Subject: RE: Why spam is a problem.

From: "Christian Huitema" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 13 Aug 2002 09:43:08 -0700

Perry,

SPAM is a problem, but the solutions so far have a strong smell of
"throwing the baby with the bathwater." For example, a popular ISP
practice is to block all SMTP connections that are not directed to a
local ISP server: it blocks submission through legitimate servers run by
third parties, e.g. personal web servers. Another popular practice is to
block a whole network if SPAM originates from some of its addresses; an
extreme version of that blocks all mail from Korea or China; the belief
is that by doing so one forces network providers to clean up their act;
in practice, a lot of legitimate usage is prevented. There are other
irritating consequence, such as mailing restriction on IETF lists, which
we are forced to accept for the common good but which also makes
interaction harder than necessary.

So, Perry, are you proposing a solution? Or perhaps a process to find a
solution?

-- Christian Huitema

---

From: "Perry E. Metzger" <[email-masked]>
Date: 13 Aug 2002 12:55:34 -0400

"Christian Huitema" <[email-masked]> writes:
> local ISP server:

And without that practice, Christian, I'm sure I'd be getting even
more spam than I do now.

> There are other

Thank goodness we have them.

What I'm trying to say, and what some people still don't hear, is that
this is no longer just an annoyance. Unfortunately, many in the IETF
community still cling to the naive feeling that somehow our personal
distaste at closed mailing lists or dial up lines that cannot
communicate on port 25 except to authorized hosts is more important
than keeping SMTP usable AT ALL. What happened to Usenet will indeed
happen to SMTP if we do not stop pretending that the problem is
insignificant.

-- 
Perry E. Metzger		[email-masked]
--
"Ask not what your country can force other people to do for you..."

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 13 Aug 2002 14:32:00 -0400

> this is no longer just an annoyance. 

I'm entirely in agreement with this.

> Unfortunately, many in the IETF community still cling to the naive 
> feeling that somehow our personal distaste at closed mailing lists 
> or dial up lines that cannot communicate on port 25 except to authorized 
> hosts is more important than keeping SMTP usable AT ALL. 

It should be obvious to most that any effective solution will require 
some compromises.  That does not mean that the appropriate compromise
is obvious, or that we will all instantly agree on a single compromise.  

As for naivete, there's plenty of it to go around, and ill-conceived
countermeasures to spam are as much a part of the current problem 
as the spam itself.  But calling someone 'naive' because he/she doesn't 
like your preferred compromise is probably counterproductive.  

> What happened to Usenet will indeed happen to SMTP if we do not stop 
> pretending that the problem is insignificant.

I agree with this also.

Keith

---

From: Russ Allbery <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 13 Aug 2002 15:20:21 -0700

I agree with most of what you're saying.  However...

> pretending that the problem is insignificant.

...Usenet mostly controlled its spam problem.  It's not increasing any
more, and it's much less noticable to the average user than e-mail spam.
So this statement is going to hurt your presentation with anyone who
actually knows what's going on on Usenet.

What's really happening to Usenet is that Usenet does not offer anyone
sufficient control over the presentation, readership, or postings in a
forum, and most people want control rather than anarchy and want their
presentation to be pretty.  So they are instead using mailing lists
(somewhat more control) or web-based discussion software (lots and lots of
control).

Furthermore, the money in Internet communication these days is in
one-to-many broadcast communication without the possibility of response,
which web pages and to a lesser extent mailing lists thrive at, and which
is nearly impossible on Usenet and is strongly attacked by Usenet users.
So that money isn't going into Usenet.

The long-term direction of Usenet seems to more and more be heading
towards a quiet backwater populated mostly by technical people who
understand the technology and think it's cool, as more and more sites drop
all of the binary groups and carry only text-based discussion, with a
strong sideline of bidirectional gateways to mailing lists so that people
can pick the interface they prefer.  I can't say that I'd be particularly
unhappy with that; it would be rather like rolling the clock back to 1995,
and in another five or ten years it wouldn't surprise me if that's what
happened.

It means that Usenet ceases to be a hotbed for experimentation in new
communication techniques, which is a bit of a shame, but frankly Usenet
hasn't been that since the web was invented.  That's where all of the
effort is going these days.

-- 
Russ Allbery ([email-masked])             <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>

---

From: "Anthony Atkielski" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2002 12:58:31 +0200

Perry writes:

> What happened to Usenet will indeed
> happen to SMTP if we do not stop pretending
> that the problem is insignificant.

What happened to Usenet?  Still seems fine to me.

---

From: Richard Welty <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2002 07:25:07 -0400 (EDT)

> What happened to Usenet?  Still seems fine to me.

automated spam cancellers.

richard
--
Richard Welty                                         [email-masked]
Averill Park Networking                                         518-573-7592
              Unix, Linux, IP Network Engineering, Security