From: Daniel Feenberg <feenberg(_at_)nber(_dot_)org>
On Sun, 13 Apr 2003, John Fenley wrote:
> Personaly I think it is the recipients responsability to block their own
> spam. It upsets me when I hear about legitimate mail being blocked. any
> "good faith" system using todays weak reasoning will dump some
legitimate
> mail. Ulimately it is the recipients decision about what they want to
> recieve. I feel that any system to block mail, that is not agreed to by
the
> recipients, should be illegal. There are substantial penalties for
> interfering with postal mail. Email should be as protected as postal
mail is
> from third party interference.
I disagree most vehemently. The user chooses their ISP, and its success at
blocking spam will soon be the primary differentor between good and bad
ISPs, if the crowd screaming "censorship" doesn't have its way. What you
are really proposing is that the recipient can block spam, but he can't
ask for help from his own ISP or mail provider. That puts far to great a
burden on the recipient, who rarely has the knowledge or resources to do a
good job.
I said "that is not agreed to by the recipients"
If I went to your inbox, and took some messages out you would be mad, right?
That is what I am against. Nobody should be able to say "they won't want
that, yoink, they'll never even know it was here", unless I ASK them to do
that.
Without the threat of blacklisting by receiving ISPs, there is no
incentive for sending ISPs to control spam eminating from their systems.
Without any control on sending, the volume will increase dramatically,
making the mismatch between spammers and recipients even greater. The
recipients will be overwhelmed. Note that without blacklists, the
proportion of spam coming from sending hosts that also provide legitimate
mail will increase. With all hosts sending legitimate and spam mail,
connection address will lose its value as a spam indicator.
I don't think sending address has any value as a spam indicator.
and isp's can't decide what spam is anyway. only the recipient can do that.
And before you say the ISP is a monopolist, even if that is true in some
rural area, that would not prevent the user from using a different
provider for mail if the ISPs spam policies did not suit the user.
I said "third party interference"
someone in the middle should not be allowed to block mail. Once the mail is
sent, it must be protected and delivered regardless of origin or content.
Further, blacklisting by recipients is greatly inferior to blacklisting by
MTA operators, because only MTA level mail rejection provides notice to
legitimate senders that mail has been blocked.
Blacklisting is an inferior "solution" altogether. It is only effective
after spam has been sent, and it could block legitimate mail.
Also, why can't a Mail User Agent notify senders?
I am begining to wonder if the "R" in asrg is valid.
maybe it should just be asg.
Perhaps my idea started as the same old challenge/response but over the past
week it has evolved into something I feel is much better, that is what
research does to ideas. Reasearchers look at the real problem, not the
symptoms. Reasearchers examine their ideas from all sides, and researchers
try to understand ideas before they shoot them down. If a Reasearcher sees a
problem, they examine why it is a problem, and then try to solve it.
Researchers do not let personal biases against ideas influence them unless
they have a valid reason. Also a researcher does not "beat a dead horse"
unless they realy think there is something that has been missed. A good
researcher can change how they feel about an idea based on its merit as an
idea, their loyalty is to the solution, not a solution.
a reasearchers response to "blacklists don't stop spam untill after they are
sent." would not be to restate the importance of blacklists. It would be one
of these:
"your logic is wrong for these reasons..."
"that's not a problem I see as important for these reasons..."
"yes, you are right, here is a modification that changes the behavior of
blacblists to alieviate the problem..."
"yes you are right, blacklists are not a suitable solution to the problem."
These are types of statements that show the evolution of ideas.
That is what research is about.
John Fenley
www.pontifier.com
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