my comments, making me appear to be a spammer/bulk mailer, and to be speaking on behalf of spammer, open-relay maintainers, and commercial speach. I've just sent her and her editor the following response, with a request it be posted as a follow-up to her story.

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Erin:

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I've read your story on the AOL dynamic IP SMTP block. You've badly\r\nmisrepresented my comments, implying that I'm a mass mailer (I'm not), and\r\nthat this is an issue only affecting those who use mail relays or send\r\nlarge quantities of mail (it's not). It is about family, friends, club\r\nmembers, and small businesses being denied email delivery due to the\r\narbitrary and unadvertised discriminatory practices of AOL, breaking norms\r\nof interconnectivity on the Internet, and doing relatively little to\r\neffectively combat spam.

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I'm requesting publication of this letter as a followup to your\r\nessay.

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You quote me saying "AOL is violating a standard of people sending large\r\nquantities of mail". I did not say this. It strongly implies that the\r\n"people sendin large quantities of email" is me -- if there's any truth to\r\nthe comment, it's AOL that is handling large quantities of email\r\non behalf of others, and failing to behave responsibly when changing its\r\nemail policies in ways that have a huge effect on the ability to send email\r\nto AOL accounts. Whom it has failed to inform of its policy changes, which\r\nhave a huge effect on the ability to send mail to AOL accounts. I'm Joe\r\nInternet User: I send personal mail and mailing list messages on a dialy\r\nbasis to friends, family, and associates. Your story paints a deceptive\r\npicture of myself and my statements.

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What I said is that AOL is violating two concepts:

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• That of an open Internet, in which connections between any two points\r\nare not prejudicially refused on arbitrary grounds. The specific words I\r\nused were "AOL is redlining the Internet". The actions AOL is taking to\r\ncombat spam is to refuse service to an entire class of Internet\r\naddresses...with no demonstrated evidence that the addresses in question\r\nare the source of spam. As I told you over the phone this morning, I\r\nchecked the IP address of the sending host in this case, at AOL's\r\nwebsite, AOL reported the address as clean. AOL is blocking an address,\r\nand cannot tell me why.
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• That of managing services on behalf of the 35 million or so AOL\r\ncustomers in a responsible manner. I spoke with my mother (the "AOL\r\nmember" your story mentions me mailing) about this issue Sunday night.\r\nShe was unaware of AOL's policy, and of the fact that my mail to her was\r\nbouncing. I suspect she's highly typical of other AOL customers in this\r\nregard. Several posts to my original Slashdot article indicated that\r\nother individuals, groups (a Rotary club), and small businesses (a\r\nconsultancy pursuing a $50,000 contract) were unable to send mail to AOL\r\ncustomers, customers who were unaware the mail was being blocked. While\r\nspam is annoying, the costs of an individual spam message are low. The\r\ncosts of an undelivered legitimate mail are far, far higher, and AOL's\r\nindiscriminate ban is incurring this cost.
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You also write "[Karsten] said AOL needs to create more effective\r\nfilters for the problem, rather than block groups of e-mail senders who use\r\nrelay channels to send bulk mail."

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Again: this isn't about sending bulk mail. It's about sending\r\nany mail. Sons to mothers. Club members to one another. Businesses\r\nto clients. Friends to friends. That's what AOL is blocking. That is the\r\ncollateral damage AOL is creating. The network addresses AOL is selecting\r\nfor blockage need have no history or indication of use for spam, or even\r\nsolicited bulk mail. As I've said: I checked my own IP address (and not\r\njust at AOL's site). According to the sources I've used, the only thing I'm\r\nguilty of is using a dynamically alloted cable Internet connection. As are\r\nthe others being similarly blocked.

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I acknowledge that spam is a problem. As I mentioned, I receive 20-80\r\nitems daily myself, and have ways to deal with them. There are\r\ntools to make spam manageable, available to both individuals and users. AOL\r\nhas lagged badly among major ISPs in offering useful spam tools to its\r\ncustomers. Doubly ironic as the spam filtering built into the Mozilla /\r\nNetscape Internet application are among the best there are.

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I'm also not against denying access to selected blocks of IP addresses,\r\nif those addresses are directly responsible for spam [RetroEdit: should make clear I'm talking about the administrative block as a whole. Feh, you always find one more thing to change....]. It\r\nmay even be appropriate to block very large swathes of the Internet, if\r\nthere is no meaningful response from the parties administering those\r\nsystems. As a systems and mail administrator, I'm very much aware of the\r\nspam that would issue from Asian addresses, particularly South Korean\r\nprimary and secondary schools following a "wire the classroom" initiative.\r\nFor a long time, complaints to the administrators of such sites would go\r\nunanswered...if you could even identify the responsible party (the Internet\r\nregistry for Asia has been a wretched mess).

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This is not the same as stating that dynamic IP\r\nconnections -- responsible, irresponsible, spam sources, or spanking clean\r\n-- can't send email. Blocking irresponsible or unresponsive netblocks is a\r\nquid pro quo response for careless use (or wanton abuse) of an Internet\r\nresource. Banning a class of network addresses indiscriminately is simply a\r\nform of electronic apartheid, leading to further ghettoization of the\r\nInternet. While some tried and true protocols of an older, kinder, and\r\ngentler Internet may have outlived their usefulness, throwing up\r\nindiscriminate barriars is not the answer.

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Nicholas Graham has not returned my phone call to him placed today. If\r\nhe would care to, I'd be happy to discuss several positive, and globally\r\nuseful steps, AOL could take to improve the spam situation for itself, its\r\ncustomers, and the Internet community as a whole.

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Thank you.

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\r\n--\r\nKarsten M. Self <kmself@ix.netcom.com>        [link|http://kmself.home.netcom.com/|http://kmself.home.netcom.com/]\r\nWhat Part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?\r\nOffice Despot: Office Depot embraces Microsoft XP logo requirement.\r\n[link|http://www.aaxnet.com/editor/edit030.html|http://www.aaxnet.com/editor/edit030.html]\r\n[link|http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=8472|http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=8472]\r\n

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Interesting. It appears [link|http://www.disobey.com/ghostsites/jaysonblair.shtml|Erin Joyce has shared panels with Jayson Blair] (discredited NYTimes reporter). Twice. "The Silicon Alley Beat: Coverage of NY High Tech" and "Silicon Alley Pundits on Parade: Predictions for 2001 "

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When Blair became a "Pundit on Parade", he crossed the line between reporter and reportee. He became part of the story he was covering. No, he wasn't alone in this - the "technology press" has never been known for its adversary practices, because it depends on access to power, or its source of editorial fodder quickly dries up. But it is significant that Blair was so deeply enmeshed in the world he claimed to cover. And it is also significant that this world - the one that Blair came from immediately before he was promoted to covering national stories for the Times was - like an unfortunate chunk of Blair's subsequent reporting - based on total, wishful fantasy. One in which it might be said that "a culture of lies" prevailed.

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Interesting company she keeps.