On Friday, March 10, 2006 at 9:08 AM Dave Crocker wrote:
I am warming to the model you describe.
1. It is an extremely well-established model.
2. It pertains to salient responsibilities in an information
transfer sequence.
(Given that multiple operators can be in a sequence, I'd
suggest 'distributor'
rather than 'bookstore'.)
It scares me quite a bit to have my email operator be vested
with apparent responsibility for the content of my email,
but, alas, I guess that really is what the anti-abuse work is about.
What do other folks think?
The author=>publisher=>bookstore/distributor analogy resonates quite
strongly with me (I have a quibble with "distributor" which I'll discuss
in a moment). It is indeed a scary thought to vest responsibility of a
message content with the email operator, but, as Dave observed, this is
the point we seem to have reached in current messaging abuse control
strategy. I *do* want the "publisher" of an email message to bear more
responsbility for that message than a receiving MTA. This seems to be
consistent with the principles of Carl Hutzler's Spamops I-D, and also
in alignment with the direction MAAWG participants seem to be headed:
control spam at the source rather than at the receiving end.
While I understand Dave's point about "distributor", I fear that using
this terminology might be confusing. Still using the
author/publisher/bookstore analogy, "distributors" might be
intermediaries between publishers and bookstores, and not the parties
responsible for getting books in the hands of readers. Moreover, the
term might also be thought to refer to parties that are responsible for
transmitting a message, thus confusing "distributors" with "publishers".
But I do like the distinctions between
the-entity-responsible-for-creating-the-content-of-a-message,
the-entity-responsible-for-emanating-a-message[1], and
the-entity-responsible-for-getting-a-message-to-a-recipient. Differing
roles, differing responsibilities. I just haven't decided yet which
terms I like best for each of these roles.
Regards,
Nick
[1] To be clear, when I speak of "emanating" a message, I am *not*
referring to a situation such as when a secretary types a message for
the boss and then presses the "send" button.
--
Nick Nicholas
Knowledge Engineer
Habeas Inc.
650-694-3320
nick(_at_)habeas(_dot_)com
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