Subject: RE: draft-danisch-dns-rr-smtp-02.txt

From: "Hallam-Baker, Phillip" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 4 Jun 2003 14:39:51 -0700

> Senders of email from a domain are not, in general, attached to an IP
> address. They may use any IP address from any service provider they
> please.  For example, I have customers which have leased 
> lines from Av8
> Internet, but have their email outsourced to Earthlink. 
> Earthlink does not
> provide them with relay services. 

So Earthlink sets the DNS RMX record accordingly, problem solved.

Or as is likely to be the case anyway we have to go to a certificate based
scheme if we want to get significant coverage.

this is simply a low hanging fruit exercise, the cost of deployment is low
and the leverage is significant.

> Limitations on the IP addresses 
> that may be
> used by users, and thus on the industry of Email Outsourcing, and for
> private use, tend to subdivide the internet, and seem to 
> violate the ISOC Code of Conduct sections 4 and 14.

Unless the ISOC can propose a better solution to the spam problem the code
of conduct is not going to have much effect.

We already have a major problem with the blacklists causing large areas of
the net to be censored because some self important upstart thinks they are
in charge and have the right to use 'collateral damage'.

We are not discussing people being kicked off the net here, we are talking
about reducing the probability that their email will be unjustly blocked.

> Dr. Claude Shannon, one of the founders of the science of Information
> Theory, proved that it is impossible to prove the non-existance of a
> covert channel. In terms of spam, this means that it is impossible to
> construct a protocol that cannot be abused, since one cannot 
> prove that it
> is impossible (the channel can't exist) to send abuse (a 
> covert channel).

That does not follow at all. And invoking Shannon that way hardly helps the
argument. You are not Claude Shannon and Shannon wrote nothing on the
subject of email spam.

It is quite possible to solve the problem of long term abuse in a protocol
where there is a means of establishing reputation. Extrapolation from
abstract principles of what is not possible rarely results in correct
statements. A problem may not be perfectly solvable but it can be
sufficiently solvable.

> It goes without saying that the DNS protocol is itself not secure, and
> can't be used for any type of authorization or authentication scheme.

That is not my fault or the fault of Hadmut. It is secure enough to 
allow a meaningful level of control.

> Therefore, I think this proposal will have no effect on the problem of
> spam control, and leads to a gratuitous change to the DNS protocol.

Would you rather the gratuitous change take place in the IETF or some other
forum?

> Our open relays are typically
> only abused by radical antispammers, sometimes with overt 
> threats. 

And a large part of the movement for new anti-spam mechanisms is comming
from ISPs who are as fed up with the anti-spam people than the spam senders.
They want authentication as a way they can start whitelisting the good mail
rather than relying on self appointed anti-spam zealots.

		Phill

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