Status of relays.orbs.org: Shut down, legal troubles in 2001

Remember ORBS? Short for “Open Relay Behavior Modification System,” it was a blocking list run by Alan Brown from New Zealand. (Mr. Brown ran the second version of ORBS. The first version had been run by Canadian Alan Hodgson.)

People keep asking me about the situation regarding ORBS and its eventual downfall. It happened so long ago, that I don't feel that it would be appropriate to try to fill people in from memory alone. Instead, here's links to a lot of the articles I've found regarding Alan Brown and ORBS. If you have any others, drop me a line and I'll add them to this page.

• Wikipedia's page on ORBS.
• Thread from the newsgroup nz.comp that discusses the shutdown and contains opinions regarding ORBS' listing policies.
• Here's an overview of legal action against Alan Brown, I believe around the same times as ORBS was imploding. Apparently he was sued for defamation over this newsgroup post, and lost. (More commentary on that here, from someone else involved, writing about it a couple of years after the fact.)
• This Register article talks about the legal action against Alan Brown and ORBS regarding Alan's listing of Xtra and Actrix. Courts found that they were falsely listed on the ORBS blocking list.
• An Actrix rep points out that the reason they were listed is due to getting sucked into the disagreement between Alan Brown and Domainz Followups from others indicate that the Actrix IP address was listed as an open relay input. According to Actrix, it was not an open relay.
• Some newsgroup commentary regarding the defamation suit and ORBS listing policies.
• Tom Betz posts Alan Brown's statement to SPAM-L encouraging the blocking of Telecom NZ and indicating that he's no longer in New Zealand.
• Here's an interesting article about ORBS and the controversy surrounding its practices, from Salon.com.

Please note that I'm not linking to any commentary or conspiracy theories put forth by emotional, anti-blocklisting “how dare you block my guaranteed opt-in email” people. There are many blocklists run correctly and appropriately. There were then, and there are now. The lists themselves weren't the problem, and aren't the problem now. Like with any other field of study, type of product, or process, some manage it well, and others do not.