From: Jim Youll <jim(_at_)media(_dot_)mit(_dot_)edu>
Vernon, in many cases the CA's are not selling the certificates (IP addresses)
but only renting them for short periods of time. We get a great deal of spam
from one-off dialups or otherwise variable IP addresses... such as the guy who
has been dictionary-spamming one of our domains for a week now. He still
hasn't
gotten through the A's(_at_)ourdomain(_dot_) I've now locked out
a whole class C block and if he pops up elsewhere, I'll have to block
yet another...
Yes, and if ISPs were willing to spend the time and money to break
the financial kneecaps of spammers, that sort of spam would not be a
problem. Practical proof of that theory is that there are ISPs that
rent dynamic IP addresses but that do not have a spam problem. I use
one when I travel.
If the ISPs infested with dial-up spammers also sold cryptographic
certificates, those certificates would be just as valuable as the
corresponding IP addresses. The slum lord ISPs on the spam-friendly
side of the Internet would still choose to not know their customers.
They would rent cryptographic certificates just as they now rent IP
addresses, except that they would always discard the cryptographic
certs after use instead of only sometimes switching IP addresses.
The cryptogrphic certs of those ISPs would be blacklisted along with
their IP address certs. We would then have their customers shouting
about the unfairness of blacklists of PacBell's ADSL open proxy infested
ADSL lines and demanding that ISPs be regulated like common carriers
and not allowed to reject their important messages.
Vernon Schryver vjs(_at_)rhyolite(_dot_)com
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