[ppml] Question?

[John M. Brown]

Hmm, developing a STANDARD to stop spammers means they
will find a way to "route around the damage, er, standard".

What people seem to fail at understanding is that SPAM is
no different, technically speaking, than regular mail.  It
follows the various RFC's to communicate the bits.

People have tried for multiple years to define nice neat
little definitions of what SPAM is, how to 100 percent 
guarantee that a message is SPAM and zap it. 

So far, I haven't seen any silver bullet that catches 
100 percent all spam with no false positives.

To have the IETF, RIR's, and others create a standard is
myopic at best, and dangerous at worse.

SPAM is a social and economic issue.  As long as WorldCom
and others take money from those that SPAM, the edge
of the net is unsecure, and people make money from sending
SPAM, it will continue to exist.


Bottomline, RIR's, ICANN, IANA, IETF, IESG, IAB, et al are
NOT the Police.Net.  We should NOT encourage them to be 
the Police.Net.

If enough people don't like SPAM, then march on your state
capital, or on Washington DC and get the laws changed.

If you don't like that, then stop buying services from
those that support spammers.  Otherwords vote with
your checkbook.

I'd suspect that WorldCom would drop a DS1 spammer if they
new I recently decided NOT to purchase a DS3 worth of bandwidth
becuase of the recent article in which the admitted to supporting
spammers as customers.  I voted with my checkbook.

John Brown

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-ppml at arin.net [mailto:owner-ppml at arin.net] On 
> Behalf Of McBurnett, Jim
> Sent: Monday, December 02, 2002 1:00 PM
> To: Ron da Silva; ppml at arin.net
> Subject: RE: [ppml] Question?
> 
> 
> Purpose:
> To design a method of stopping SPAMmers that becomes a 
> standard rather that the current haphazard Blacklist 
> approach. This should include creation of new procedures and 
> methods by the industry with the aid of IETF engineering to 
> identify and to correct the problem in a politically correct 
> manner. (I hate to say it this way, but to say: Shut down the 
> Spammers T-1 is not quite the correct approach, however 
> gratifying it may be)
> 
> Outcome: An RFC or other similar document with guidelines 
> defining SPAM, listing unacceptable practices to limit or 
> stop 		abuses of individuals or companies.
> 		Along with as clear, concise (as much as it can 
> be coming from a commitee) language that defines SPAM and the 
> possible actions that are recommended to ISP's, End users, 
> and Domain Admins to fight it.
> 
> Finally:  If the committee comes out and says:  
> 	Should a block of Address from ISP A is identified as 
> being a massive SPAMer, then the AUP's from it's provider 
> with support from the community at large and the RIR's, IETF, 
> IANA, may take these actions, I believe many will adopted it, 
> and the ones who refuse will become the minority since the 
> current outcry about SPAM is just going to grow.
> 
> Folks, we are on the verge of email becoming the next snail 
> mail if we sit back and watch and allow the junk to flow. If 
> anyone follows the news and the FTC's actions on junk mail, 
> how can we not think about some kind of action? Did you enjoy 
> getting 5,10 or 20 pieces of junk mail daily from the US 
> Postal Service when this was the norm?
> 
> Suggestions anyone?
> 
> 
> Jim
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ron da Silva [mailto:ron at aol.net]
> Sent: Monday, December 02, 2002 1:22 PM
> To: ppml at arin.net
> Subject: Re: [ppml] Question?
> 
> 
> On Sat, Nov 30, 2002 at 12:45:43PM -0500, McBurnett, Jim wrote:
> > 
> > What I propose is that...[we] start a committee of a few folks from 
> > each RIR, the IETF, IANA, and a few other organizations and fix 
> > this...
> 
> Ok, committee could be a good idea, but we need to better 
> articulate what 'this' is, clear expectations of outcome and 
> measure of success. To what problem would this committee be 
> expected to create a solution? Also, what would the committee 
> do with the result?  I suspect that at best the committee 
> would be able to "suggest" a solution to its constituents.
> 
> -ron
>