4 ms·

Am I the only one disgusted by this?

by maaku 13y ago

zo1 13y ago
Nope, we're with you on this one. It's a flat-out money grab. From an institution that we expect to keep the internet running. Great idea, right? You know, instead, they could fix the damn email and content spamming rampantly going on the internet. But no, those things don't give ICANN yearly profits. I guess they fail to realize that spam-detection is one of the main things behind Gmail's phenomenal success since its inception.
- icebraining 13y ago
  You know, instead, they could fix the damn email and content spamming rampantly going on the internet. How exactly could they achieve that?
  - zo1 13y ago
    First they could start by revoking domain ownership if spam comes from there. If it keeps persisting and from multiple different IP addresses from the same block, start taking IP blocks away until it stops. Spam email doesn't just appear out of the ether. It comes from an email, a domain, and finally IP addresses. Now I know the technical details are lacking, and they obviously need to account for offenders that fix their stuff, but I'm just trying to illustrate that it is do-able. The above is for email spam. Content spam is a little bit different, and would step on quite a few toes. I view content spam as websites that mirror Wikipedia/SO/GoogleGroups for example. Or sites that simply fill their pages with garbage, referral links, URL's to game search-engine rankings, etc. Again, start by revoking the worst offende's domain ownership. Eventually, you'll be able to get rid of domain-squatters as well because it invariably means that they have to put meaningful content on their site and not useless junk. So it's a use it properly, or lose it sort of situation. The above is just not very easy, and it'll cost ICANN registration fees with seemingly no ROI. But that's a problem with ICANN. Registration fees started off as a way to prevent spamming and everyone snatching up all domains, but it's quickly turned in to a revenue cow for ICANN. They're trying to have their cake and eat it at the same time. Either they're a non-profit government/UN organization and function for the public good. Or they're a for-profit entity and they need to have their MONOPOLY status/powers revoked.
    - icebraining 13y ago
      First they could start by revoking domain ownership if spam comes from there. How does email spam come from a domain? You can just set whatever domain you want in the headers. For a long time, I had spammers using my personal domain in their From: headers, sent from their servers (I knew because I received automated replies on my catch-all box). What exactly would be accomplished by taking away my domain? As for IP blocks, that's like throwing napalm to kill a few weeds. You'd affect hundreds or thousands of users of an ISP just to kill a spammer, who will just move to the next connection. I view content spam as websites that mirror Wikipedia/SO/GoogleGroups for example. Or sites that simply fill their pages with garbage, referral links, URL's to game search-engine rankings, etc. Again, start by revoking the worst offende's domain ownership. Eventually, you'll be able to get rid of domain-squatters as well because it invariably means that they have to put meaningful content on their site and not useless junk. So instead of issuing TLDs, they could start performing censorship. I'm seriously glad they don't share your views. Having a website sitting somewhere is not spam. It's not being pushed on anyone; if search engines are indexing content that their users don't want to see, that's their problem. It shouldn't require to pass some bureaucrat's consideration to what is "proper content" to be accessible. Many of us around the world already find the US' TV censorship quite ridiculous, we don't need any more of that.
      - zo1 13y ago
        "How does email spam come from a domain? You can just set whatever domain you want in the headers. For a long time, I had spammers using my personal domain in their From: headers, sent from their servers (I knew because I received automated replies on my catch-all box). What exactly would be accomplished by taking away my domain?" Solutions to prevent/combat email header spoofing have been gaining quite a bit of traction and are quite prevalant. And yes, if that means taking the domain away from people that don't implement said solutions, then poof you've lost the domain. It would accomplish getting rid of domain owners that enable spammers. "As for IP blocks, that's like throwing napalm to kill a few weeds. You'd affect hundreds or thousands of users of an ISP just to kill a spammer, who will just move to the next connection." If you lease out IPs that have been assigned to you to a spammer, then you better get him off your network. Otherwise you'll lose your entire block. It's not rocket science, nor is it overkill. You mention that spammers will move on to the next connection if they get kicked off. Yeah, well that's not really ICANN's problem is it, that's up to the IP block lessee's to solve if they want to start sub-leasing out to unknown/untrusted individuals in the public. "So instead of issuing TLDs, they could start performing censorship. I'm seriously glad they don't share your views." There is a big difference between censorship and removing junk from your network. Perhaps it is something we should worry about, but we should have thought of censorship BEFORE we allowed the US to maintain control of ICANN, don't you think? "Having a website sitting somewhere is not spam" Probably not the common definition, but if it pollutes the domain/tld namespace with useless/junk domains then yes you can call it spam. "It's not being pushed on anyone; if search engines are indexing content that their users don't want to see, that's their problem" I agree with you. However, my point was more along the lines of "use it for something useful, or lose it" in order to both prevent useless domain squatting AND content spam. "Many of us around the world already find the US' TV censorship quite ridiculous, we don't need any more of that." Nope, we don't, I agree with you. Hence why I suggested we either treat ICANN like a for-profit private enterprise with NO government monopoly or privilege of licensing, OR we damn well make sure it behaves like non-profit acting for the public good. I.e. no lucrative money grabs such as the one in this article. Assuming that's even possible with an entity controlled by the US government. Look. These are just some ideas we can implement to combat spam and other malicious behavior on the internet. But sticking our heads in the sand by ignoring some of these solutions just because they aren't perfect is definitely not going to fix them. At the very least they're better than what we have now.

Am I the only one disgusted by this?

by maaku 13y ago

Am I the only one disgusted by this?

zo1 13y ago

Nope, we're with you on this one. It's a flat-out money grab. From an institution that we expect to keep the internet running. Great idea, right? You know, instead, they could fix the damn email and content spamming rampantly going on the internet. But no, those things don't give ICANN yearly profits. I guess they fail to realize that spam-detection is one of the main things behind Gmail's phenomenal success since its inception.

icebraining 13y ago
You know, instead, they could fix the damn email and content spamming rampantly going on the internet. How exactly could they achieve that?
- zo1 13y ago
  First they could start by revoking domain ownership if spam comes from there. If it keeps persisting and from multiple different IP addresses from the same block, start taking IP blocks away until it stops. Spam email doesn't just appear out of the ether. It comes from an email, a domain, and finally IP addresses. Now I know the technical details are lacking, and they obviously need to account for offenders that fix their stuff, but I'm just trying to illustrate that it is do-able. The above is for email spam. Content spam is a little bit different, and would step on quite a few toes. I view content spam as websites that mirror Wikipedia/SO/GoogleGroups for example. Or sites that simply fill their pages with garbage, referral links, URL's to game search-engine rankings, etc. Again, start by revoking the worst offende's domain ownership. Eventually, you'll be able to get rid of domain-squatters as well because it invariably means that they have to put meaningful content on their site and not useless junk. So it's a use it properly, or lose it sort of situation. The above is just not very easy, and it'll cost ICANN registration fees with seemingly no ROI. But that's a problem with ICANN. Registration fees started off as a way to prevent spamming and everyone snatching up all domains, but it's quickly turned in to a revenue cow for ICANN. They're trying to have their cake and eat it at the same time. Either they're a non-profit government/UN organization and function for the public good. Or they're a for-profit entity and they need to have their MONOPOLY status/powers revoked.
  - icebraining 13y ago
    First they could start by revoking domain ownership if spam comes from there. How does email spam come from a domain? You can just set whatever domain you want in the headers. For a long time, I had spammers using my personal domain in their From: headers, sent from their servers (I knew because I received automated replies on my catch-all box). What exactly would be accomplished by taking away my domain? As for IP blocks, that's like throwing napalm to kill a few weeds. You'd affect hundreds or thousands of users of an ISP just to kill a spammer, who will just move to the next connection. I view content spam as websites that mirror Wikipedia/SO/GoogleGroups for example. Or sites that simply fill their pages with garbage, referral links, URL's to game search-engine rankings, etc. Again, start by revoking the worst offende's domain ownership. Eventually, you'll be able to get rid of domain-squatters as well because it invariably means that they have to put meaningful content on their site and not useless junk. So instead of issuing TLDs, they could start performing censorship. I'm seriously glad they don't share your views. Having a website sitting somewhere is not spam. It's not being pushed on anyone; if search engines are indexing content that their users don't want to see, that's their problem. It shouldn't require to pass some bureaucrat's consideration to what is "proper content" to be accessible. Many of us around the world already find the US' TV censorship quite ridiculous, we don't need any more of that.
    - zo1 13y ago
      "How does email spam come from a domain? You can just set whatever domain you want in the headers. For a long time, I had spammers using my personal domain in their From: headers, sent from their servers (I knew because I received automated replies on my catch-all box). What exactly would be accomplished by taking away my domain?" Solutions to prevent/combat email header spoofing have been gaining quite a bit of traction and are quite prevalant. And yes, if that means taking the domain away from people that don't implement said solutions, then poof you've lost the domain. It would accomplish getting rid of domain owners that enable spammers. "As for IP blocks, that's like throwing napalm to kill a few weeds. You'd affect hundreds or thousands of users of an ISP just to kill a spammer, who will just move to the next connection." If you lease out IPs that have been assigned to you to a spammer, then you better get him off your network. Otherwise you'll lose your entire block. It's not rocket science, nor is it overkill. You mention that spammers will move on to the next connection if they get kicked off. Yeah, well that's not really ICANN's problem is it, that's up to the IP block lessee's to solve if they want to start sub-leasing out to unknown/untrusted individuals in the public. "So instead of issuing TLDs, they could start performing censorship. I'm seriously glad they don't share your views." There is a big difference between censorship and removing junk from your network. Perhaps it is something we should worry about, but we should have thought of censorship BEFORE we allowed the US to maintain control of ICANN, don't you think? "Having a website sitting somewhere is not spam" Probably not the common definition, but if it pollutes the domain/tld namespace with useless/junk domains then yes you can call it spam. "It's not being pushed on anyone; if search engines are indexing content that their users don't want to see, that's their problem" I agree with you. However, my point was more along the lines of "use it for something useful, or lose it" in order to both prevent useless domain squatting AND content spam. "Many of us around the world already find the US' TV censorship quite ridiculous, we don't need any more of that." Nope, we don't, I agree with you. Hence why I suggested we either treat ICANN like a for-profit private enterprise with NO government monopoly or privilege of licensing, OR we damn well make sure it behaves like non-profit acting for the public good. I.e. no lucrative money grabs such as the one in this article. Assuming that's even possible with an entity controlled by the US government. Look. These are just some ideas we can implement to combat spam and other malicious behavior on the internet. But sticking our heads in the sand by ignoring some of these solutions just because they aren't perfect is definitely not going to fix them. At the very least they're better than what we have now.