ORBS splits into ORBZ and ORBL

It's all go

By Kieren McCarthy • Get more from this author

Posted in Media, 18th June 2001 17:33 GMT

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We reported on Friday how anti-spam company ORBS has been reborn as ORBS UK, after its demise following a New Zealand court case.

The owner of ORBS UK, Paul Cummins, has been back in touch to tell us that he has renamed the company ORBZ - standing for Open Relay Blocking Zone. He was also keen to point out that Actrix and Xtra - the two companies that sparked the original court case after being falsely listed on ORBS' blacklist - have now been removed.

Hang on though, Michael Rawls, who previously said he would also set up a new ORBS, has done just that and it calling it ORBL - Open Relay Black List. You can see his new site here.

We wonder whether any others that made noises about setting up an anti-spam list using ORBS' database as a start point will do so as well.

It's far too early to tell whether either will survive, so we'll sit and wait. We have heard some interesting things about ORBZ owner Paul Cummins though.

Paul wasn't interested in replying to our questions about him being kicked off CIX, an ISP trade association [actually a UK ISP and online conferencing service, there are two CIXes]. Having tried to call him on personal redirect numbers, we managed to contact him via email. He replied: "As I worked for CIX (now Nextra) up until September 1999 I suggest you ask them."

He wasn't much more talkative when we inquired about ORBZ. "Have a look at www.idg.co.nz, for a pretty clear statement of what's going on," he wrote. And that was it.

Old associates of Mr Cummins have told us this limited response is unusual - his exuberant approach to making his point known has apparently seen him escorted away from discussions in the past. ®