Economic conditions and an apparent decision to start a fee-based service will force access to MAPS services to cease. A post from mail-abuse.org to the net-abuse.email newsgroup has started some controversy over MAPS' intentions, finding replacements for their service, and basically what should be done next.. . .
Economic conditions and an apparent decision to start a fee-based service will force access to MAPS services to cease. A post from mail-abuse.org to the net-abuse.email newsgroup has started some controversy over MAPS' intentions, finding replacements for their service, and basically what should be done next.

Craig Sanders writes that, "orbz.org seems a pretty good replacement for orbs.org. doesn't have a huge hit rate yet but that could be because it's last in my maps_rbl_domains list. on the bright side, they DO separate the listing into inputs.orbz.org and outputs.orbz.org."

Below is the usenet post from mail-abuse.org. Stay tuned.

 From: Margie  Newsgroups: news.admin.net-abuse.email Subject: MAPS Subscription Policy Changes Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 16:45:11 -0700 Message-ID:   Effective Midnight 7/31/2001, all non-subscription access to MAPS services will cease.  Anyone wishing to transfer or query MAPS data must have a signed contract with MAPS, and have access enabled in our ACL.   There are several reasons for this change:  1) The data in the MAPS files belongs to MAPS and is copyrighted. MAPS, RBL, RBL+, DUL and RSS are all service marks of MAPS.  MAPS must have the ability to protect its assets from unauthorized use or disclosure by third parties.  2) As MAPS popularity grew, the demand on our resources grew.  We have continually upgraded systems, software, and added servers where necessary. The end result is our systems and connectivity are sufficient enough that providers have no incentive to pay for zone transfer subscriptions. When MAPS began to offer paid subscriptions, we believed that allowing access based on the ability to pay would allow the largest percentage of the net to access the services, while permitting MAPS to sustain itself with subscriptions from the large users of the services.  What we have found instead is that we are our own worst "competition".  3) The economic conditions in the industry have hit everyone, including MAPS. MAPS' purpose is to stop spam on the internet. That purpose can only be achieved as long as MAPS can maintain itself as a corporation. Like any corporation, that takes income.  There is very little debate about the effectiveness of the MAPS lists. This effectiveness saves its users time, bandwidth and other resources as well as giving them an added value to their customers by reducing the amount of spam the customer sees in their inbox.  MAPS can simply no longer afford to foot the bill for the bulk of the internet community.   It is not our intent to put the use of the MAPS lists out of reach of the individual or hobby site. We will still offer some reduced fee or free query contracts under limited circumstances.   As usual, please direct requests for contracts to subscription-request@mail-abuse.org, questions and comments to margie@mail-abuse.org and flames to dev/null. ;)   --  =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Margie Arbon                   Mail Abuse Prevention System, LLC Manager, Market and Business Development margie@mail-abuse.org          https://servicecentral.trendmicro.com/en-US/ers/