--On Tuesday, 01 May, 2007 00:27 +0200 Frank Ellermann
<nobody(_at_)xyzzy(_dot_)claranet(_dot_)de> wrote:
My consideration is that I don't know the owner of foo.com and
can't tell if he likes that addresses in his domain are used in
2821. And if he likes it I'd wonder if 2821 is a good place
for foo.com search engine optimization.
Sure. And, as I indicated in another note (possibly not to the
list), I have no problem at all with the IESG, or someone else,
insisting on the use of 2060 names in new documents. But, for
those that have been using other names for a decade or two, and
the names they have been using,
(i) if the holder of foo.com doesn't like the impact of having
that domain used in examples, they presumably have gotten used
to it a long time ago... and the first of those examples
preceded their registration. In particular, I suggest that
having such a domain for email may constitute holding up a
"spammers, especially dumb spammers, please hit me" sign,
especially if the mailboxes used in those examples actually
exist.
(ii) anyone who picks up those examples and uses them unchanged
to run or test something is sufficiently stupid that they
probably deserve to encounter what you politely describe as
search engine optimization.
(iii) the "search engine optimization" problem exists for http
connections. An SMTP connection won't cause any of those
issues to be triggered although it might cause the sender's
putative backward-pointing address and IP address to be logged
and perhaps used in an attack or intelligence test.
I just don't know how far it is worth going to try to protect
stupid people from themselves.
Another consideration are users making up what they think are
"random" addresses / IPs / etc. hurting real addresses. The
address harvesters and spiders are everywhere. It's just bad
practice to make up example addreses if there are reserved IPs,
domains, and phone numbers for such purposes.
Again, if these addresses were being made up, new, at this
point, I'd certainly agree with you. But they are quite old (in
Internet time), so the issue now is, IMO, about a cosmetic
change.
john