FC: Spamcop again blocks legit site, reportedly takes out Tucows

From: Declan McCullagh (declanat_private)
Date: Thu Mar 06 2003 - 10:42:52 PST

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    [Tucows is a domain name registrar that became famous in the 1990s by 
    offering freeware/shareware downloads. The danger here is not that Spamcop 
    is violating its own rules; it almost certainly is not. Its procedures, as 
    I understand them, allow incorrect or malicious allegations of spam to 
    place a site on the Spamcop blacklist. This is not a mistake: Spamcop was 
    intentionally designed to have a hair-trigger better-safe-than-sorry 
    reporting system. That makes it terribly prone to abuse, and Spamcop knows 
    it. Spamcop's designers should have the right to sell such a flawed system, 
    but the rest of us don't need to use it and should advise others against 
    it. --Declan]
    
    ---
    
    Date: Thu, 6 Mar 2003 13:34:30 -0500 (EST)
    From: Joe Baptista <baptista@dot-god.com>
    To: Declan McCullagh <declanat_private>
    Subject: SpamCop (fwd)
    
    
    Declan - looks like spamcop blacklisted tucows.
    
    Joe Baptista - only at www.baptista.god
    
                           www.baptista.god
                          yours to discover
    
    ---------- Forwarded message ----------
    Date: Thu, 6 Mar 2003 12:01:35 -0500
    From: Edward Gray <egrayat_private>
    To: discuss-listat_private
    Subject: SpamCop
    
    Early this morning the opensrs mail system that is used for sending OpenSRS
    domain renewal notifications was
    blacklisted by SpamCop.
    
    This has happened several times in the past specifically with SpamCop. This
    occurs because a registrant receives the renewal notice and in error, flags
    it as a Spam message with SpamCop. We are required to send at least 2
    renewal notices to the owner of every domain as per the ICANN Registrar
    Accreditation Agreement.
    
    The duration that the blacklist will remain active is difficult to determine
    but the longest we have remained blacklisted so far is approximately 19
    hours with some of the events lasting a 1-2 hours.
    
    Edward Gray
    Director, Operations & Networks
    Tucows Inc.
    egrayat_private
    
    
    
    
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