Hi,
On Thu, 11 Mar 2004, Aleksander Adamowski wrote:
> Had anyone seen any evidence that Habeas is a legitimate company? If so,
> please, share with us.
Yes.
Search the SPAM-L archives over, say, the last 3-5 years.
(
http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/spam-l.html - subscription to SPAM-L
required.)
As has been beaten to death on many fora, Habeas is not an anti-spam
company, nor are they spammers. They are an email assurance company;
legitimate mailers (bulk or not) agree to some basic "best practices" for
sending email and are allowed to use their trademark, often for a fee.
The intent is to signal the recipient that the sender is a responsible
mailer and therefore increase deliverability of mail sent with the Habeas
mark. This increased deliverability is Habeas' value.
Those misusing the Habeas mark are in fact sued for copyright violation,
trademark dilution, etc. - see
http://www.habeas.com/companyPressPR.html#fivesuits What you don't see are the number of cease & desist orders sent by
Habeas's staff and other actions that never make it to court.
There is no way to prevent spammers from forging the Habeas mark, a
priori. Habeas' model relies on the deterence value of lawsuits; Habeas is
quite willing to sue to protect their intellectual property. IP law is
much more well-developed than spam law; it's easier for lawyers and judges
to understand and is much easier to successfully prosecute.
That is the nutshell explanation of Habeas model. I didn't invent it, I
don't own stock in Habeas, I don't use their mark, and I have no opinion
of their business model other than it's an interesting application of
trademark and copyright law. If you want to know more, you can do what I
did and read
http://www.habeas.com/ ----- Sensitive viewers should tune out now -----
I've seen very little Habeas marked spam, hardly any worth mentioning.
What I have seen though, is every ignorant loudmouth dumbass come out of
the woodwork and trash Habeas in a public forum without doing a shred of
research into the company, their history, and their business model. Habeas
is as much a victim as spam recipients are, moreso because they can
actually show how their business has been damaged by misuse of their IP.
"Your system, your rules" but IMO anyone who scores HABEAS_SWE as positive
is a moron and anyone who advocates that stupidity to others shouldn't be
trusted to operate a mailserver. Set the score to zero and get on with
your lives; I'm tired of hearing about it.
-- Bob
(this is not directed at anyone in particular; I'm just frustrated
from hearing the same ignorant bullshit over and over. nobody should take
this as a personal flame.)
