Edited by author 08-20-2002 09:21 PM
People need to read up on SpamCop - Felten's ISP gave out some misinformation. Unlike SPEWS, Spamcop isn't going to blacklist an entire netblock because of a single report.

From the spamcop blacklist FAQ:
- Reports regarding website and email-address spamvertisement ARE NOT counted at all.
- If a server has fewer than 3 spam reports against it and neither of these are newer than 6 hours, then it will be delisted, despite any otherwise-high ratio.

Felten's hypothesized train of events is completely wrong. What really happened? Check the blacklist for www.freedom-to-tinker.com:

http://spamcop.net/w3m?action=checkblock&ip=209.51.158.242

Huh. A real spammer sending mail from that server; they were listed on 7/31 and delisted on 8/7. Felton's "we're back" message was on 8/10. Seems pretty obvious - Felton's ISP screwed up and yanked his site because of a separate issue (they probably confused SpamCop with SPEWS, which really does use over-the-line vigilante tactics). Now they're trying to blame SpamCop for their mistake and, since Felten didn't double-check their story, the problem got far more publicity than it merited.

Dori's link referred to Zeldman's screed about spamcop. He needs desperately to buy a clue - yes, your abuse contact will get a report for each user report, just as if they sent it directly. That's the point - SpamCop aggregates reports and, among other things, provides a way to batch resolve the multiple reports which come in from spam recipients. All an ISP has to do is mark the problem as "resolved" after investigating - I've done this with mistakenly reported emails for IP space I control. Problem solved. SpamCop does monitor this so they can catch the ISPs which are lying about resolving problems - that procedure requires a good deal more than a single automatic report.