Michael Thomas <mat(_at_)cisco(_dot_)com> wrote:
Subject: Re: Principles of Spam-abatement
X-Mailer: VM 6.72 under 21.1 (patch 6) "Big Bend" XEmacs Lucid
John Leslie writes:
Michael Thomas <mat(_at_)cisco(_dot_)com> wrote:
John Leslie writes:
Paul Vixie <vixie(_at_)vix(_dot_)com> wrote:
"all communications must be by mutual consent"
Ok, I'm dense. How do I meaningfully consent to
somebody for which I have no a priori information
about their consentworthiness?
Much the same as you do with the telephone: some people just pick up,
Case 1: consent is presumed until content is observed;
others check caller-ID, and let an answering machine take any calls
they don't recognize;
Case 2: non-consent is presumed for unauthenticated senders;
still others hire a sectretary to screen their calls...
Case 3: an external agent screens everything;
I mean, I can blackhole them after the fact, but until I have some
information to inform my consent, I'm not sure what this principle
buys you.
It doesn't necessarily buy you anything: it's a way to look at what
we're trying to engineer.
Well, I don't understand because it sure seems to
me that the principle requires omniscience in
isolation...
No more so than the three cases listed above (or others not listed).
Or is this just a covert way of saying that we need an e-Yentl?
I can't say whether Paul intended that: but I don't interpret the
principle to say any such thing.
It would be a lot clearer if the intent is to say that third
party introductions are a necessary possibility, that it come
out and say that instead of leaving the possibility of oracles
explicitly open.
You're getting into implementation details -- definitely off-topic
for a list of principles.
I'm still open (for a few hours) to suggestions for re-wording;
but I'm not going to accept any re-wording that changes a principle
into an implementation plan.
--
John Leslie <john(_at_)jlc(_dot_)net>