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Futureproofing Spamhaus |
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1 June 2004 Spamhaus has grown considerably these last few years, we have many more servers, more dedicated investigators, more projects on the go, and the running costs are forever mounting. As some know, we initially looked to the UK Government for funding, but that's not been forthcoming (issue additionally complicated by Spamhaus being an international organization which the UK Government thinks should also be the responsibility of the EU and US governments to fund). In the meantime, thanks largely to ineffective spam laws passed by governments, we are having to step up the fight against spam with more resources, and for this we need more funding - Spamhaus can't continue forever funded with the personal resources of its team, or rely indefinitely on donated servers and network resources. This year we have a dozen conferences and law enforcement meetings we need to attend in various expensive-to-get-to places, new projects and databases necessitate more servers, dedicated lines and armoured, distributed colo space on 4 continents. We also anticipate spammers will attempt more lawsuits in efforts to stop us stopping them, and we need sufficient funds to easily turn the tables on them when they do. In addition we have a number of large entities hesitant to use our Block Lists without Service Agreement contracts. As the Swedish Government put it, when they asked the service price for SBL zone transfers and were told 'they're free': "Free means you can't fund yourselves, we need to be sure you'll be around tomorrow". Many ISPs want the same assurance, as do all who rely on our data to protect commercial networks. And we're going to give it to them. So it's time for Spamhaus to address these issues and fund itself, using a funding model I believe the email management community will be happy with, and from which our millions of free users will benefit. The chosen funding model is based on charging large commercial/corporate networks a yearly fee for a service only large networks need - our 'Data Feed' data synchronization service. Data Feed is a resource-intensive service which Spamhaus currently supplies exclusively to large ISPs and corporations with heavy email traffic. By separating the Data Feed into an independently-run service, funds from the Data Feed service will finance new projects and in turn fund yet more free public DNSBL query mirrors, guaranteeing that Spamhaus's public DNSBL query mirrors remain free, and the free public mirrors will be boosted with additional servers and made ever more attack-proof. We have devised a pricing structure designed to be acceptable to Data Feed users (the few thousand corporations taking twice-hourly Spamhaus DNSBL transfers) and which takes into account the large amount of universities and non-profits, and which caps the subscription fee with an "unlimited users" rate - so our current giant Free Mail providers with millions of users each needn't worry, in fact they should find it very cheap - it's designed to fund operations, not make us rich. ISPs that up to June 2004 have generously provided Spamhaus with our free public DNSBL query mirrors in return will now receive service free of charge no matter how many users they have. These ISPs become our partners/sponsors in the fight on spam. With this model, our prime objective of keeping Spamhaus free to the public is secure, and the millions of users who rely on our anti-spam systems can be assured we'll be here for as long as spammers plague the Internet. Steve Linford Chief Executive, The Spamhaus Project London, UK Data Feed Service Info | About Spamhaus |
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