A spam cop goes AWOL

Is what ORBS did really so bad? In essence, ORBS was nothing more than a list of servers that Brown checked and decided to block from connecting with his network -- which is one suggested recipe for spam fighting. Doesn't Brown have the right to protect his network by blocking whomever he wants to? Doesn't he have the right to publish a list of whom he's blocking?

People who rail against Brown are ignoring the implications of their argument, says "Afterburner," manager of the e-mail abuse department for a large ISP. ORBS may have been run "in a particularly unethical way," he says, but that doesn't mean that Brown should be silenced.

Rather, everyone should have "the unfettered right to publish" a blacklist, regardless of how it is organized, he says. Probes don't damage a network, and "nobody is required to use your list if they don't want to," he says. "The situation is somewhat analogous to the idealized free market: If you put out a list that's worth using, people will use it. If you put out a list that is not worth using, people will not use it."

But ORBS doesn't quite fit Afterburner's paraphrase of the libertarian ideal. The list was worth using; blocking the servers ORBS listed cut down on spam. Yet those who used the list as a tool against unwanted e-mail didn't necessarily have to pay the costs, which came in the form of ORBS's probes. In other words, Brown's approach looks a lot like a spammer's: He invaded others' networks without consent, offering benefits without costs.

Even worse, critics argue, Brown went one step further, blocking servers that didn't have open relays, and adding them to a list that he knew would keep traffic from them. There is, for example, the Xtra Mail lawsuit in New Zealand, which Brown's critics say was a direct result of Brown's unethical practices.

Essentially, Brown added Actrix and Xtra Mail's servers to his blacklist after they blocked his probes. He reportedly had no evidence that they used open relays. Actrix and Xtra Mail sued, and on May 24 they won. The New Zealand High Court ordered Brown to remove Xtra Mail's servers from the ORBS database.

Brown then said that he would comply, but he remained unrepentant. "ORBS policy is that if you threaten ORBS you'll be manually listed," he said, according to a story in IDG New Zealand. "Telecom [Actrix and Xtra Mail's parent company] threatened me with legal action for two years."

Those who have tangled with Brown aren't surprised at his stance. And they don't have a problem with his philosophy, or with his argument that he has a right to form a policy and block whomever he wants. They argue, however, that the policy has to be carried out with honesty.

"The list wasn't what it was purported to be," says Oliver, of San Diego. "If you employ a list called the Open Relay Behavior Modification System to protect your server from spam, you expect that list to block open relays and nothing else. But that isn't what you got with ORBS. You got open relays blocked as well as anyone who had attracted the personal enmity of Mr. Brown."

Ultimately, Oliver says, the Net should be glad to see ORBS go because it lacked the basic values of the old Internet -- truth, respect and freedom. "It's extremely dangerous to support the use of a tool when the cost for its use includes the loss of a liberty," he says.

Still, many of Brown's critics argue that ORBS's technology shouldn't go to waste. The list is already mirrored on at least one site, and some predict that another administrator -- someone with a bit more restraint -- will clean it up and maintain it. If he or she does, perhaps that individual, and other technologists, will learn from Brown's mistakes, says Geller at Suespammers.org.

"Any technical endeavor that ignores social aspects is doomed to failure," he says. "It's like making soup without liquid."

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