Subject: [Asrg] Fwd: Major E-mail Delivery for FTC DNCR Launch

From: Eric Brunner-Williams in Portland Maine <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 25 Jun 2003 21:20:35 -0400

Folks,

This was sent to nanog earlier in the day. Asrg contributors would help
the (US jurisdiction) FTC's "Do Not Call" (phone spam) service roll-out
by letting Richard Callahan know how to keep the eventual AT&T GS mails
from being some systems' false-positive, and not delivered.

I'll sumarize to the list responses that I'm copied on, using white-out
appropriately if requested. The question will come up again.

P3P contributors are noticed simply because ... watching the US go down
the opt-out path is -- er -- interesting.

Semi-related, the special WHOIS:43 (and other kludges) workshop of the
Montreal meeting of ICANN should be winding up, and I'll sumarize what
others who attended sumarize elsewhere, but the bottom line is something
along the lines of you-know-already -- (US) law-enforcement and (WIPO)
trademark interests claim compelling interests in manditory spam-prone
databases, and the (non-US) ccTLD registry operators and GAC reps reply
that <insert-country-here> isn't a town in California (or Maine for you
who know how Maine's towns are named). ICANN head-butting, or butt-heads.

Oh. The going price for 30 million (that's 3 times 10 to the sixth) email
addresses culled from the combined whois databases is ... US$30. I just
can't wait for enum-on-port-43, oops ... my phone is ringing...

Cheers,
Eric

------- Forwarded Message
Subject: Major E-mail Delivery for FTC DNCR Launch
Date: Wed, 25 Jun 2003 13:08:08 -0500
Message-ID: <[email-masked]>
From: "Callahan, Richard M, SOLGV" <[email-masked]>
To: <[email-masked]>
Cc: "Windelberg, Marjorie L, SOLGV" <[email-masked]>,
   "Weiss, Christine G, SOLGV" <[email-masked]>
Sender: [email-masked]
X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by nic-naa.net id h5PI9I5U023796

Good Afternoon 
     and forgive the new guy if I break any rules or conventions.

I work for AT&T Government Solutions and we are about to launch the Do Not Call Registry for the Federal Trade Commission.  At a high level this allows consumers to register their phone numbers to  keep most telemarketers from calling their homes.  Penalties for calling a consumer on the list can be $11K per call and enforcement begins in October.

We are launching consumer registrations on Friday.  My concern:

 - every registration using the web generates an email which must be opened to complete the registration process

We are looking at the potential of MILLIONS OF EMAILS PER DAY beginning Friday.  These will be from the same address and have the same subject line.

I am worried about denial of service or blocking by spam filters if providers are not aware this is coming.

I am hoping this group is a good medium to get the word out to inform the community of this impending event.

At this time I am unable to provide the link or email address, but will do so on Thursday evening if it is of value.

Any thoughts?

Richard M. Callahan
Client Business Manager
AT&T Government Solutions
Office:  (703)506-5780
Mobile: (703)608-0665
Fax: (703)245-3749

------- End of Forwarded Message

_______________________________________________
Asrg mailing list
[email-masked]
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/asrg

---

From: Barry Shein <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2003 17:11:41 -0400

> from being some systems' false-positive, and not delivered.

They're not paying me so why should I care?

Oh, don't tell me, he's decided he deserves a chunk of net subscriber
fees to subsidize the delivery. Get in line!

Or, it's a GOOD THING so therefore we are all OBLIGATED to provide
whatever resources he needs for free. Just like the post office
delivers his messages for free when they're for a worthy cause (yeah
right.)

Put another way, he'll get what he pays for. Which, in this case, is
about zero.

This is what I mean by billion-dollar corps weasling in on the free
mass-mailing biz.

Why is AT&T doing this? Charity? Goodness of their hearts?

Or are they compelled by regulations or some court decision or order?

Today it's the oh-so-reasonable-sounding Do Not Call list
notifications, tomorrow, their bills, next day, changes in service
etc, then 1-800-CALL-ATT ads, etc.

Tell him if he wants reliability to stick it in an envelope with a
stamp on it.

Otherwise he should be prepared to take what he gets.

And maybe even a bill. We reserve the right to charge for such mass
mailing, USE CONSITUTES ACCEPTANCE OF TERMS, or refuse it entirely.

Gak, he's even trying to get free advice on how to get millions of
dollars worth of free mailing reliably.

-- 
        -Barry Shein

Software Tool & Die    | [email-masked]           | http://www.TheWorld.com
Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 617-739-0202        | Login: 617-739-WRLD
The World              | Public Access Internet     | Since 1989     *oo*

---

From: Yakov Shafranovich <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2003 17:22:31 -0400

At 05:11 PM 6/26/2003 -0400, Barry Shein wrote:

>[..]

The no-call list specifically is used by consumers such as YOUR ISP 
subscribers who PAY you. They are soliciting this information by signing up 
on the FTC's website.

Yakov

---

From: Vernon Schryver <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2003 16:47:28 -0600 (MDT)

> From: Barry Shein <[email-masked]>

> ...
> ...

That's still nonsense.  Your customers are paying you, not AT&T or
other third parties (unless you are a "free" provider).  If your
customers don't want confirmation mail, whether from the FTC's DNC
machinery or some mailing list, then you should not accept it.  If
your customers don't pay you enough to deal with their email including
the FTC's DNC confirmations, then you should either raise your rates
or fire those customers that are too expensive to deal with.

> ..

That is not at all what he asked.  He only asked how to avoid your
filters that you have installed at the behest of your customers so
that the mail that your customers are paying you to deliver is in
fact delivered to them.

Vernon Schryver    [email-masked]

---

From: Barry Shein <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2003 19:35:56 -0400

> subscribers who PAY you. They are soliciting this information by signing up 

So by your reasoning because most people pay for their telephone
service then AT&T should allow the FTC to just make millions of free
phone calls to them all over the country (or world) to deliver these
confirmations.

Ok, I think we have a solution there.

Now you're going to faux lecture me on how things are again.

Yet, it occurs to me that we're all here because how things ARE isn't
WORKING.

I'm here to tell you things must change.

There's more to this spam problem than a little perl script is going
to solve

There's crime, and there's greed, in a nutshell.

How surprising in this otherwise perfect and altruistic world.

-- 
        -Barry Shein

---

From: Vernon Schryver <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2003 18:13:05 -0600 (MDT)

> phone calls to them all over the country (or world) to deliver these

That's a nonsense analogy.  You're like a cell phone carrier instead
of a long distance carrier.  Like a U.S. cell phone carrier, your
paying customer is the recipient of the message.  Cell phone carriers
don't whine when their customers burn all of their minutes on phone-sex
or even on frauds routed to island nations.  Instead they raise rates
or cancel customer accounts.  If your customers are receiving too much
mail of any sort including spam for what they pay you, then you should
either raise your rates or terminate their accounts.

No matter how much you'd like a piece of AT&T's pie or a cut of the
action of any third party that sends content to your customers by
SMTP, HTTP, or any other IP protocol, you have no reasonable claim,
at least not unless you make a private deal AOL and others.  If you
don't have AOL's clout to get other big outfits to pay for your
customer's "eyes," then you have my sympathy, but only a little.

---

From: Barry Shein <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2003 20:16:31 -0400

On June 26, 2003 at 16:47 [email-masked] (Vernon Schryver) wrote:
 > That's still nonsense.

Why thank you for the collegial consideration!

  Your customers are paying you, not AT&T or
 > other third parties (unless you are a "free" provider).

Kind of like how I pay for my telephone service? So you ought to be
able to call me for free so long as I want your call? Does AT&T know
about this?

  If your
 > machinery or some mailing list, then you should not accept it.

Well, that's how it's worked.

But then again without change that's also the system that let all this
massive spam breed.

Foolish me I thought we were here to propose CHANGES which might
ameliorate the spam problem.

  If
 > or fire those customers that are too expensive to deal with.

And if you don't have time or inclination to deal with all the spam
then you should hire a full-time secretary to pre-screen your email so
you only see what you want and otherwise just be quiet about it. It's
not a problem, you're just too poor.

Ah, so easy to throw the other guy's money around!

What if such an account as you describe, honestly, would cost $100/mo
or more, w/o connectivity fees?

When is spam a problem? When you have to pay someone full-time to sort
through your email or when I'm forced to raise prices to a level which
kills the technology just so AT&T can deliver all the mail they want
for free?

I think a major point of why we are all here is because, in various
ways, massive spamming is making e-mail as a technology untenable as
conceived. That would include its presumed or at least desireable
economics.

And who are you to say I should charge my customers more to cover the
costs of bulk-mailers? Why not charge THE BULK MAILERS. Doh!

You're just advocating for receiver pays.

Which is your right.

But just so we're all clear.

 > that the mail that your customers are paying you to deliver is in

Well, not really, he was trying to put as many network operators on
notice to try to let his stuff through.

But if you want to fly into wherever his office is and have a sit down
with him explaining what he needs to do, research potential problems,
and write it all up in a nice report for them to use as a set of
guidelines and even take responsibility for your recommendations all
at your own expense why Vernon by all means go for it!

The point is: Stop being willfully ignorant.

-- 
        -Barry Shein

---

From: Vernon Schryver <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2003 18:40:40 -0600 (MDT)

> Why thank you for the collegial consideration!

You're welcome.  I really think that on alternate Thursdays you
try to solve spam from the perspective of an AOL with 80,000,000
eyeballs to rent to the highest bidder.  That's a fine model from
some perspectives, but not mine.

> ameliorate the spam problem.

I think switching to sender pays is impossible, even if it were
desirable or practical with some other history.  Except in the
perverted cases where big advertisers pay big sellers of "eyes,"
there are insurmountable practical problems in authorization,
authentication, and general accounting.  Sender pays for email
makes just as much sense as sender-pays-per-IP-packet, which about
15 years after it was first pushed, makes even less sense. 
(Yes, I've heard of peering fees and approximations to "settlements".)

> not a problem, you're just too poor.

Plenty of spam is sent in my direction, thank you very much.  Like
everyone else, I deal with it.

> Ah, so easy to throw the other guy's money around!

Yes, but what you're doing is something else and worse.  You're
demanding a cut of other people's action because you're apparently
unwilling or unable to charge your customers whatever your serivces
cost.

> or more, w/o connectivity fees?

The email will end.  Fortunately, we both know that such a number is
silly nonsense.

> kills the technology just so AT&T can deliver all the mail they want

Those would be bad events.  It would also be bad if a large astroid
landed in the Atlantic.  Fortunately, both are very unlikely events.

> costs of bulk-mailers? Why not charge THE BULK MAILERS. Doh!

Because it is impractical to charge the mailers that cause problems.

> But just so we're all clear.

Receiver pays is what we have.  It's not perfect, but until you raise
the cost of email to at least the cost of U.S.P.S. junk mail, it's
the only possible system.

> The point is: Stop being willfully ignorant.

That's good advice.  Concerning sender-pays:
  - who runs the machinery to collect the fees and how much does that
     entity charge? 
  - who gets how much of the fees? 
  - how do you prevent abuses such as signing up for the FTC's DNC
      1000 times only to collect the fee?
  - how do you keep the fee low enough to not kill the utility of
      email that you are trying to preseve against the ravages of spam?
  - how do you get people to give up the original point-to-point
      data protocol?  The RIAA hasn't had a lot of success against "file
      sharing."

There are facile answers for all of those issues.  I think any real
answer to all of them simultaneously is indistinguishable from extending
the U.S. Postal Service's monopoly on paper mail to email, complete
with $0.50/message "e-postage."

---

From: Barry Shein <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2003 20:40:49 -0400

Ok Vernon, you've made your point.

You are in favor of the current "recipient pays" model for bulk email
etc.

We disagree. I think bulk mailers should pay their freight.

I just would like to point out that not going along with your
"recipient-pays" scheme is hardly nonsense, as you assert.

Next time try to use facts and reasoning to back up your point of view
rather than insults. I realize sometimes it's satisfying to convince
oneself that not only do they disagree, but the other person is a fool
for not seeing it your way. Well, whatever floats your self-esteem.

To be honest, I find your point of view, that the consumer will pay
whatever it takes to receive all the bulk mail anyone can justify
sending him or her, to be in a word: Nonsense.

But we're both free to have our differing opinions nonetheless.

        -Barry Shein

---

From: Vernon Schryver <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2003 19:06:21 -0600 (MDT)

> sending him or her, to be in a word: Nonsense.

It's a good thing that's not my point of view, although my view
may still be nonsense.

I think consumers will and must pay whatever it takes to receive the
mail they want (bulk or not) and not receive the rest.  That means
that customers will variously choose to pay to
  - have filters run on their behalf, 
  - buy software that implements challenge-response mechanisms,
  - use whitelists that make their mailboxes private and unreachable
     even to real long lost friends,
  - have their congresscritters write laws that reduce spam somewhat.

Some consumers will even pay their "eyeballs" to free and almost free
providers.  That's the only possible real world implementation of
sender-pays.  From outside, Hotmail is already in the business of
filtering unwanted junk advertising except that which Hotmail has been
paid to deliver.
Perhaps I'm being silly, but I doubt you'd take world.std.com in
that direction.  If I'm wrong, I think there will always be ISPs that
don't go that way.

---

From: Barry Shein <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2003 21:52:51 -0400

> The email will end.  Fortunately, we both know that such a number is

Let's see. I've been president & CEO of an ISP since 1989.

Are you sure you want to dismiss my comments about the costs of the
email business as nonsense off-hand?

Maybe you don't understand to what exent email is being subsidized by
other revenue streams and how that subsidy is becoming unbearable
mostly due to the personnel strain being created by spam.

Email is and has been the killer app of the net (in more ways than
one.) Now what happens when something gets people through the door? It
becomes a loss leader, you charge as little as possible in the hope
that once inside they may buy more profitable goods and services.

Well, it's a little more complicated than that but you'd have to pay
me the big bucks to explain it fully.

But unless you work the spreadsheets for a living don't be too sure
that you can extrapolate from what it takes to set-up sendmail and pop
on a linux pc for a few people to what it takes to run a professional
organization with service and customer support staff etc for many
thousands of people. Remember Brooks' constant carping about the N!
nature of organizational endeavors.

 > Because it is impractical to charge the mailers that cause problems.

Why? Because you can't think of a way to do it off the top of your
head?

But you can't think of a way to stop spam by any other means off the
top of your head either. Neither can anyone else, apparently.

Which is the justification for a research group. To try to tackle
problems which don't have obvious answers.

I wouldn't necessarily start with a sender-pays business plan as a
problem to solve here, maybe later, but I've seen some which are quite
plausible and nothing like what usually gets suggested by people who
aren't in the business of creating new business models.

But I bring it up because I think it's a reality we're going to have
to face, like it or not.

-- 
        -Barry Shein

---

From: Vernon Schryver <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2003 20:27:57 -0600 (MDT)

> email business as nonsense off-hand?

Yes, because I've been using email for 35 years since 1968.  I've
been continuously running sendmail servers that deal with my own
mail since 1986, and have run SMTP servers for years that handled
200K msgs/day for 10K users.  I know that it does not take
$100/user/month to provide email with or without spam filtering.
I suspect others know as much.

> mostly due to the personnel strain being created by spam.

I'd be very happy to hear an accounting of those costs, but not
insulting hyperbole of $100/month/user.

> nature of organizational endeavors.

So you're saying that ISP services costs AOL and Earthlink
$100/month/user for SMTP plus whatever petty change is needed for
HTTP and they're making up the difference between $100/month and
$10-30/month in volume?  .

You're also saying that providing mail for the current ~500,000,000
users is costing the world economy $600B/year?

sheesh...No one disputes that spam is expsensive, but statements like
$100/month/user are noise that hides your message.

> Why? Because you can't think of a way to do it off the top of your

Because it has insurmountable transition and operational problems.

> problems which don't have obvious answers.

Research includes being open to not finding a nice answer.

> But I bring it up because I think it's a reality we're going to have

If you'd stop the hyperbole, you might find that I agree a version of
sender pays will occur.  I predict (not because I like the idea) that
governments will impose a $0.001 to $0.10/target tax or fee on commercial
bulk email.  They'll make the failure to pay that fee a major criminal
offense like failing to pay other taxes.  They'll follow the money and
jail both the spam service bureaus and their customers, but mostly the
customers because they're easier to find.  Much of the proceeds will go
where government fees always go, but some will to ISPs in the name of
closing the digital divide, providing universal service, improving
education, and stopping child pornography, terrorism, and drugs.  Non-bulk
mail and non-commercial bulk mail, including stuff such as the FTC mailings
and messages from politicians will not be taxed.

The Direct Marketing Association will be pleased because the cost of
spam will high enough that reasonable percentage margins will let
Topica, Roving Software, et al survive, and because the viagra work
at home dirty picture spammers will be out of business.  ISPs will be
glad to get a cut of the fees.  Bill Gates will be especially pleased.

Users will not be pleased because they'll still be getting 10-20
spam/day, albeit of higher quality.

There will be endless court cases over whether particular spews are
commercial.  Many completely legitimate bulk mail senders will shut
down rather than risk running afoul of the tax man.  Some will switch
to NNTP or HTTP to deliver their current content.

---

From: Yakov Shafranovich <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 27 Jun 2003 15:30:29 -0400

At 08:20 AM 6/27/2003 -0400, Madscientist wrote:
[..]
>I suggest we remain focused on solving the problem of control and the 
>suppression of abuse. This can be done by technical means in a 
>decentralized fashion, and we'd better get on with it.
>
>+ adjustments and enhancements to open protocols and standards.
>+ distributed, dynamic threat detection and response mechanisms.
>+ intelligent controls that allow recipients to define the content they want.
>+ adaptive propagation mechanisms to enhance efficiency.
>...
>
>If the infrastructure of the Internet disconnects abusers, and the 
>definition of abuse is controlled by the recipients, then the economics 
>will be well defined for the spammer: If you abuse this network you will 
>be removed from it and _no amount_ of money will get your messages to 
>unwilling recipients. It will also be well defined for the provider: 
>Implement these protocols or lose customers to those who do.
>[..]

As I mentioned in a different thread there seems to be two types of 
solutions to the spam problem: one focusing on the senders and the network 
(network abuse model), and the second focusing on the receiver's end only 
(consent model). I think that both are equally valid and we should be 
looking at both, and restrict ourselves.

Also, from a recent message by Alan DeKok:
-----snip----
Yakov Shafranovich <[email-masked]> wrote:
 >If both problems are similar, then perhaps we need to look into what
 > methods are currently in place to block DDOS attacks and we can
 > reuse the same methods here for spam.
"DDoS attacks can only be prevented if the network entities mutually 
cooperate to minimize the scope of the attack.  As seen here, that's 
extremely difficult to do."
-----snip----

Yakov

---

From: "Madscientist" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 27 Jun 2003 17:52:33 -0400

>From: Yakov Shafranovich [mailto:[email-masked]] 

<snip>

>looking at both, and restrict ourselves.

Actually, what I am suggesting is that there should be a unified model
where the consent model can (essentially) drive the network abuse model
via a collection of open protocols. I will attempt to summarize:

Each terminal user would feed policy decisions (or not if they are lazy)
to their local MTA. The local MTA aggregates those policy decisions and
responds accordingly while allowing for any exceptions to specific end
users. (Lazy users would accept by default the aggregate policy of the
system, or some other standard defined by their relationship with their
provider).

Failure to respect negative responses, or to fail to properly execute
other protocols can be monitored by the MTA and would be seen as abuse.
Other tests could also be added as abuse detection mechanisms (port scan
detection, dictionary attacks, delivery or attempted delivery of
malware, etc..) MTAs with compatible policies would collaborate to share
common elements and would collect sensory data on abuse as well as
diseminate that data as needed with peers. Peers would be selected based
on COT (Circle Of Trust) protocols whereby each participating node
continuously evaluates the performance, consistency, and policy
proximity of it's peer nodes and migrates to new peers as needed. This
mechanism provides for no single point of failure as there is no
centralized authority. It also overlays automatically with an optimized,
distributed processing facility for threat detection and collective
response.

(NOTE: Nodes need not be a single MTA, MUA or otherwise. In fact, an MTA
in a large scale system might support many "nodes" so that it can
aggregate the policies of it's end users based on similarities between
groups to simplify it's local delivery rules. Other devices may also
play a part depending upon local policies.)

Aggressive abuse would trigger aggressive measures such as blocking
inbound access from the offending ips and/or networks. (DSQP = Dynamic
Squelch Propogation). At first, a local MTA would refuse connections at
an envelope level if a "more terminalward" MTA (or MUA or MUA agent)
refused the content. If the refusal was not heeded or if other abuse was
present sufficient to meet the local policy thresholds, then the MTA
would initiate a DSQP request to it's border routers to refuse access
from the offending network. Collaborating nodes within a high trust
level of the COT would be allowed to aggregate individual IPs to network
blocks appropriate to fit their collective requirements and optimize
network level controls at the border routers or other similar
structures.

DSQP news messages might be broadcast to peers depending on local and
peer policy. Peers might then aggregate or simply act on similar news
messages by issuing their own local DSQP. In this way, for example,
worms  could be detected and blocked before they could spread.
Similarly, unwanted spam broadcasts might also be detected and slowed
for analysis or entirely blocked based on the wide detection of abuse.

For example, a network provider might have a COT/DSQP policy such that
some threshold of DSQP requests for a given network at the network's
edge might result in a broad propogation of DSQP requests directly to
the sources for that traffic. For example if a large ISP were to detect
DSQP-Malware signals from 5% of it's network clients then it might have
a policy to block the source network named in the DSQP at the border
routers thus temporarily denying transit across it's network. A similar
action might occur at a higher level for DSQP-Spam reports with a
specific characteristic (such as a new unknown source reported by 10% of
client networks - again, local policies prevail [ the provider might
know that only 15% of it's client networks have these protocols in place
so a 10% showing would indicate a very high threat ]).

Collaborating intermediate providers might therefore block serious
network threats and DDoS attacks automatically based on detecting abuse
reports from client systems - and thus disconnect the source of the
abuse.

(NOTE: All of these protocols also relax restrictions automatically once
abuse subsides based on local policy decisions. In any case the
responses at each level would be metered by local policies in much the
same way BGP policies can be established to accept or deny routes from
particular sources under specific conditions... If someone makes a
mistake, they would be blocked, but once they correct that mistake they
are back in operation.)

The model also works well during rollout (before wide deployment)
provided the local policies of each peer are willing to accept
non-compliant (outdated) MTA traffic.

Consider an inbound message from a new sender (from the perspective of a
given MTA). The MTA would ask some number of peers in it's COT to
"vouch" for the sender. If the other peers in it's group show a good
rating for the sender then the message would be processed with little
bias and a new monitoring record would be developed in the local node.

If the peers show a bad rating for the new sender then the local MTA
might adopt that policy and reject the message. (for example if the same
sender had recently attempted a dictionary attack on one of my peers
then "I" would not want to accept any traffic from that sender.)

If the peers do not have any rating for the new sender then the local
MTA would process the message according to it's local policy for new
contacts. It would also begin forming it's own rating for that sender
based on the sender's performance, adherence to policy and protocol
requests etc.

One way this new unknown message might be processed is with an IRRQ
(Intelligent Retry Request) where the initial message is rejected with a
unique response that the sender can use in their next retry after an
appropriate guard time. 

(IRRQ modifies SMTP by indicating a temporary failure and providing a
one-time password for the sender to use in their next attempt. The
sender issues the password as it's first recipient in it's retries after
an established guard time in order to comply with the protocol. A
non-compliant sender would respond normally to the initial temporary
failure. Spamware would not remember the password and would probably do
a lot of other detectable things. An uncompromised MTA would at least
act in a predictable way (not retrying 30 seconds later for example). An
MTA implementing the protocol would most certainly not be spamware and
would be given a higher trust rating provided no other policies were
violated.)

If the sending MTA has implemented IRRQ and responds appropriately then
the local node might increase it's "trust" rating. If the sending MTA
does not implement this protocl then the local MTA would be somewhat
more biased against this incoming traffic as determined by it's local
policy. If, on the other hand the new sending MTA began pounding the
local MTA with bad requests (or other detectable abuse) then the local
rating for this sender would immediately plummit and no messages would
be accepted (escallating as indicated above if necessary). Since this
local MTA now has a rating for this sender, if the sender attempts to
contact on of the peers in the COT then those peers would receive the
negative rating from the local MTA and would start their evaluation of
the sender from that perspective.

--- summarizing the summary ---

The important characteristics of this solution are:

- End users ultimately define the nature of abuse (spam or otherwise)
within their local context, which includes their immediate provider.

- Abuse can be detected more accurately and sensitively because multiple
systems across the Internet are involved in the detection process.

- Broad defensive actions against abuse are enabled.

- Individual processing costs are reduced significantly by leveraging
network effects. (For example, only one well trusted system need detect
a virus for an entire group of systems to reject contact from that
source. The detection must only occur once, not once for each system.
This leverage also applies to content rejection of spam whereby systems
with very similar policies might adopt a block after unwanted material
is detected on a well trusted system (unless a local policy forces an
exception) This is true if the spam detection is a person rejecting the
message or an automated system of heuristics or some other policy
mechanism).

- Any protective response against abuse is driven as close to the source
as possible thereby protecting the widest possible area of the network
and significantly reducing the possibility of damage or other costs.

- Administrators close to the source of an abuse are given strong real
time data that can help them identify policy violations and take
appropriate actions (legal or otherwise) within their local framework.
This might be particularly important where legal actions are considered.
Note that system operators overseas who consistently allow abuse without
acting effectively will automatically be rated poorly by systems
implementing these protocols... that may well result in their effective
removal from the network as broad policies develop to reject their
network - this puts a very specific spin on the economics of network
service operation, content publication, and otherwise.

- The system is extremely difficult to compromise or corrupt because
there is no single point of failure and every node is under constant
observation by other peers. If a node becomes compromised then it's
peers will reject it based on their local policies and can even be made
sensitive to this possibility by sharing their observations... A
compromised node would be seen as "losing trust" with all of the other
peers simultaneously and so each peer could be programmed to be ultra
sensitive to this condition. In any case failure can only degrade the
system to the degree allowed by all local policies - so there should be
no possibility for a large scale failure scenario.

- The system automatically adapts to policy changes... If a peer changes
it's policy and that policy is no longer compatible with your local
policy than you will reduce that peer's trust rating until you
eventually drop it from your COT. That does not mean that you won't
accept content from that system (provided that content doesn't violate
your policy) but it does mean that you will not accept that system's
policy recommendations nor seek it's advice on new contacts.

... There is a lot to this, I hope that the above description provides a
good starting point...

_M

PS: I am working on papers to describe these concepts in more depth and
more clearly.

---

From: Barry Shein <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 27 Jun 2003 18:52:38 -0400

> >  > > or more, w/o connectivity fees?

From: Vernon Schryver <[email-masked]>
>insulting hyperbole of $100/month/user.

Vernon seems to be having trouble with the subjunctive.

WOULD cost, that's a hypothetical future.

Have you anything of actual value to say to everyone here? Remember,
this isn't a snippy little bar conversation just between the two of
us.

You're taking up others' valuable time with the straw men, willful
misunderstandings, and other sleazy argumentation which I don't think
is convincing anyone that you're very bright.

-- 
        -Barry Shein