Matthew Elvey <matthew(_at_)elvey(_dot_)com> wrote:
People expect the standard we come up with to substantially reduce
spam flows (as recent press has confirmed). If it doesn't, and IMO
there's a big risk it won't, the result is LESS credibility than we
have now, not more!
Absolutely. But addressing that concern is a requirement for the
PR/marketing portion of any proposal, not for the technical portion.
Participants in the technical portion should make it clear to the
marketing people that there is no silver bullet. Any anti-spam
proposal will do nothing more than take us a step towards the
solution.
It is unscientific nonsense to say that adding an assertion
increases the complexity of the assertions exponentially. I'd say
for certain O(n) <= n, WELL BELOW not EXPONENTIAL. Once you're
making the effort to create and install a MARID record in DNS,
adding another assertion is trivial, so it's actually the case that
O(n) = 1 !!!
While participants can decide on, and use, one method, the other
possibilities exist in the code, making inter-operation, debugging,
and maintenance a nightmare.
It is absolutely not forbidden for us to endorse a scheme that
implies a suggested tighenting up on what is allowed in SMTP.
Many would disagree with you.
One response to that disagreement is that implementations are
*already* restricting the kinds of data they accept in SMTP
conversations. It would be prudent for the IETF to come up with
standard restrictions on SMTP, to replace the ad-hoc hacks currently
in existence.
Alan DeKok.