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>