🚀 go-pugleaf

<enricor@my-dejanews.com> schrieb:

> (Ceci est un reprint. J'avais post� cet article sur ch.general, et
> plusieurs utilisateurs m'ont signal� que ch.network serait plus
> appropri�)

Almost. :-) ch.network is about to disappear. Follow-ups to
ch.comp.networks.

[...]
> Surprise, je re�ois d'abord un t�l�phone du spammer, qui me tient au
> t�l�phone un certain temps pour m'expliquer que non, c'est pas un spamm,
> mais un mailing s�l�ctif, parce que ils ont eu les adresses de
> l'annuaire Swisscom (dans le genre s�lectif, "Prenez l'annuaire" n'est
> pas iun exemple de s�lectivit� extr�me, mais enfin passons)

Besides that, Swisscom says on their homepage about the e-mail addresses
<http://www.swisscom.com/gd/web_specials/electronic_addresses/electronic
_addresses_disclaimer-de.html>:
   "Jede zweckfremde Nutzung oder Verwertung der Eintr�ge ist
   unzul�ssig. So ist insbesondere die vollst�ndige, teilweise oder
   auszugsweise Nutzung des Verzeichnisses der Elektronischen Adressen
   f�r eine kommerzielle Verwendung nicht gestattet."

> puis, je re�oit un mail d'un certain Olivier Bourgeois
> (bourgeois@fastnet.ch), apparemment employ� de Fastnet qui m'explique que
> je n'ai rien compris, que ce n'est pas un SPAMM puisqu'ils n'ont pas cach�
> d'o� ils �crivaient

Olivier Bourgeois is the administrator and technician of Fastnet. He
apparently has no idea what spam is, though.

[...]
> (Extrait mail de fastnet du 14 . 7. 98)
> (...) le message que vous proposer de mettre en retour sur votre mailer
> est (...) selon la loi suisse en vigueur " une attaque diffamatoire" et
> dans le cas d'une telle reaction nous nous ferons un plaisir d'en
> informer VOTRE provider (avec lequel nous entretenons les rapports les
> meilleurs et a qui nous mettons copie de ce mail) et notre avocat.
> (...) (Fin de l'extrait)

1. about the "defamation": one, in my opinion this couldn't count as
defamation anyway (see below), and two, it never is a defamation if it
is true. If they wanted to take it to court (which they won't, because
it's too expensive for them, and they'd lose anyway), they would have to
prove that you didn't tell the truth. Which would be very hard to prove,
obviously.
2. about your provider: Fastnet wants to complain to your provider, but
not because you violated the netiquette, but because they don't like
what you say. Any normal provider would never cancel an account simply
because some people don't like what that person says. This would make
the provider look very bad, it would appear that he wants to censor his
customers' opinions.

> A part le caract�re un peu disproportionn� de la r�action de fastnet
> (Mon mailer actuel ne me permet pas de filtrer les messages ! :-) ), QUE
> FAIRE ? car le fait est que fastnet, provider suisse, d�fend ceux de ces
> clients qui pratiquent l'envoi massif de mails publicitaires, et menace
> avec une vigueur suprennante ceux qui se plaignent de ces pratiques pour
> le moins discutables.

I for my part will write them a mail, asking them to explain to me
what's going on. If I don't get a _very_ good reply by Monday evening
(today is Saturday), I will put all of their IP-numbers in my spamblock,
and I will never be bothered by them or by their customers.
By the way, for everybody who's interested, their IP blocks are
193.246.63   and
195.176.192 - 195.176.199
What you could do is
- write to their upstream provider, which is uniplus.ch (belongs to
Unisource). Write to hostmaster@uniource.ch and ask him to tell his
customer that spamming simply is not acceptable.
- write to their customers. For instance, www.hebdo.ch and www.omega.ch
are customers of Fastnet. If you say something like "Based on this and
that, I have the impression that your Internet provider supports spam.
However, I strongly believe that spam is bad because of this and that.
Many people block all domains that are hosted by a provider they think
is spam-friendly. Therefore you risk that your domain is blocked by
other providers. You might want to contact Fastnet and tell them what
you think about this." This wouldn't be defamation because you would
make it clear why you think that they are spammers.

[...]
> De plus, est-ce que un Mail peut faire l'objet d'un proc�s en
> diffamaition? Je croyais qu'il faut PUBLIER quelquechose de diffamatoire
> pour courrir un tel risque. Or un Mail est une pi�ce de correspondance,
> pas une publication.
[...]

IANAL, but I would say this could never count as defamation. The reason:
You are absolutely free to say for yourself what mail you want to
receive, and why. If people want to contact you, and you don't want to
read it, you're free to tell them you don't want your mail, and why.
After all, you don't go to the train station and pass out flyers full of
lies, but you tell the people who've asked you why you don't accept
their mails, and you have very good reasons for that. Plus, speech
between two people is very well protected in Switzerland. Public speech
may be regulated (for instance, anti-racism law), but between two
people, you can pretty much say whatever you want.

Fastnet won't sue you because it would be extremely bad publicity for
them. The Swiss media would be very interested in an "Internet lawsuit",
it would get a lot of coverage. And I'd say, most journalists would find
it hard to understand how a provider would go that far in defending
their spamming customers that they would even try to shut up people who
merely complain.

Cheers, Simon

-- 
Simon Ramseier                   sam@trash.net
Ein Unix-Konto (alles inkl.) gibt's gratis unter http://www.trash.net