Dr. Jeffrey Race wrote:
On Mon, 15 Mar 2004 10:27:46 -0500, Nathaniel Borenstein wrote:
This is exactly right -- we have people arguing from two different
paradigms, both fundamentally orthogonal to the expertise of the IETF.
What this suggests to me is that until the larger society -- i.e. the
courts and international institutions -- reach a determination of the
"right" paradigm for dealing with spam, the IETF is going to spin its
wheels on these issues. If someone could tell us definitively "this is
a question of property rights" or "this is a question of human rights"
or whatever, the IETF as a community would be well qualified to do the
engineering implied by that conclusion. Until then, it's probably an
unresolvable issue for a community as open and democratic as the IETF.
The larger society HAS ALREADY REACHED A DETERMINATION because the
larger society has dealt with this kind of problem, successfully, since
the dawn of civilization. That's why it is called civilization. The
principle, simply stated, is "Actions must have consequences". When
they don't, any sociologist will tell you that you will get exactly
the results you see on the internet.
This is all spelled out in <http://www.camblab.com/misc/univ_std.txt>
which is based on <http://www.camblab.com/nugget/spam_03.pdf>.
Jeffrey,
My concern with your approach is with the fact that SPs can employ such
measures against someone else without proof, simply cutting off
connectivity for some stupid reason and blaming it on not handling abuse
reports. What about ISPs erring on the side of caution and cutting off
an entire netblock? Is there a provision for an accused "pollutor" to
appeal the decision against the SP that is employing the practice? These
are some of the questions that come up off-hand, I will be more than
happy to discuss the entire document in detail with you off-list.
Even in the real world, while there are consequences for actions, there
are numerous checks and balances that make sure that the right person is
actually punished for the actions that he or she actually did. This is
why we have courts, appeals, clemency, etc. to mention a few. The same
checks and balances must be applied in any similar mechanisms in the
Internet arena. The problem is that these checks and balances make the
process slower. This is where we move away from the technical issues and
into the human ones, and this is where its gets very heated and political.
Yakov