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Re: [Asrg] What is Spam? Was: RMX Records

2003-03-03 12:00:52


On Mon, 3 Mar 2003, Robert G. Ferrell wrote:

My contention is that spam is largely a social, not a technical, issue.
The reason spam exists is that it is cost effective for the spammers.  A 
certain small percentage of people who receive spam respond to it, and that 
response is sufficient to drive further spamming.  If we spent as much 
effort in educating the public about the pitfalls of responding to 
unsolicited commercial email as we do in thinking up ways to block it, we 
could probably make the problem go away on its own.

That may be, but the IETF has to chose from among the tools that it has to
achieve its goals, just as the legislature must chose from among its
tools. There is no doubt a better way than this to solve the problem, but
that doesn't really matter, in fact it is always true. The existence of a
better solution is only an argument against this solution if this solution
precludes the better one, and if the better one would otherwise come into
existence. Neither of these is highly likely, so this group should
continue to think about "What is the most you can do with an RFC?" rather
than "What is the most someone else could do if they wanted to?".


Somewhere there is a legislature meeting about this problem, and someone
is saying that the IETF needs to solve the email forgery problem, rather
than depend upon the legislature to paper over technical inadequecies.




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