On 01/27/03, "Michael A. Atkinson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I'll try not to reminisce about The Old Internet any more on this forum, but I
> remember a time when spammers were disconnected on the first offense almost
> everywhere on the planet.
Hmm, I don't remember that. What I remember from the early days
of spam (let's say 1993 to 1996) was that most ISP's, businesses,
or educational institutions didn't have policies about spam yet.
Some sysadmins could still get away with the old "piss me off and
you lose your account" rule, but larger providers and businesses
had to answer to lawyers and managers who had basically no
experience with e-mail.
Like many things, this changed around 1996-1997 because that's
when AGIS was backbone for all of the big-time spammers of the
time. After a while, the problem began to get some serious and
sometimes actually well-informed press, so the decision-makers
at every /other/ backbone and ISP came to realize that it was
about damn time they codified their techies' informal policies
into actual contracts.
When even UUnet threatened to cut off peering, AGIS finally
decided to stop pretending that they were a common carrier. But
by then, it was too late -- the spam idea had escaped, and there
were hundreds of unscrupulous people ready to give it a try.
Since then there's been some ebb and flow, and "pink contracts"
were the flavor of the month for a while, but for the most part
there haven't been any major policy changes from ISP's (except
when they fire the abuse department to cut costs.)
--
J.D. Falk "There's pork in the tofu?!"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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