| reply to Rhobite
Re: Punish everyone else because of a few people said by Rhobite:
Don't worry, you're doing nothing wrong. A certain segment here loves to take a holier-than-thou position and pretend that they are the sole judges of what constitutes acceptable Internet use.
Since you didn't answer my question the first time (which I asked above), but rather chose to twist the situation and claim others are taking this position, I will ask again (care to answer this time without any attacks?):
said by Shady Bimmer:
said by Rhobite:
I'll say it again, sending thousands of e-mails to people you know is in no way spam.
And who is to be the judge of this? Should OOL simply trust users to claim "Oh - I'm not sending spam. I really do have 1000 friends that I regularly mass-email". What's to stop a Spammer from making the same claim? How should OOL determine which claims are legitimate and which are not?
The reality is that without actually reading the content OOL has no way of telling that a single message sent from a single client to 1000+ recipients is not spam.
It isn't a matter of doing something wrong. OOL can claim you are violating TOS by doing this (it is really a matter of interpretation) but the issue is larger than that. Even if you are operating within the TOS, how can OOL easily verify this without violating privacy laws?
Why is everyone so stuck on spending so much energy whining and complaining when it would take far less to simply find an acceptable alternate solution. Perhaps breaking the recipients into smaller groups and sending the same message to each group spaced out in intervals? That's just one idea that's been used by others (that, BTW, have been under these constraints with other ISPs far longer than anyone on OOL).
If the service is really that bad you live in a free society and are able to excercise your freedom by moving to a different provider. |
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 RhobitePremium
join:2002-02-24
Cambridge, MA
1 edit | The only "whining and complaining" is coming from you, about how sending a few thousand e-mails (probably amounting to just a few megs) or a few gigs of files will somehow degrade other people's Internet connections. As for your suggestion that I find another provider, um.. I'm a Verizon customer and I assure you that it's not against the rules to do any of these things. I also assure you that despite your continual protest, I do understand "data over cable." You're acting like it's some sort of voodoo mystery technology. It's just shared bandwidth between all houses on a node. About 30 Mbps with DOCSIS 2.0. With Comcast customers spewing out millions of spams a day, I hardly think a thousand e-mails is a significant bandwidth problem.
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Jimmysquid.com - I take pictures. |
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| said by Rhobite:
The only "whining and complaining" is coming from you, about how sending a few thousand e-mails (probably amounting to just a few megs) or a few gigs of files will somehow degrade other people's Internet connections.
OK - PLEASE stop putting words in my mouth. My issue (that I clearly stated) was with your comment that it is your bandwidth to use as you wish. You're twisting the situation again.
Now, after already claiming the bandwidth was yours you change your mind and state quote:
It's just shared bandwidth between all houses on a node.
If its shared then:
•How can it be all yours to use as you wish?
•How can abuse by you not affect other users?
I'm simply working with the facts. I'm not whining and complaining and I'm perfectly happy with my OOL service. I'm not affected in the slightest by OOL's policy change and yes, I do have other domains hosted by other ISPs that I can still send email through.
You still haven't answered my question about how you expect OOL to differentiate between a legimate person sending a message to 1000+ reciplients at once and a spammer doing the same. I'm not whining or complaining about someone doing this - I merely stated a few facts and some justification why running a maillist could be against TOS. Rather than trying so hard to fight it and getting so worked up about it why not find an acceptable solution to work within the constraints? It isn't difficult and many others have been doing it with their ISPs for quite some time.
I'm glad for you that you have an alternate ISP that allows this - why are you so interested in OOL's policies if you aren't using them? Why not suggest those with problems move on over to your ISP from OOL instead of whining about how you should be able to do what you want with your bandwidth (which you don't have since you don't use OOL anyway)?
Oh - Data-Over-Cable is not "just shared bandwidth between all houses on a node". There are two independent assymetrical channels. The upstream has a much smaller frequency range to work in and has a fraction of the bandwidth of the downstream. OOL is not using DOCSIS 2 so I don't quite understand how that relates. |
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RhobitePremium
join:2002-02-24
Cambridge, MA | This is utterly hopeless. |
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1 edit | reply to Shady Bimmer
Re: Punish everyone else because of a few people Thanks for pointing out my intentions as it saved me a lot of typing.
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"It's always funny until someone gets hurt......and then it's absolutely friggin' hysterical!" |
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| reply to NeilB
Re: Punish everyone else because of a few people said by NeilB:
I am the league webmaster for a local youth baseball leauge and I probably have around 1,100 email addresses that we use to communicate to parents when we have something important to say (Spring and Fall Registrations, all fields are closed because of rain, etc.).
It has become almost impossible for me to communicate with parents because ISP's have restricted things down so much. I've contacted the ISP's directly to let them know that I'm sending 1,100 emails with permission, but to no avail. Unfortunately, it's the kids (and their parents) that get hurt because of these restrictions...
Rather than complaining about OOL modifying their policy to follow many other ISPs, I'll try to offer some guidance. I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with the TOS, but expending so much energy whining and complaining won't do anything but add more stress to your life (which I'm sure you don't need).
Unfortunately most providers will consider sending 1000 messages in a single shot "bulk" or "spam". Regardless of whether or not it is, without violating privacy laws they have no way of knowing.
There are alternatives. As I already suggested you could try splitting up the recipients into smaller groups. You may need to limit your message to as few as 150 recipients at a time (or perhaps 500 will suffice) so it could be tedious.
You could try doing a search (Google is a good start) for "mail reflector service", "maillist service", "maillist hosting", etc.
You could try using online "groups" - essentially free-for-all forum hosting. MSN Groups, Yahoo! Groups, and SmartGroups are just a few options here. Email delivery of postings is often an option so you could post to the group and recipients will get an email. I'm not exactly a big fan of Yahoo! Groups given that it is in-your-face advertising supported, but for low-volume (IE: relatively few messages) purposes it could be your answer.
The groups idea may be a viable solution for you and is absolutely worth looking into, but other choices include maillist services/providers (which may be free or charge a recurring fee). These include Coollist, Your MailingList Provider, andCrossLink.
Finally, many dynamic-dns providers include email services including mail reflection and alternate-port SMTP services. These include both DynDNS and No-IP. These typically include a variety of mail services so you'll want to review their options and possibly even put in a query about their best solution for you.
Beware, though, that as I already pointed out many providers will consider 1000+ recipients bulk or spam mail, and will only offer business-style services. A little time spent doing research here, though, can yield a more-than-acceptable solution. |
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