China Says They're Knocking Spammers Offline
from the but-are-they-really? dept
Many spammers have apparently located servers in China, because no one in China seemed to care enough to stop them. That may have just changed, as China has started blocking mail from 127 servers that were used primarily for spam. While those in the antispam world are cheering (as was my first reaction, as well), I wonder if this really is that good. China, of course, has a long history of "blocking" all sorts of political speech. Who knows if, among those 127 servers, some were actually just political opponents? In fact, the article claims that 90 of the 127 servers were actually based in Taiwan, suggesting that this is more politically motivated than simply an attempt at stopping spam. Yes, we need to crack down on spam - but trusting the Chinese government to just block the spam offenders opens up a bunch of other problems.
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Might be doing good work
Perhaps in this case, copyright laws do serve some good.
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Blocking Spam to China
Any e-mails sent from these servers will automatically be blocked from reaching Chinese internet users.
Maybe that's what it means when it says they are blocking Taiwanese servers - they are not blocking the spam going out, they're blocking the spam coming in to China.
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Did I miss part of the article?
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