Michael Thomas <mat@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > John Leslie writes: >> Paul Vixie <vixie@xxxxxxx> wrote: >>> >>> the principle i've always followed is that >>> "all communications must be by mutual consent" >>> ... >> >> Excellent principle, Paul. I'd like to put it at the head of the >> list. > > Ok, I'm dense. How do I meaningfully consent to > somebody for which I have no a priori information > about their consentworthiness? Much the same as you do with the telephone: some people just pick up, expecting to complain to the telephone company if it's an obscene call; others check caller-ID, and let an answering machine take any calls they don't recognize; still others hire a sectretary to screen their calls... > I mean, I can blackhole them after the fact, but until I have some > information to inform my consent, I'm not sure what this principle > buys you. It doesn't necessarily buy you anything: it's a way to look at what we're trying to engineer. I take it to mean that we should look at the system in terms of informing the consent, rather than rules to cover every case; and specifically that we shouldn't be communicating back any information except by consent of the recipient. (This is, after all, a _difficult_ problem -- some principles may be in competition with others...) -- John Leslie <john@xxxxxxx>