Subject: Re: Apology Re: Principles of Spam-abatement

From: "Dr. Jeffrey Race" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 15 Mar 2004 22:58:38 +0700

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>.

The IETF and other standards bodies can almost completely STOP spam,
viruses, trojans, and other security threats,  if they will
develop tools  (for example traceability) and norms (for example
null-routing polluting sources) to impose consequences on actions.
Once you do it (and there are tricks to make it work, easily, when
you decide to do it) then the problems go away in HOURS (not after
years of hot air such as we see on certain discussion groups).

Now antisocial behavior produces only good for the perps, not the
reverse.

This is just common sense which every parent knows.

Until the standards bodies start this process in motion, everything
else is just useless whining.

OK, I feel better now.

Jeffrey Race

---

From: Yakov Shafranovich <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 15 Mar 2004 15:58:25 -0500

> 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