Slower Than You wrote:
> ReverbNation wrote:
>
> [rubbish]
>
> What a bunch of clueless twats.

Actually, as unfashionable as it is, I have some sympathy for his
position. He's not trying to justify opt-out lists - just saying that on
their service the ultimate responsibility for maintaining legitimate
opt-in lists lies with the bands.

A small part of my day job as a web developer involves me creating
systems that allow our clients to send out mass-mailings to mailing
lists that they themselves have provided. We take it on trust that those
mailing lists are legitimate; we just provide one bit of their IT
infrastructure, we don't have control over their contact database. (As
it happens, it's not unknown for one of our clients to screw up and send
email to someone they shouldn't - usually out of incompetence rather
than malice - and when that happens they suffer the consequences, such
as being blocked by entire ISPs. If it ever emerged that one of our
clients was doing this deliberately, you can be sure we'd drop them in a
heartbeat. Just like these guys claim to have done in fact.)

As such, there's not an awful lot of difference between what we're
doing, or what Doubleclick or Campaign Monitor or Hotmail or Gmail are
doing, and what ReverbNation are doing, except that a) our clients are
generally established organisations with a reputation to protect, as
opposed to emo kids with guitars and oversized egos, and b) we don't
splash our own name over the emails as prominently as they (apparently)
do. Which means that they're somewhat more likely to come under fire for
this than we are, but there's nothing fundamentally wrong with the way
they're running things.

On Jun 19, 3:23 pm, Scribbler wrote:
> That's not bad actually. I didn't get any interesting Xmas Spam. Just the
> usual rubbish selling watches and vgriaigra, whatever that is...

I keep getting spammers offering me "rep1 c@s", whatever those are.
Is a rep1 cat cute? Is it cuddly? Does it invariably find the
warmest spot in the room, and curl up to sleep there? I think we need
to be told. :-)

One spam I've received ('twas already flagged as such) was from the
"Classmates support center"[sic] inviting me to a so-called "class
reunion". The trouble being, of course, that I've never been in (or
anywhere near) any class where such spellings as "center" was
used. :-)

Slower Than You wrote:
> You allow other organisations to send e-mail from your domain and/or
> via your SMTP servers? If so, then I'd say the responsibility for
> ensuring the e-mail is legit rests very firmly on your company's
> shoulders.

Generally I'd agree, but there's a limit to how far you can take that...
we can't vet every email that goes out, any more than your average
consumer ISP could. Yes, it is every service provider's responsibility
to put an adequate amount of resources into dealing with spam - in our
case I think I can justifiably say that it's less of an issue given the
nature of the work we do and the clients we work with (we aren't a
consumer-facing ISP) but if what this guy says is true, then it sounds
like they aren't shirking from their responsibilities either.

> If I received spam from one of your customers from your SMTP servers,
> bearing your domain name, and I decided to get arsey about it
> (unlikely, as it would probably be lost in the 300-odd other bits of
> spam I get every day...) then it'd be your employer I'd be on the phone
> to.

Fair enough - I'd do the same (i.e. contact the ISP, not the advertiser)
if I was in the business of regularly chasing up spammers (which I'm
not, for similar reasons). I imagine that if you were to do so, we'd
take your side when dealing with it, and I'd like to think we'd handle
it well enough that you'd have no reason to refer to us as "clueless twats".

> Whether you handle your responsibilities by some technical means
> (difficult, I would have thought) or contractually (compensation/bad
> will/clean-up clauses in the contract with your customers)

Well, personally I don't have a huge amount of knowledge about what goes
in our contracts, but I assume it's the latter - that would certainly be
in our interest, as well as the internet at large. But even if we didn't
have any formal countermeasures in place and our reaction would be
limited to 'firing' the client in question, I think that's on a par with
how a typical consumer ISP would respond.

Andrew Halliwell wrote:

> Scriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiib!
> Getcher arse in #speccy you.....
> you....
> YOU you...
>
> How DARE you miss my burfday?!!! Git.

Belated happy birthday y'old sod.

cheers,
Dave

Soni tempori elseu romani yeof helsforo nisson ol sefini ill des Fri, 20 Jun
2008 10:53:00 +0100, sefini jorgo geanyet des mani yeof do comp.sys.sinclair,
yawatina tan reek esk dave@webshed.org (Dave The Lurker) fornis do marikano es
bono tan el:

>Andrew Halliwell wrote:
>
>> Scriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiib!
>> Getcher arse in #speccy you.....
>> you....
>> YOU you...
>>
>> How DARE you miss my burfday?!!! Git.
>
>Belated happy birthday y'old sod.

I didn't realise numbers went that high!

deKay
--
Lofi Gaming - http://lofi-gaming.org.uk
Gaming Diary - http://lofi-gaming.org.uk/diary
Blog - http://lofi-gaming.org.uk/blog
My computer runs at 3.5MHz and I'm proud of that

deKay wrote:
>>Andrew Halliwell wrote:
>>
>>> Scriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiib!
>>> Getcher arse in #speccy you.....
>>> you....
>>> YOU you...
>>>
>>> How DARE you miss my burfday?!!! Git.
>>
>>Belated happy birthday y'old sod.
>
> I didn't realise numbers went that high!

Just you wait...
11 years you've got... then you'll be in the same boat I am now.
'course, by then, I'll be in that boat over there...
--
| |What to do if you find yourself stuck in a crack|
| spike1@freenet.co.uk |in the ground beneath a giant boulder, which you|
| |can't move, with no hope of rescue. |
| Andrew Halliwell BSc |Consider how lucky you are that life has been |
| in |good to you so far... |
| Computer Science | -The BOOK, Hitch-hiker's guide to the galaxy.|

Andrew Halliwell wrote in news:evisi5-v2a.ln1
@ponder.sky.com:

> deKay wrote:
>>>Andrew Halliwell wrote:
>>>
>>>> Scriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiib!
>>>> Getcher arse in #speccy you.....
>>>> you....
>>>> YOU you...
>>>>
>>>> How DARE you miss my burfday?!!! Git.
>>>
>>>Belated happy birthday y'old sod.
>>
>> I didn't realise numbers went that high!
>
> Just you wait...
> 11 years you've got... then you'll be in the same boat I am now.
> 'course, by then, I'll be in that boat over there...

.... you mean the boat-shaped old folks' home?

--
http://www.mercuryvapour.co.uk

Matthew Westcott wrote:

> Well, personally I don't have a huge amount of knowledge about what
> goes in our contracts, but I assume it's the latter - that would
> certainly be in our interest, as well as the internet at large. But
> even if we didn't have any formal countermeasures in place and our
> reaction would be limited to 'firing' the client in question, I think
> that's on a par with how a typical consumer ISP would respond.

That probably works okay in your company's scenario, but looking at the
site for ReverbNation suggests they don't charge for their services. So
"firing" users isn't much of a threat. I could sign up, abuse the
service, and if I ultimately get caught, sign up again using a
different email. Even if I was somehow prevented from signing up again
(unlikely, I suspect), it's no great loss. I'm not out of pocket as a
result.

Anyway, although there are more pressing problems in the world than
this, I still say **** 'em. It's their problem to work out a system
that doesn't result in rubbish being spewed into anyone's inbox, and if
they fail to solve that problem then I reserve the right to cop the
right old hump with them. I've got me own problems to deal with...
--
Slower Than You

One thing I'd like to know is why I receive so much spam with the
subject "You look really stupid". As if that's supposed to prompt any
reaction but "it takes one to know one" and clicking Delete.

On Thu, 19 Jun 2008 03:33:15 -0700 (PDT), korax1214@gmail.com wrote:

>On Jun 18, 9:40 pm, ReverbNation wrote:
>
>> Here are some things we don't do.
>
>And if (as was the case as of yesterday) one of the things you don't
>do is confirmed opt-in, and you instead require people to "opt-
>out" [sic] from lists that *they* never joined in the first place,
>then (as already explained, and for the reasons already given) you're
>spammers.

Another bunch of f***wits to put on your blocklist is Spliff Music,
from which I got my first (and hopefully last) email today. I don't
know if they themselves are directly spamming me, or allowing a third
party to do so by not implementing confirmed-opt-in -- nor, as already
pointed out, do I care, since from my end it comes to the same thing.
--
Zork: one nation, underground, invisible, with loot and adventure for all