As usual, comments are in italics.

Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2003 22:43:14 -0400
From: Abuse Desk <Abuse@Conti.NU>
Organization: Conti.NU
To: c.parnell@opengroup.org,postmaster@opengroup.org
CC: Abuse Desk <Abuse@Conti.NU>
Subject: Dean Anderson <dean@av8.com> is not making friends

Dear OpenGroup.org,

As Dean Anderson <dean@av8.com> claims that you, as the successor to the "Open Software Foundation", have contracted av8.com to provide routing and connectivity service for your 130.105.0.0/16 netblock, please explain to us (and such comments will have to be quotable in public) your relationship with av8.com.

Dean Anderson has never said anything like the above. All that has been said is that The Open Group is a customer. This is just an attempt to "social-engineer" some information, in the hopes that The Open Group will "correct" my "claims". Spam profiteers have been trying for ages to work out what the relationship is, apparently to better help them tortiously interfere with a contract.

Dean claims that information about this relationship falls under his right to enter into a "private contract", however ARIN regulations and their predecessor's (the Internic: operations funded by ARPANET) regulations make it quite clear that the resources allocated by these registries are for the public benefit, and are nothing short of a government grant for use of a public, shared resource. Government grants are not transferable without explicit and advance permission, and their beneficial details and use are open to the public for inspection, and likely covered by the FOIA.

More lies. Everyone has a right to enter into a private contract, and random people do not have the right to demand details. ARIN makes no such requirement that "resources ... are for the public benefit". Nor is IP Address space a government grant subject to FOIA requests. Nor is it the case that the Open Group can't allow others to use the IP address space. Pure BS.

As some people have alleged, av8.com is using this /16 for it's own purposes, rather than for the Open Group's exclusive benefit. The question is whether you are aware of, and have authorized such use of your IP block.

There is no requirement to use any IP address space for the organizations exclusive benefit. "As some have alleged...", as though he isn't the group making the "allegations". As there is no wrongdoing, there is nothing to "allege".

Allegations about Dean Anderson having hijacked/mis-appropriated this /16 have surfaced before, but have reached a new level of urgency in the face of mass-hijackings of legacy IP blocks in recent times.
Let's see. Brown first posted the claim in March, 2003. April, May, June. Yes, 3 months really changed things.

Dean, in statements public and private, appears to make every effort to not just NOT be above suspicion on this issue, but quite the contrary, and by doing so appears to be talking on your behalf (unless the network space is a legal entity by itself, and he speaks on that IP space's behalf).

Dean Anderson is the authorized contact for the IP address space. Schlichting, Brown, and Sullivan aren't authorized to say anything about it.

Dean's actions, no secret to the public, coupled with plenty historical and current legal threats against DNSBL operators, individuals, complaints to their upstream ISPs bearing legal barrage and allegations of libel and defamation, and one begins to wonder: is Dean Anderson officially representing you and your interests? If yes, you should consider a new spokesperson that has more respect for other individuals and their opinions than him on matters of network use and -abuse. It's times like these (with SCO/IBM/Novell bashing in each other's heads) that you yourself must be beyond suspicion and find support in the community.

If they don't want legal complaints, they should try to respect and obey the law. Note the SCO/IBM/Novell FUD. Like they will get a lot of support from the radical anti-spam community.


Thank you,
Abuse@conti.nu

Abuse@conti.nu sounds pretty official. In fact, the .NU domain is run out of Massachussetts, with goal of providing anonymous services. Basically, everything a spammer or a radical anti-spammer would want. It took a little sleuthing to figure out that this came from Mr. Schlicting. While they won't give out a mailing address, they will give out an email address, but only over the phone. The contact email address

This is a rather transparent attempt to scare The Open Group. It is fortunate that they have lawyers and some experience with crackpots.

Not only is Schlicting trying to defame Dean Anderson, but he is trying to pump more information using social-engineering techniques described in "The Art of Deception".