Subject: Primal urges in the can-the-spam movement

From: [email-masked] (Dan Kolis)
Date: Fri, 13 Feb 2004 13:46:05 -0500

Robert Brown said:
>Let's BUY the MTA server and two encryption nodes whose only job is to
>ensure that the MTA queue never runs dry, each equipped with 600 GB in
>RAID3.  Let's see, that would be, hmm, less than $10K if one got gold
>plated parts, less than $4K at my local OTC no-name computer store.
>Let's amortize all costs over a year.  The $10K hardware cost is then a
>measley $30/day.

And further said:
>SPAM is undeniably evil, but the place to add costs is at the ISP level
>and the PoP level.  Acceptable use agreements with sharp nasty teeth and
>anti-spam legislation that hits spammers AND the networks that
>tolerate/enable their activities AND the actual vendors that are selling
>the products being spammed with big fines have a far better chance of
>having a favorable impact on SPAM than any number of arcane and
>expensive countermeasures at the level of the mailer itself.

>Legislation CAN be effective.  The new do-not call list has worked
>absolute wonders for me.  Note that PHONE spam was never free -- it
>costs anywhere from $0.10 to $1 per call.  Yet three months ago I would
>get hit a half-dozen times per day or more.  Caller ID was all but
>useless, as few phonespammers used listed numbers or else they used
>blocks.  The DNC list plus the promise of fines or worse, and I now get
>phone-spammed once every few weeks, usually by somebody that apologizes
>profusely and babbles about removing my name from their list once I
>point out that I'm on the DNC list.  After all, they can't sell to me
>without telling me who they are, and that's all I need to have them
>fined or worse.
>   rgb

Dan says:
If I follows Roberts scenerios, he visualizes ways to own things like MTA's,
etc and evade the cost per by magnitudes.

Generally, as the second fragment of text describes, Robert's suggesting
catch-me-if-you-can enforcement is the way to go.

If that's a logical mode, IETF can possibly see a mandate to tighten
technology to find our true sources of messages, packets, etc. Generally,
like MPLS, and 802.11b, the trend is moving slowly the other way.

I think instead of detailed calculations, an observation which might seem
familiar to economists is closer to the issue. 

If you expect people paid to enforce things to do it, they will always Jones
for more people and resources, and probably no enforcement in the world
accounts for capturing more than some ones of percents of undesired
activity. Like any community, there will always be a "crisis" or some
description requirement more of: everything. Cooperation, legal scope,
education, and of course always more money. This constitutes part of the
noise level that degrades much of modern life. (Like the incredible
competition to have the most interesting possible up and coming new disease,
mental problem or crime).

On the other hand, we all have a vested interest in watching the eggs in our
basket. 

Allthough I've never seen a note posted to this effect, If I walked in off
the street into the office up front in this building and started loading
office supplies into a hand cart and roll them out the door; Secretaries,
salespeople, the shipping guy, would come piling out of the spaces and stop
me. Nobody put that in there job description, or has to.

By making some catagories of messaging a chargable cost, and making sure
somebody has to pay; (easiest as an anonymous cost up front), now everyone
in the cost pipeline has something to gain and lose with enforcement.

Its easy to visualize this. the MTA's look at a MIME type field and its a
very large prime number. Its forwarded to an agency or heirarchy of
agencies. They return a go/no-go message (UDP probably). If the number is
already used, the message declines it and the message is aborted from
delivery; (or just downgrades to free). If its accepted, the factors are
return and the software verifies it by multiplying them. Having the factors
on file proves the identity of the agency. Each handoff offers the MTA a new
prime. Only the first is chargable. Any MTA can downgrade a message to free,
(or upgrade it with a top level seeded prime). This works right down to a
home box type MTA, like a POP3 program. Subsideary primes have a mappable
relation to the seed ones; (doesn't matter what it is. As long as the
relation can be detmined).

MTA's which do not cooperate in the scheme incur no cost, and add or lose no
value to themselves or anyone else. No message status changes. Some may
encounter MTA's elsewhere in the system to modify that, but there is no red
flag day at all.

It involves trust of only one agency at the top of the heirarchy. You have
to trust them to want old fashioned, hard currency, money. I can refer you
to a number of personal aquiaintances with that characteristic, (if you do
not know people of that ilk).

regards,
Dan

---

From: "Dr. Jeffrey Race" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 14 Feb 2004 08:59:08 +0700

It is a pleasure to see someone bringing common sense about human
behavior to the discussion, but I dread seeing another proposal like
this, which entails a new technical mechanism which the victims have
to pay to establish.    Society has dealt with problems comparable
to spam for at least five thousand years, and the mechanisms for
dealing with antisocial behavior are quite simple to understand and
implement.   There is no need for additional complex technical mechanisms
(though anything enhancing traceability is desirable).  Just apply to
the internet the mechanisms which are used everywhere else in society
to deal (successfully) with comparable problems.

 See <http://www.camblab.com/misc/univ_std.txt>

   based on

     <http://www.camblab.com/nugget/spam_03.pdf>

Jeffrey Race