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RE: [Asrg] The "Human-Shield" effect; the need for end-user control

2003-03-23 11:43:05
At 9:36 PM -0500 3/22/03, <asrg(_at_)Frankston(_dot_)com> wrote:
What I am very worried about is the assumption that you must put what
are nothing more than social polices deeply into the infrastructure of
the protocols.

I think that most people here are aware that writing code is another way of creating social and pseudo-legal rules. (If not, they should all go read Lessig's "Code and Ither Laws of Cyberspace" http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0465039138/somewherecom and return to this forum when they've finished it.)

The reason we are here is that the code that we currently are running has created a society that we are not pleased with. We would like to modify that society, so we are looking for ways to codify a new one.

Why do you think that many of the responses on this forum are so virulent? Why do people publicly chastise other's for forcing us to deal with their challenge/response system. Why do I get so angry at sender-pays folks for proposing a system because it does what they want--without thinking about what it does for everyone else, or whether it meets everyone else's needs.

We're defining social rules.  That's a very emotional process.

Spam filtering is an app.

If it clogs your dial up lines then buy a screening service.

So your belief is that it's not possible to change the social structure without losing necessary benefits. I think most of the people on this list disagree.

So, what is the problem being solved? Too much traffic in the Internet
or better applications at the edge to help you manage your availability
and the flood of information that you are confronted with?

The latter is definitely a problem and needs fixing. Please go start a company and solve it. I keep trying to persuade DevonTHINK to merge their software with Qualcomm. Feel free to apply your presure.

The former needs to be subdivided. We are seeing too much traffic on the edge. We are not seeing too much traffic, AS MEASURED IN BITS, in the center.

But while you may say that bits are just bits, email bits require far more handling than streaming video. We already *do* provide different QoS for email than for video. There is an expectation that the message will get through, or that the sender will be notified if it does not. If we were just talking about bits then spam wouldn't be such a problem. But because email has a higher QoS, the problem of fake email is a serious problem. You can't just throw them on the floor because you can't tell which bounce is real and which is fake. Determining what is real and what is fake requires processing all those bits, do extensive network analysis, and keeping your information up-to-date on a daily basis--it's not cheap.

In addition, forgeries have caused serious damage to company reputations. They are seriously damaging the reputation of email as a whole. Spam floods have taken email servers off the air for *weeks*. Never mind the times my systems have crashed because person A was spamming person B using my domain. I've had people threaten to rape my wife because of email forgeries. And Friday I almost lost my internet connection because some heavy weight media company fell for a forgery. If my ISP weren't smart enough to ignore it I would not be talking to you on this list right now.

This is not an acceptable society. And telling people to hire some filtering company is *not* a sufficient solution. And that's from someone who *runs* a filtering company.
--
Kee Hinckley
http://www.puremessaging.com/        Junk-Free Email Filtering
http://commons.somewhere.com/buzz/   Writings on Technology and Society

I'm not sure which upsets me more: that people are so unwilling to accept
responsibility for their own actions, or that they are so eager to regulate
everyone else's.
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