AHA! Thanks Ed;-)...
That is the best expose' of the current situation that I have so far seen.
I would like to add that this outcome was possible because at the time of
SMTP/RFC822 conception and standardization in the early '80's, the ARPA/NSF
Internet had an Honor System based on the fact that access was controlled
for all users by ARPA/NSF. Untrustworthy users were subject to loss of
their access rights. Any use of the net was clearly a granted privilege!
Also, the IETF had not yet been conceived, let alone established at that time.
Its predecessor, if it might be called that, was the ARPA Contractors Meeting.
As I recall, RFCs 822/821 were completed in 1982 around the time that IP/TCP
was put into wide use after the great conversion date when the net was shut
down for the last time, and NCP was decommissioned to enable IP/TCP to
introduce the new Internet in place of the original ARPAnet.
IETF was firmed up in 1986 to work on Internet protocols and coordination.
The original Appropriate Use Policy of ARPAnet was modified somewhat in 1987
when NSFnet took the lead in continued Internet development, and NSF
maintained the AUP which served to instill trust because any user in those
days could be denied access rights if caught behaving badly contrary to the
AUP.
NSF dropped the AUP in 1994 as access was opened up to all who could afford it
and the trustworthiness of the internet has gone downhill ever since because
there is no longer any obvious incentive to inhibit bad behavior.
Reasonable trustworthiness is no longer a hallmark of all Internauts.
We all know that there are many bad apples in the barrel. I appears that
the IETF did not foresee the fact of loss of trust, and did not foresee the
affects such loss would have on everything, until now.
And so, perhaps all the major IETF standards need to be reviewed for
upgrading to deal with the almost complete loss of internet-user trust and
Internet System Trust.
This is why I would designate Inter-system and Inter-personal trust induction
as the major paradigm shift to be navigated in this first decade of the New
Millennium. Unfortunately, it appears that the shift of paradigms might be
a bigger adjustment than we are ready to address.
But, the fact is that our old trust has been lost, and something new is
desperately needed, as seems clear from this discussion thread...
I hesitate to spout off and claim that the first thing to be done regarding
trust is to find a definition that we all can embrace so we will be able to
work together on the same problems. But I strongly believe that trust needs
to be well defined before we mount a search party to find it and bring it
home to our beloved Internet.
Without a good definition, we will be reduced to what might look like 2000
monkeys all trying to have sex with a football.
Cheers...\Stef
++++++++++++++
At 22:22 -0800 3/13/04, Ed Gerck wrote:
Yakov Shafranovich wrote:
This discussion got me thinking about the need to state clearly that the
IETF's goal is not to solve the spam problem.
Inadequate design cannot be corrected?
The *possibility* of spam is due to an Internet design based on an
honor system for the end points. The model being that the connection
was less trusted than the end points. Access to the end points was
granted under an honor system and usage rules were enforceable.
Reality showed that the model was upside down for commercial operation.
The end points cannot be controlled and are in fact less trusted than
the connection. Anyone can connect to the network. There is no honor
system. Usage rules are not enforceable -- users can hide and change
their end points.
What I read above is denial that the spam problem was made possible
by a design developed under the auspices of the IETF.
This is good but can I motion that we now move to the second stage
of problem solving?
Cheers,
Ed Gerck