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ICANN Leaves Announcements List Open 60

Posted by emmett from the spam-spam-spam-spam-domain-names-and-spam dept.
BlueCalx- writes: "ICANN seems to be at it again. Last night, they sent a message to all their potential members at large, and they accidentally left the list open for all its members to post. Between midnight and 10 AM EST, ICANN's members-to-be received a wealth of unsolicited email from fellow members. You can view the text of the emails here." A special tip of the maildump to the Kevin McMaster, the first twonk to actually spam the list with an ad for his site, Alberta Register.
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ICANN Leaves Announcements List Open More

ICANN Leaves Announcements List Open

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  • They cant have much Karma left. Even if they do, with 2000 posts below 0 - EVERYONE will know Slashdot is against free speach.

  • Hmm, does this deserve law enforecement? (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Hmmm. The first thing I thought was, those people who got spammed should call in a class action lawsuit against ICANN, for negligence.

    But then I stopped and though, wait a second, all they did was accidentally make the information public; does an error that simple mean that they (ICANN) deserve to be shredded in a court of law?

    While it's likely that someone who had to sort through 80,000 emails that day to find an important message that they needed would agree, I have to wonder: Do simple, honest, accidental mistakes which cause a large amount of damage to many people, deserve to destroy the company? Mistakes are inevitable; If we are to sustain any pretense of 'fairness' in our courts-of-law, we can't smash every entity that makes a mistake to flinders; granted lots of people were damaged, but what good would blasting ICANN do? If you were about to say, "Because it would make an example, which cause others to avoid similar miscarriages" think again; this infringement was ACCIDENTAL. There's no way to prevent all accidents... that's why they're accidental! On the other hand, many people were hurt... do they deserve damages? If so, where should those damages come from, ICANN? Because, ICANN could have (hypothetically) easily hurt many more people than it's net worth could pay back; If those people are due damages, should same be paid by the government, should ICANN be bankrupted?

    Maybe these are all trivial to a lawyer, but the kernel of the matter, to me, is that

    Mistakes will always be made.

    With the info era, extremely easy to make mistakes can have dire consequences for large numbers of people.

    Regardless of who we blame after the fact, we cannot prevent these increasingly dangerous mistakes, which can harm bystanders.

    Maybe the internet _will_ bring on the END... be afraid! woooooooo....

    ;)

  • Regardless of who we blame after the fact, we cannot prevent these increasingly dangerous mistakes, which can harm bystanders.

    It's the list server's fault!! And we need waiting periods before lists can go active, and posting locks to prevent children from getting to them. This was just a simple, innocent mail admin. It's not his fault he didn't set up a config file right. ICANN needs to sue the creators of the server so this sort of thing doesn't kill any more children.
  • Well... That's how you can interpret it if you want to. However, I wouldn't call dying on the cross to save someone from hell hatred.

    --

  • Re:Jesus hates trolls (Score:3)

    by Amphigory ( 2375 ) on Saturday April 15, 2000 @11:06AM (#1130934) Homepage
    Just for the record (because I'm really anal retentive about this kind of stuff), Jesus does not hate fags. Although some great fools [gothatesfags.com] have claimed he does, they are just enjoying their folly.

    Of course, Jesus (i.e. God) does disapprove of homesexual behaviour, but there is a big difference between that and "hating fags".

    --

  • Well, thanks for contradicting yourself by demonstrating the fact that you _can_ freely post the news on /.
    #define X(x,y) x##y
  • Weird, but maybe it didnt come direct from the ICANN list as I and several others did not receive the spam.

    Ewan
  • If it was accidental, but it caused damage to others, shouldn't their malpractice or liability insurance cover it? This, of course, raises the issue of the fact that they probably don't have malpractice or liability insurance, that such insurance probably hasn't been invented yet, that such insurance is probably going to have to be invented soon and made mandatory by law if you're going to be allowed to connect to the internet, and that people who know what they're doing should be able to find gainful employment from insurance companies looking to make their policy holders as unlikely to cost them money as possible.

    If some jerk decides to patent the idea of liability or malpractice insurance, and/or associated lawsuits over liability and/or malpractice, just because the internet is involved I hereby proclaim prior art on my part!

  • I don't think Esther Dyson is their Mail List administrator.
  • yeah- i noticed that as well, i was just addressing the intent of the article posting and that mention.......
  • Mentioning and pointing at Kevin McMaster's site (are you hoping it will get slashdotted and brought down?) reminds me of that movie Midnight Express where the turkish make the guy an example to american smugglers. Bizarre! "Mess with us and we'll slashdot you, buddy!" I hate spam and direct marketing in general as much as the next person, but wtf?

  • Because I figured, hey, if it was broken anyway, we might as well get some dialog out of it, right?

    I mean, the whole problem with the ICANN, as far as I can tell, is that they haven't been interacting with those of us that care about what's going on with domain name registration.

    I too received nada from ICANN after I sent off my original request, and I assumed they had just dropped the ball on it.

    Then some wit replied to the at-large posting, and so I figured that the cat was out of the bag, might be worth salvaging something.

    What *should* have happened is that the announcement message could have linked to an opt-in list, so those of us "at-large" members could interact.

    (Is it just me or does "at-large members" sound like a herd of phalli gone awol?)

  • This is all kind of odd, becos I received the initial posting to ICANN members (but not last night, it was several days ago), and never received anything else.

  • Of course, the fact there are laws about what and how they can post news about their stock prices doesn't register in the tiny brain at all, does it?

    I'm getting sick of all these idiots. Everyone knows all tech stocks dropped this past week.

    -David T. C.

  • Bueracracy(sp) at its best.

  • Even worse was the bonehead Raiduhs fans going wild about that pick. Even if he wasn't going to get deported, picking a kicker with a top-20 pick is just plain stupid. Especially with Raiduh's historic quarterback woes and Pennington still on the table. Can you imagine if the Jets had picked him? The fans there would've rioted and torn the whole damn place down!

    Cheers,
    ZicoKnows@hotmail.com

  • the funniest thing about this is that half of the _replies_ read "have some decency; don't reply, you twits!"

    ah, the hypocrisy..

    - pal
  • This is not an unusual opportunity for community. I'm part of many "communities" online. (Hey, /. almost certainly qualifies.) I'm on a lot of mailing lists -- this sort of thing is not novel. However, I don't want to be a part of this ICANN "community." I signed up to vote on the issues, not to get spammed. Leave me to my USAS [umich.edu] mailing list, thank you very much.

  • Hmmm (Score:4)

    by Fizgig ( 16368 ) on Saturday April 15, 2000 @08:26AM (#1130948)
    So we don't like the first guy for spamming his list onto all the members, and his punishment is to have his site linked to Slashdot?! Hmmm.
  • I'd moderate you up if I could. The whole idea behind ICANN is pretty bizzaro to begin with, let alone with Queen Esther at the helm of it.

    Bowie J. Poag
    Project Founder, PROPAGANDA For Linux (http://metalab.unc.edu/propaganda [unc.edu])

  • I'm so glad... (Score:5)

    by Kaufmann ( 16976 ) <[rnedal] [at] [olimpo.com.br]> on Saturday April 15, 2000 @08:40AM (#1130950) Homepage
    This is what you get from putting Esther Dyson (aka Lucifer herself) in charge of the Internet. Yeah, I'm really happy to trust these people with the entire domain naming system. Blergh. Seriously, they've been around for years and they've yet to get a single thing right. They have not shown one ounce of willingness to adopt an administrative policy which could be described as anything less than fascist. It's just the cherry on the top that they aren't even able to manage a mailing list -- it's no surprise that the naming system in its current state. I say kill the ICANN; let's get rid of this awful monstrosity once and for all.

    (Sorry for the rant, but it really pisses me off to see my beloved network get to this point. Moderators take note: this post was not a troll, flamebait or offtopic.)

  • If you think Microsoft/AOL/Time Warner are monopolies you aint seen nothing yet! ICANN is a hand puppet for big corporations and trademark lawyers to turn DNS into a vehicle for "e-commerce" -- go and post your comments on their site and let them know that we don't need a bunch of lawyers and idiots making technical choices about DNS and new Domain names - http://www.icann.org/dnso/new-gtlds -01apr00.htm [icann.org]
  • Same here... I got the original message but none of the extra bullshit that the article refers to. This happened to me at work once. I was on an Amazon list for publishers. They too left the list open and thousands of brain-dead morons started posting "Remove me from the list" to the list and it just got worse from there. In the end I think I had like 3,200 emails or so. I called Amazon the next day and spoke to someone in their catalog dept. who assured me that the guilty person had been "dealt with" ... yeah right.

    "Don't do it again... or else!"

    It truely is frightening that business is now in charge of the Net. They can make decisions and pay the bills, but when it comes to setting up a mailing list, or running a forum... they are complete fucking morons.

  • I just got the original "Greetings" message, but none of the responses. How very weird.
  • IF this guy was spamming ads for his site, why did you post a link to it on the front page of Slashdot? Now he'll get more hits than he'd ever dreamed. You should have simply posted his email address so that he could feel the love... er... maybe that's feel the spam.

    __________________________________________________ ___

  • The other half of this story[1] is of course, why this list was made in the first place:

    ICANN has received "an overwhelming number" (only 12,000! Hah! /. has more members than that!) of signups for its At Large Membership program, and as a result, the mailing of PINs will be delayed for another two months, even though the confirmation message we all got told us they would be mailed two days after our signup and would arrive within a week later.

    In the meantime, they are "verifying" the applications before they send out PINs.

    I wonder... do they think their ineptitude has made them a target for spamming, or do they not realize their ineptitude would cause so many people to want to hop on and straighten them out? Inability to deal with politics doesn't seem to be their only problem.

    [1] Which my submission of this story pointed out... (grumble)
    --

  • I got my usual Friday night stock tips, vacation offers,MMF, etc. spam, but none of it thru ICANN.
    Got the original mail, though. Gee. Should I feel slighted?
  • Maybe /. should have a link at the top of every page that will crash a spamers server a day. One just have to be careful that the offending site isn't use banner ads.
  • Mistakes are inevitable; If we are to sustain any pretense of 'fairness' in our courts-of-law, we can't smash every entity that makes a mistake to flinders; granted lots of people were damaged, but what good would blasting ICANN do?
    That's why we have the concept of negliance in the first place.

    Say Company X has a toxic waste spill. When we're deciding if we're going to let it go at "Whoops! Sorry d00ds!", or shoot the CEO and Board of Directors, we ask whether they took reasonable and prudent steps to prevent a spill from occuring, or whether they were storing their toxic waste in zip-lock bags in someone's backyard.

    Offhand, I would say that any remotely competent admin would know enough to easily prevent this mistake; ICANN was negligent.

    But they don't need to be nailed to the wall; simple restitution would serve. I think it would suffice to make ICANN send every spam victim $20 or so for their trouble.

    Because, ICANN could have (hypothetically) easily hurt many more people than it's net worth could pay back;
    Then they ought to be more fscking responsible.
    If those people are due damages, should same be paid by the government, should ICANN be bankrupted?
    Why not? Do we let Company X stay in business if they negligently cause more damage than they can pay?
  • All I see is posts like:

    "OMIGOD the list is open! This is horrible! Spammers will spam us! Close the list!"

    "Yes I agree! This is aweful! I will have to filter my mail! Please do not respond!"

    "Stop sending 'this is cool' messages! Close the list! I have to redirect to /dev/nul!"

    "OMIGOD the list is open! This is horrible! Spammers will spam us! Close the list!"

    etc, etc.

    spamming themselves with antispam messages...idiots...
  • I got these emails this morning. Personally, I found it rather amusing.

    Other than that, I don't much feel like there's very much about this incident that's interesting other than the fact that everyone's making such a big deal out of it.

    Chill out, folks.

    -Omar

  • Damn! With the link to the text of the articles, I had a chance to have my name mentioned on Slashdot! All it would have taken is one silly reply!

    Argh,
    -Omar

  • Hmm, that's odd, I only got about 10 or 20.
    Cheers,

    Rick Kirkland
  • Ok... I am one of the very very annoyed people that are on this list. That said, let me tell you what some fun people are doing...

    It seems that some people have figured out that this loophole in the announcement list is a great way for them to gather email address for whatever reason they choose (I believe that these lists are going to be compiled and then sold to companies... oh joy, more spam). The best thing is, these people are sending email to the list and then they want notification that the reciever has read the email.

    In case that went by to fast... here's a break down:
    1. People sign up for members at large from ICANN
    2. ICANN leaves a loophole in the email list allowing "reply to all" to go to every member (12000 accourding to ICANN)
    3. People post messages to the ICANN list and then they want to know if the reciever has read it.
    4. When people allow themselves to send this email back, thier email address are added to a spam list.

    Well, I can say one thing about ICANN so far, it takes some kind of sick mind to create a situation where 1 person can send 1 email to 1 address and in turn get 12,000 email address together for a spam mailing list that companies will pay big money for.

  • They want even partial control of the internet, and they make a blunder like this? Yeah, that's gonna fly.

    -----------------------

  • Another email in the list (Score:5)

    by Money__ ( 87045 ) on Saturday April 15, 2000 @09:28AM (#1130965)

    Date: Sat, 15 Apr 2000 10:56:04 +0530
    From: Bill Gates
    Reply-To: weenie@microsoft.com
    Organization: Microsoft Inc.
    X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.7 [en] (Win95);
    X-Accept-Language: en
    MIME-Version: 1.0
    To: atlarge@icann.org
    CC: members-announce@icann.org
    Subject: ICANN Engineers
    References:
    Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
    Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
    Sender: owner-members-announce@icann.org
    Precedence: bulk

    !seineew era sreenigne NNACI
    ___

  • > IF this guy was spamming ads for his site, why did you post a link to it on the front page of Slashdot?

    So he'd get slashdotted?

    Admit it, it's almost a punishment. There's no worry of him getting any business, his site is pathetic. Hell, that made it funny from my point of view.

    Ahhhh, doesn't it make you feel all warm inside, to think that the fate of the 'net' is now left in the hands of some idiots and all their commoner idiot friends?

    Good thing the net always routes around damage. I couldn't care less what ICANN and Netwerk-Solushunz do. We can always go off by ourselves and create 'Internet-2', and like Usenet-2 this time we'll put it together so the idiots can't get in.

    ---

  • An interview with ICANN (Score:3)

    by MicroBerto ( 91055 ) on Saturday April 15, 2000 @08:50AM (#1130967)
    When the MicroBerto reporting service asked why they made such a poorly-engineered list, the At Large Membership Program simply claimed "Because ICANN!"

    Mike Roberto (roberto@soul.apk.net [mailto]) - AOL IM: MicroBerto
  • Since ICANN is already at the center of a controversy over the desirability of handing them partial control of the 'net, this is not a good reflection on their expertise and professionalism. Therefore, I'd say that a blunder like this *does* qualify as news. ~Tiroth
  • I'm responding to the AC who feels ICANN should not be blamed for their "accident".
    no way to prevent all accidents... that's why they're accidental!
    I disagree. Preventing accidents is a large part of what airlines do, what shipping companies do, and less obviously, what ISP's do. ICANN has vomited profusely on itself in public, and deserves contempt, not excuses. An incident like this doesn't proceed from a single minor mistake; rather it indicates a deeply flawed organization. Which of the following is more likely?
    1. ICANN's seasoned, gray-bearded mail admin, who has been working with mail since UUCP days, was setting up a list server for the ten thousandth time, a task he can perform standing on his head, when a wild cosmic ray entered his skull, causing a neuron to misfire, whereupon the admin configured the list server wide open.
    2. ICANN's trained MCSE monkey clicked on a pretty icon and said "Look boss! Instead of pasting all 12000 addresses into Outlock, we can automagically send them with Visual Active SpamBlaster++!" whereupon he was given a bannana.
    In the absence of decisive information, I think the latter is more likely. Which brings me to my point: organizations that undervalue technical people will embarass themselves technically; a fate which they richly deserve. Sooner or later, investors must get the message that when some suit decides "120K is way to much to pay a sysadmin, whatever that is. I can get a MCSE for half that!", he is steering the organization towards financial ruin.

    I am not claiming that good sysadmins don't make mistakes. I am claiming that good sysadmins have a sense of fear which is proportional to the magnitude of the disaster with which they are flirting. They also have a tendency to watch newly activated things for signs of impending doom. A lack of that sense and that tendency ought to disqualify one from being a sysadmin. A lack of good sysadmins ought to disqualify one from having a decisive effect on the internet.

  • I love the Internet. The more it changes, the more it stays the same. :o)
  • Internet-2: FreeNet [sourceforge.net] or VPN? Well FreeNet is leaning more on the Usernet side, but is a mix of the two, but that's probably what you meant to be thinking of. Sure there will be idiots on FreeNet, but they won't be in control.

  • kevin mcmaster needs to set his email client up to wrap at 72 characters.

    His email was annoying on so many levels. :)

  • Some people on the list are getting angry about this unusual opportunity for community. Personally, I think that this is an intriguing look at large group communication. What percentage of people on the list respond to the list? What kind of people respond to the list? How many people respond favorably/angrily? eh.
  • ..because someone said, "I wonder what would happen if I clicked reply?".

  • Odd (Score:1)

    by j0nb0y ( 107699 )
    Odd. I got the ICANN At Large announcement, but I didn't get any of the spam. I wonder how that happenned.

  • ..because someone said, "I wonder what would happen if I clicked reply?".

    The question I'm asking is... Did they do it on purpose to identify the idiots in the herd?

    Temkin

  • heheheh people trying to make money, As far as large group communication, a better word for it would be mob rule. STudied like this have been done before. Im gong nowhere with this post :)

  • The same happened with me. I got the "At Large Membership Status Report" then nothing else.

  • Nah. The guy's site doesn't appear sluggish at all.
    Either they can handle the load, or the average Slashdot reader is in the Big Blue Room today.
    (which reminds me...why am I sitting here writing this??)

    Bye!

    ø

  • Ah the world wide web, where bad publicity actually *isn't* good for a company (until they employ Web QOS).
  • It just goes to show that there are a few clueless, illiterate, Outlook-using newbies on any mailing list, even one like this where you'd expect people to be at least somewhat experienced with the net...

    My favourites are always the people who post messages to tell everyone else to stop posting messages.
  • But of course. Pretty soon his site won't work...
  • My local dialup ISP did the same thing a year or so ago...i found it to be hilarious. I go check me email and I have 60 messages. Basically it was people getting pissed off at the first person and a lot of "Whats going on?". They had left it open for a good day.
  • Who is Kevin McMaster? I have gotten 27 replys off of the ICANN list, and none seemed to mention or be from Kevin McMaster. Is he the hunger site guy?
  • After seeing the posting on /. a few weeks back, I signed up. Nothing happened. I figured, oh well, it's ICANN, they're just blowing me off.

    Well, I wish that was the case. After a few days of not collecting my email, I now have hundreds of messages from moron twinks who felt compelled to tell all other 12,000 members "Geez, I'm so glad ICANN is doing this" and "When will my PIN come?" Then of course is the best "Me too, when will my PIN come"

    Can this organization do ANYTHING right? By the looks of it, days went by without anything happening. I posted a message to the list from an account I wasn't even subscribed with. Is there more of a sin in running a mailing list than to allow the public at large to post?

    I have zero hope for this organization if they haven't the common sense to properly configure a mailing list. I don't even remember asking to be on the list, nor have they ever sent instructions on how to get off the list. Despicable.
  • It's entirely optional to click on the link. It's not like they're in your mailbox, or in the body of the article.
    I'm guessing most people don't want to and won't click on the link. I clicked on it because I thought it would be interesting to see what ppl posted, and was rewarded as it was quite funny.
  • If you make a mistake that causes someone to be killed, /accidentally/ but it was obviously your fault, you can be charged with involuntary manslaughter and/or reckless endangerment. If you cause somebody to be injured inadvertantly through stupidity or oversight, you can qualify for reckless endangerment.

    Leaving a gun lying around where a kid could find it is a "mistake" and the kid finding it is "accidental". But charging the adult for damages has the affect in the future of people thinking "hmmm... maybe I shouldn't leave my gun here" instead of just doing it without thinking. So too with things like leaving a list open--they produced unsolicited mail to 12,000 people, and failed to stop in a timely matter when asked, sustained unsolicited mail being illegal in many states. If they had knowingly subscribed to the list, it would be different. If the list had just contained announcements from ICANN, as it was supposed, it would be different because that would have been solicited by signing up. Now /I don't think legal action makes sense in this case/, and if I were a judge I might throw it out (IANAL but I don't think there are really any precedents for this sort of thing), but chastising them for this mistake makes an example so that hopefully, ppl will be more careful and check whether their lists are open automatically before sending them to people who did not knowingly sign up.

  • A well orchestated conspiracy (Score:4)

    by TrollinForJesus ( 174685 ) on Saturday April 15, 2000 @08:23AM (#1130988) Homepage
    This is obviously a well orchestrated conspiracy organised by the National Security Agency and the CIA to divert public attention from the Elian Gonzalez case.

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