Re: Anti-spam Working Group, cornel@localhost

[Gunnar Lindberg <]

>Date: Wed, 02 Sep 1998 17:59:30 +0200
>From: Piet Beertema <Piet.Beertema@localhost
>To: cornel@localhost
>Subject: Re: Anti-spam Working Group 
>Message-Id: <UTC199809021559.RAA09869.piet@localhost>

>    I think that if the European Internet community will have some
>    anti-spam policy
>Internet is a community of communities of communities... and
>so on, ad infinitum. And just like there's no European policy
>in other areas, there will be no "European Internet policy".

Agree, no "European Internet policy". But Europe could put itself
one step ahead by strong ISP cooperation to handle spam. RIPE?

>    (black hole will be fine)
>Definitely not: see previous reply.

Agree. Blackhole should be avoided - not at all cost but almost.

>    maybe then we'll be able to get rid of spammers using relays in
>    Spain or Korea or Mexico or UUNET (USA).
>Let all sysadmins (not ISP's!) use RBL. It's quite solid and
>trusted, and about as good as you can get. And if a sysadmin
>can't or doesn't want to use this and/or his/her own anti-spam
>measures, (s)he shouldn't complain about spam.

Violently disagree!!! RBL may work technically, but it has exactly
all the admin/political problems you mentioned earlier, Piet - who
can make me get on their Bad List, how do I get off it again (how
do I sent mail and complain...), who guarantees that noone tampers
with the RBL data, who guarantees "neutrality", etc. Ad infinitum.

Although it's not a Blackhole per your definition, it still makes
mail stop. As long as it's outgoing spam that gets stopped it's
great, but if you scale it up to the size of the email Internet you
will have "a lot of baby going out with the bathwater". As always
you must make sure the cure is not worse than the disease.

Besides, if a site doesn't have an email contact in whois.ripe.net
or that contact and/or their Postmaster doesn't respond, do you
consider it likely that they'll handle RBL? Really? Unfortunately
I don't even think the threat of RBL will make then change - they
simply don't know (and possibly don't care). Driver's License.

	Gunnar