----- Original Message -----
From: "Marc Perkel" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Paul Oehler" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Friday, February 28, 2003 1:29 AM
Subject: Re: [Razor-users] Turning Razor into a censorship tool


> My point is - being flagged as spam by razor is like being convicted of
> a crime without and accuser or without evidence.

No it isn't - it is more akin to the 'dob in a dope dealer' where ANYONE can
anonymously phone their local police station and suggest the "Joe Bloggs at
123 somestreet" is selling drugs.

Joe Bloggs could be completetly innocent of this accusation. The police have
no idea who placed the report, so THEY must decide (based on various unknown
factors) whether they should follow up this report or not.

Razor is no different. Anyone can anonymously report any given message as
spam, and the Razor USERS must then decide whether they should followup on
this spam report or not.

> I don't think that
> Razor can determine if they had to - how it is that EFF was censored. I
> am also pointing out that I suspect that Razor doesn't have the ability
> to even know how it is being used/abused

You're right - Razor doesn't know. It has no need to know. It makes no
judgment calls whatsoever.

> and does not give a damn about
> if they are being used as a tool to block free speech.

You're right again -  Just like a Gun doesn't know if it is being used to
kill a bad guy or a good guy.  It is a totally indiscriminate TOOL.

> I use Razor myself as part of spam assassin and it does a good job
> generally when it comes to real spam. But when it comes to free speech
> newsletters it does a very poor job.

First let me state that I have no idea how often an issue of the EFF
newsletter is produced, but for arguments sake, lets say there is one issue
per week.  Now, Razor doesn't block on the senders address, the subject
lines, nor any part of the message itself, so let us assume you send out
THIS weeks issue of the newsletter and someone erroniously reports it is
spam, this will cause THIS WEEKS issue of the newsletter to be flagged by
razor as POSSIBLE spam. Next week you'll be sending out a DIFFERENT
newsletter, and razor will have no record of this so it will be NOT be
flagged as spam, that is, until someone reports it again.
In other words, Razor will NEVER report the *newsletter* itself as spam, it
only has the capability of reporting THE CURRENT ISSUE as spam.

So now you need to ask yourself WHY IS EVERY ISSUE being reported as
possible SPAM? There are only two answers that comes to mind, either one or
more razor users are recieving this newsletter even though they never
requested it (you can do something about this, as it isn't razors problem) -
OR, as you keep hinting, there is at least one razor user that has a
vendetta against EFF to the extent that they are not only a willing
subscriber, but they are also willing to repeatedly report each and every
issue as spam. There is NOTHING that ANYONE can do in a situation like this,
which is why NO spam reporting system is infallible, and why razor USERS
need to make their OWN decision on what to do with any given mail that has
been flagged by Razor..

Rod








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