ietf(_at_)soaring(_dot_)demon(_dot_)co(_dot_)uk (Andrew Shore) writes:
... I found it interesting, specifically the claim that there are 180
entities creating nearly all the spam... it would explain the recurrence
of certain seemingly unlikely patterns across the board, but is still
hard to credit even with that in mind.
it's absolutely true. see the background at www.spamhaus.org for details.
however, it's also irrelevant. bad spam has currently driven-low gray spam,
but if not for those ~200 spam gangs giving unsolicited e-mail a bad reputation
there would be 50X more unsolicited bulk e-mail coming to each of us, from
companies who don't want to be evil but who don't think our privacy is worth
as much as their revenues. the spectre of "gray spam" from so-called legit
companies is more frightening to me even then the Windows Open Proxy Platform.
if we could put those ~200 spam gangs in jail then they would be replaced in
a month. if we could make spamganging so illegal that they were eventually
not replaced, then their traffic would be replaced by bulk e-mail from every
customer of every CRM (customer relationship management) company in the world.
not that it's practical to even do away with the spam gangs we have now, but
what would replace them is actually worse, so let's reconsider that goal set.
as i've said here several times in the last 10 days, the problem isn't
stopping spam but enabling batched interpersonal digital communications
where the recipients are happy to have some delivery costs shifted to them
because they have some confidence in the identity of the sender, the intent
of the relay, and the value (to the sender) of the reception.
don't think negative thoughts like "how can we save smtp from the spammers"
but rather positive ones like "what batched interpersonal digital
communications system can we create that fits the full spectrum of humanity"?
smtp was for the research community, where trust was implied by reachability.
in the full spectrum of humanity, that implication is, and has always been,
provably false.
smtp cannot be saved. let's move on.
--
Paul Vixie