Michael Thomas <mat@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Subject: Re: Principles of Spam-abatement > X-Mailer: VM 6.72 under 21.1 (patch 6) "Big Bend" XEmacs Lucid > > John Leslie writes: >> Michael Thomas <mat@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: >>> John Leslie writes: >>>> Paul Vixie <vixie@xxxxxxx> wrote: >>>>> >>>>> "all communications must be by mutual consent" >>> >>> 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, Case 1: consent is presumed until content is observed; >> others check caller-ID, and let an answering machine take any calls >> they don't recognize; Case 2: non-consent is presumed for unauthenticated senders; >> still others hire a sectretary to screen their calls... Case 3: an external agent screens everything; >>> 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. > > Well, I don't understand because it sure seems to > me that the principle requires omniscience in > isolation... No more so than the three cases listed above (or others not listed). > Or is this just a covert way of saying that we need an e-Yentl? I can't say whether Paul intended that: but I don't interpret the principle to say any such thing. > It would be a lot clearer if the intent is to say that third > party introductions are a necessary possibility, that it come > out and say that instead of leaving the possibility of oracles > explicitly open. You're getting into implementation details -- definitely off-topic for a list of principles. I'm still open (for a few hours) to suggestions for re-wording; but I'm not going to accept any re-wording that changes a principle into an implementation plan. -- John Leslie <john@xxxxxxx>