From: 	  support@dreamhost.com
Subject: 	Re: [xah 7267962] Account Concerns...
Date: 	2006 April 28 7:20:43 PM PDT
To: 	  xah@xahlee.org

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Hello Xah,

> and there's not a phone number I can find to talk with your company.
> I would like to speak to you on the phone, and possibly you may see
> that I have a point.

Unfortunately, our policy is to not handle abuse-related issues via
phone. However, if you respond to this message I will receive it and try
to get back to you in a timely manner.

> This John Bokma guy is doing harassment. Please take a look at the
> thread and see there are supporters on my side. (and i receive
> regular "thank you" emails from professors, students, programers, and
> other walks of life around the world every week since about 1997)

While I don't doubt that it's possible that you have enemies who -
rightly or not - have made a point to report you or otherwise make things
difficult, based solely on the fact of the matter (as I am not really
aware or even interested in the personal disputes between users of
Usenet) it does appear that you were widely cross-posting material to
newsgroups that are unrelated to the material in question, in violation
of those specific groups' charters.

The personal motivations of whoever reported you (note: we receive two
complaints from separate individuals) aren't really relevant, and we
wouldn't take action against you (or even send a warning) unless we could
determine based on the freely available evidence that there was an issue.

> I can do about it. What if you are helping the harasser? Spam is
> legally defined to be about sending hundreds or thousands of massive
> emails, usually in conjunction of forging identify or other devious

There is no single, universally accepted definition of 'spam'. If you go
by the US Federal government's definition as defined by the CAN-SPAM act
much of what most people consider to be spam wouldn't even be considered
spam. As such, the defintion of spam is largely based on consensus.

For email spam, this is usually defined as "unsolicited bulk email" -
that is, the sending of substantially identical bulk emails to those who
have not specifically asked for it. While most spam may be commercial,
that usually does not fall within the defintion. While most spam uses
forgery, that too is not a defining factor.

However, note email isn't the only type of spam. "Comment spam" and
"Trackback spam" are common on weblogs, and we deal with "Guestbook spam"
on a regular basis through our DreamBook.com service. Newsgroup spam is
also an issue, which is what this falls under.

In our view - and the view of the consensus of Usenet administrators and
posters - "spam" is defined as the posting of messages to newsgroups in a
manner contrary to the charters of those individual groups. Cross-posting
to multiple largely unrelated groups compounds the problem, as Usenet is
by its very nature a "bulk" medium.

> I might want to send a complaint to John Bokma's ISP or web hosting
> services to log a complaint. That is really not what i like to do.
> Because I believe that ISPs in general should not function as part of
> the government, unless it is in clear violation of the law that are
> tied to their business, such as clearly defined terms of spam.

We are definitely not functioning as a part of government. Government
has largely shown itself inept, disinterested or - as in the case of
CAN-SPAM - completely negligent on the spam issue. As an Internet
service provider we feel that it is our right and responsibility to
ensure that our customers, in their use of our services, are doing so
in a manner that does not unduly negatively impact others (not just
with spamming - security abuses, copyright infringement, etc. all fall
under this umbrella).

> This John Bokma, according to groups.google.com's archive, he posts
> perhaps tens times more than me whose contents have no value and no
> relevancy to computer languages. He is typical of students and

This may be the case. If it is so, you may consider contacting his ISP
and/or any hosts who provide him with the email addresses or web sites
he promotes through those services. This, however, is not a matter
that would directly concern us, and even if he is a hypocrit and 10x
worse than you we are not in a position to enforce our own policies on
him.

In an nutshell: If you promote your DreamHost-hosted site or email
address through Usenet (by including/referencing them in a post), you
are beholden to our policies on the manner those are used in those
posts. If you find that this is too onerous to you, you may consider
using a different host for your site and email (at least, for any
sites referenced in your posts).

Jeff

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