Re: Principles of Spam-abatement

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   I'm planning to post a summary to the MARID-planning list mentioned
elsewhere in this thread -- hopefully before 5:00 pm Korea time.
I expect there will be a proto-WG mailing list declared by the close of
the MARID BoF at 11:30 Thursday (Korea time). I recommend the discussion
continue there.

   The current draft of what I will post follows:

=============================== cut here ===============================
On the <ietf@xxxxxxxx> mailing list there has been discussion of
Principles of Spam Abatement. This is a brief summary of principles
which _may_ have consensus of that list. I accept full responsibility
for editing errors and misunderstandings.

- All communications must be by mutual consent.

- The spam problem starts with freely accepting mail from strangers.

- Spam is and will remain a long-term battleground and it needs serious
  effort to counter.

- Every mail message carries a practically unforgeable token: the IP
  address of the SMTP client.

- It is pointless to erect some expensive Maginot Line and pretend it
  will solve the problem.

- There is not and can never be a hoop low enough to pass all human
  strangers but exclude spammers' computers.

- If you want more of something, subsidize it; if you want less, tax it.

- Spammers need scale because they get a very low return. Therefore,
  part of the solution should be to deny scalability to spammers.

- If we can communicate to the sender (without adverse side effects)
  that a message is discarded, then occasional false positives aren't
  as much of a problem.

- If you reject the message during the SMTP session you don't need to
  generate a bounce message, the other side will do this.

- Errors returned after the close of the SMTP transaction are likely
  to go to an innocent party; and should be deprecated for any email
  identified as spam.

I also recommend perusing the summary of principles expressed on the
Next-Generation Mail <mail-ng@xxxxxxx> list at:

http://www.cs.utk.edu/~moore/opinions/user-visible-email-ng-goals.html

--
John Leslie <john@xxxxxxx>


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