ietf-asrg
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Re: [Asrg] 3. Proof-of-work analysis

2004-05-18 03:27:19
That works currently against spamware that pipelines illegally.
Problem is that there are lots of people using these techniques for
good reason.

Problem?  What problem?  I am quite happy to reject mail from people
who think they deserve to be exempted from the RFCs that apply to
everyone else (such as the ones that forbid non-negotiated SMTP
pipelining), no matter how good they think their reasons.

'illegal' is a poor choice of language, SMTP is not an act of
parliament,

I disagree here too.  `Illegal' is commonly used (in computer contexts
and even some non-computer contexts, such as chess) to mean "in
violation of applicable rules" even when those rules do not take the
form of mundane law.  Would you object to saying that an attempt to
move a knight as if it were a bishop in chess is an "illegal move"?
That certain machine-code bit patterns constitute "illegal
instructions"?

This is the sense in which ratware pipelines "illegally".

If you need to send out a million mails to your customers as Ebay
does every day you cannot wait around a minute while someone's idiot
sendmail script runs.

If you think you're somehow "above" the RFCs, you not only _deserve_ to
have your mail refused, you _will_ have your mail refused - at rates
that increase with the perceived severity of the violation.  "But I
need to send out more than my machine can handle if I have to follow
the rules" will be, quite properly, answered with "then get more
machines".  Being big does not exempt you from the rules, no matter how
much organizations like your email provider might wish it did.

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