In May, 2003 an initial unsolicited bulk mail message was sent to me advertising a book published by Trafford Publishing. I sent a report of that spam to obvious places. (That unsolicited bulk mail was captured in a dccm logdir file.)
The apparent Internet service provider for trafford.com responded with this message. At that time it was plausible that the author and customer of Trafford Publishing was responsible and that Trafford Publishing was innocent.
Then another message was sent to the service mailbox for the main DCC mailing list. That address is used only for requests of new subscriptions, unsubscribing, and similar business. That address common frequently receives unsolicited bulk mail from spammers who have "scrapped" it from web pages and elsewhere. It obviously and certainly would never request any of Mr. Hooker's advertising. I sent another report of this second unsolicited bulk message.
Apparently Mr. Hooker received that report of his second message, because he sent this objection. and this similar objection.
As far as I know, everything I have written about Mr. Hooker, Trafford Publishing, and Flemming Andersen is true. I do not understand anything in Mr. Hooker's March objection to be both true and contradicting anything I have said, with the possible exception of whether or not the second message was a legitimate attempt to subscribe to the DCC mailing list. That 71 line, 188 word message contains only one word that is not advertising for Trafford publishing. If I am wrong and Mr. Hooker did intend to subscribe to the DCC mailing list instead of advertise his publishing business, then I apologize. However, that conditional apology is limited. It seems that if he had subscribed, Mr. Hooker would not have submitted any messages related to the DCC. The Rhyolite Software list of unwelcome domains is unrelated to the Distributed Checksum Clearinghouse.
As far as I know, Mr. Hooker sent no mail to Rhyolite Software before that alleged attempt to subscribe to the DCC mailing list. However, it is possible that he did. Thousands of messages are caught daily in the filters protecting mailboxes at rhyolite.com. It is only by happenstance that I see any of the rejected mail. As it says, the Rhyolite Software list of unwelcome domains is published to advise people at those domains to use mechanisms other than email if they absolutely must contact someone here.
In any case, Mr. Hooker's charge of "libel" in his objection seems like a legal threat that makes any future mail from him unwelcome at Rhyolite Software. Any communications from Mr. Hooker or his lawyers should be directed to the Rhyolite Software lawyers.
It might be interesting to review other reports of unsolicited bulk mail involving trafford.com.
Other questions are answered in the list of objections about entries in the Rhyolite Software list of unwelcome domains.
Contact vjs@rhyolite.com but not this spam trap.
