What I'm trying to say, and what some people still don't hear, is that
this is no longer just an annoyance.
I'm entirely in agreement with this.
Unfortunately, many in the IETF community still cling to the naive
feeling that somehow our personal distaste at closed mailing lists
or dial up lines that cannot communicate on port 25 except to authorized
hosts is more important than keeping SMTP usable AT ALL.
It should be obvious to most that any effective solution will require
some compromises. That does not mean that the appropriate compromise
is obvious, or that we will all instantly agree on a single compromise.
As for naivete, there's plenty of it to go around, and ill-conceived
countermeasures to spam are as much a part of the current problem
as the spam itself. But calling someone 'naive' because he/she doesn't
like your preferred compromise is probably counterproductive.
What happened to Usenet will indeed happen to SMTP if we do not stop
pretending that the problem is insignificant.
I agree with this also.
Keith