At 4:48 PM -0400 2003/10/24, Alan DeKok wrote:
My concern is that I don't see a requirement that SMTP should solve
all of the worlds problems. I understand that SMTP should not
*remove* peoples privacy and anonymity. But there is no requirement
(and there SHOULD be no requirement) that SMTP creates privacy and
anonymity, where there was none before.
The problem is that the SMTP protocol exists, and in its current
form, there are a number of "features" which can be extracted. We're
here to try to address some of these "features", which have
manifested themselves as spam. However, there are other groups in
the world that have become dependant on some of these features (which
may or may not overlap with the "spam" features).
If we're going to talk about changing the SMTP protocol, or how
we recommend that people administrate their mail servers which
operate under the SMTP protocol, we need to be aware of these other
uses of the protocol, and we need to be explicit in how our suggested
changes may impact these other uses.
Further, I believe that the emotional appeal to human rights workers
is inappropriate in a professional forum. Arguments of the form "If
you're for proposal X, then you're for killing people!" should be
explicitly outside of the scope of ASRG.
I didn't say "If you're for proposal X, then you're for killing
people!" That is an unwarranted and inappropriate mis-representation
of my statement.
What I said was "Would you be willing to bet your life on that?"
This is a very different statement.
We're talking about making changes to the SMTP protocol (or the
implementation thereof) which could have a profound effect on the
lives of people around the world.
Many people's lives could literally be at stake here, and no one
has given any consideration to how they could be affected by the
kinds of things we're talking about.
--
Brad Knowles, <brad(_dot_)knowles(_at_)skynet(_dot_)be>
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
-Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania.
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